"Gov'ment causes those poor helpless colleges to overcharge."
Bullshit.
The growth in the cost of college is tied to big fat administrator salaries. It is control fraud pure and simple. To paraphrase, the best way to rob a college is to run one.
What's more he doesn't propose eliminating federal aid or loan guarantees, he advocates letting you discharge student loan debt in bankruptcy and putting colleges on the hook for some percentage of that default.
Sounds like a great idea to me. Schools that equip their students for well-paying jobs have nothing to fear, but diploma mills out for easy loan money will suffer.
Of course they wouldn't. That's the idea though. Back-pressure. The idea is that it would then become unrealistic for institutions to try and charge 200k for an arts degree which no one can afford, even with loans. This should lead to lower tuition.
Bear in mind that that what any institution wants to charge is the absolute maximum the student can borrow, plus any government subsidies or fees they can extract.
Despite its best efforts, economic law is the only one that the government can't find a way to violate.
The article makes a good point, IMO. Schools can pay "big fat administrator salaries" because students have practically unlimited access to money via student loans. Give everybody a 10% raise, and tell students to take out 10% more loans. If the student can't pay the loans then it's not the school's problem, but maybe it should be.
It is not just giving your deans a big loan to buy a house and the forgiving it. It includes paying yourself excessively.
If someone is stealing from you, the answer is not to make them share the risk.