New research is showing that a government effort to invest in higher education has “backfired.” The government “helped finance tens of millions of tuitions” with grants, low-interest loans, and loan guarantees. Enrollment at U.S. colleges and graduate schools rose by 24% from 2002 to 2012, but the total outstanding student debt, “almost all guaranteed or made directly by the federal government,” has quadrupled since 2000 to $1.2 trillion today. Millions of students have been left unable to repay their debt. Of “some 1.4 million students who left a for-profit college in the two years through September 2008,” 70% dropped out and many are earning hundreds less than they were before they pursued an associate’s and bachelor’s degree. (Wall Street Journal)
