rate of tuition would drop dramatically. It’s fine on a state and local level to give out scholarships, but I agree that the minute the fed gov’t steps in, the schools see it as a slush fund.

I agree that institutions are mostly intererested in teaching what to think and not how to think, but in the end, it’s purely financial; when the gov’t gives subsidies for students, the colleges raise rates accordingly. One stat I’ve seen is that tuition has gone up about 439% in the last 10 years, A pure example of cause and effect that happens everytime gov’t gets involved in a free-market principle.

Don’t forget O’care and the Dems are responsible for the current student loan takeover and interest rate rise and I’m waiting for the prez to say it’s Republican’s fault for not having enough Pell Grant money….we have short memories and here is the proof of the Dem’s plan:

This excerpt from USA today on 3/19/10, http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2010-03-19-IHE-student-loan-measures-in-health-bill19_ST_N.htm

titled: “Revamped student loan bill tucked into massive health bill”

“In the end, to satisfy budget requirements and win over skeptical deficit hawks in their own party, Democratic leaders wound up directing a total of $19 billion (of the $61 billion in revenues that the student loan shift would produce over 10 years) to reduce the deficit and help pay for the health care portion of the legislation.

What’s been cut

Stripped entirely from the final version of the legislation were billions of dollars to extend a cut in the student loan interest rate past 2012, $8 billion for early childhood education, and an overhaul and expansion of the Perkins Loan Program that was designed to reward institutions for their success in graduating low-income students.

The measure also lowers the sights of the administration’s plan to create a new $3 billion College Access and Completion Fund to prod states and institutions to innovate; instead, it would put $750 million toward the existing College Access Challenge Grant Program.

And even the administration’s top higher education priority ? increasing the Pell Grant ? took a serious hit. While the version of the legislation that the House passed last fall would have increased the maximum Pell Grant to $6,900 by 2019 and tied future increases in the grants to inflation plus 1 percentage point, the compromise measure would set the maximum grant to $5,975 in 2019 and provide for no increase in four of the next 10 years. ($36 billion doesn’t go as far as it used to.)

Because so many more students have applied and qualified for the grants as a result of of swelling enrollments and Americans’ worsening financial situations, the Pell Grant Program faces a $19 billion shortfall in 2009-10 and 2010-11, and lawmakers felt pressed to set aside $13.5 billion of the money from the budget bill to pay down about two-thirds of that total. Congressional appropriators will have to find the rest of that money in the coming months.”

Tell me the government isn’t responsible for this tuition mess….

And in usual fashion, derided a program before we had a continuity plan:

-Kill coal and fossil fuels before green energy & algea are ready (if ever)
-Remove the troops in Afghan, compromise with Taliban, set a date certain before we can declare victory (a word that is not in his vocabulary)
-Pretend the Constitution doesn’t exist and declare SCOTUS & Congress as barriers that he has to work around

And the list goes on….but gov’t can’t force or decide what degree a student should get and what its worth is to them or society. The easiest solution is NO gov’t influence. Period.