We’ve been taught that expanding opportunities for everyone to attend college would lead to less inequality.
But the author, below, says because much debt is taken on by students earning degrees that do not pay well after graduation, their net wealth goes down, not up. The effect is that college education makes them worse off, financially, and leads to an increase in inequality, the opposite of what was intended, he says.
The Black Hole of Student Loans – Reuven Brenner (lawliberty.org)
Related: I have been exploring the backgrounds of the reporters of the stories I read. At the national level, reporters are usually from elite backgrounds. Many attended private K-12 or private high schools – most of those I’ve checked on LinkedIn attended very expensive private universities (list, non-discounted prices of about $80k/year for tuition, fees, housing, etc), did a study abroad, sometimes more than once. For some, their education costs runs from about $300k to over $500k – for a career field that for most, does not pay well. It’s crazy. These findings illustrate that national news reporters are in a different level of eliteness and not particularly connected to us common folks. Turns out this is also well known, with occasional stories in the industry press and academic press, about the non-diversity of reporters and their disconnection from the people and topics they report on. This might account for why many in the media want to see education loans forgiven by taxpayers. Then again, he Bank of Mom and Dad may have funded their elite university attendance so some of them may not have large education loans.
