THE COLLEGE EDUCATION RIP-OFF: PART II

By Brett Arends
Yahoo News
(Part II)

How high will (the cost of a college education) go? 

Try this. The College-Industrial Complex says that degrees are still worth it because those with BAs will earn a lot more over the course of their lifetimes, and should pay for that. They point to U.S. Census data showing those with BAs earning on average $26,000 a year more than those with just a high school diploma.
Using that logic, they could justify charging as much as $500,000 for a college degree. With the interest rate on subsidized student loans down to 3.4 percent, the net present value of those future earnings is, theoretically, very high.
No one is going to slap that price tag on a degree in public. Not yet. But these numbers are based on some basic financial calculations. If I’ve done them, you can bet those in the Complex have, too.
Some members of the Complex are pushing for the interest rate on student loans to be slashed to 1 percent, subsidized with taxpayers’ dollars. The lower that interest rate, the more the colleges can charge.
This isn’t just a rip-off. 

It is also a conspiracy. You’ll notice how college fees, miraculously, move in tandem. You’ll notice how few colleges are willing to break ranks. Above all, you’ll notice amazingly little frank and open discussion of this from the usual sources.
Call me crazy if you like. Tell me I should have mimeographed this column in purple ink. Send me sarcastic emails asking if the CIA is sending me signals through the metal fillings in my teeth. Fact is, a horrifying number of people are in on the conspiracy – directly and indirectly. And, as in many of the most insidious and effective conspiracies, most of them don’t even realize they’re involved.
The rich and connected benefit from the escalation of college costs because it prices middle-class kids out of the market. For the 1 percent, a bill of $20,000 or $60,000 isn’t much different: But suddenly junior’s chances of getting in to Prestige U. are a lot better, since many will decide they can’t afford to apply. College is a luxury good again, like $3,000 Italian shoes. Great news for those who can afford it.
Fancier sports arenas and drama facilities just add to the exclusivity. Indeed, astonishingly, I have seen one or two “conservative” writers actually complain that good public colleges are underpriced. Berkeley, they say, should raise its prices to equal those of Stanford.
After all, you don’t want to let in the riff-raff!
Meanwhile there’s a second group who are in on the conspiracy: The media.
The reason? Self-interest.
Some members of the media already work in the Complex. They teach in college, or they hold down some cushy sinecure in a university’s “media institute” or think-tank. Many more journalists have friends, or family, who are employed by a college. And still more journalists are hoping to land college jobs themselves.
Consider the deafening media silence over the phenomenon of graduate degrees in journalism, where young people are scammed out of $30,000 or more for the privilege of earning a certificate to practice a dying craft. Working journalists, in private, all agree how utterly crazy and ridiculous it is that young people are still going to journalism school. I hear this all the time.
But good luck finding much commentary about it in public. The reason? J-school no longer exists to teach the journalists of tomorrow (if it ever did), but to employ the journalists of yesterday. Every reporter awaiting the dreaded Next Round of Layoffs has J-School lined up as Plan B. Good luck getting that job, though, if the hiring professor’s Google search of your recent articles turns up a scathing expose of journalism school. You’ll end up in Starbucks instead.
Like I said, call me crazy. Tell me I’m paranoid. But, whatever you do, don’t forget to tip me ten years from now, when I serve you that decaf soy latte.

Brett Arends is a MarketWatch columnist. Follow him on Twitter @BrettArends.