[CircuitSeuss]

Gut feeling here is that this is going to result in significantly lower higher ed enrollment, and therefore a less educated populace.

Less federal aid means fewer students can afford our insanely expensive educational system. This will pull up the ladder on the younger generations.

We do not teach history or ethics, or much in general to our pipeline welders, but they make bank for their hard labor. Meanwhile our well educated school teachers are paid nearly nothing. Both are needed (although I would argue teachers more so). This is not fundamentally an issue of failing educational institutions (although they may well be lacking), but an issue of societal incentives. The welder is paid by the oil corporation; the teacher by a dwindling percentage of your tax dollars.

We are living in the information age yet we have a crisis of education. We desperately a solution that increases both educational access and quality for everyone regardless of their career path. We need more, better, cheaper education. We need more incentives for an educated populace. This does not achieve that: in fact it aggravates the issue.

[01100011]

> Less federal aid means fewer students can afford our insanely expensive educational system

Are we sure about this or is federal aid one of the reasons education is so expensive?

[WalterBright]

The more it's subsidized, the more it costs. I don't think there's any surprise there.

[CircuitSeuss]

If that were true, wouldn’t we be better served by auditing the finances of these universities and imposing caps on university profits based on operating expenses?

[yorwba]

The problem is not that universities have high profits, but that they have high operating expenses.

[nullc]

Standard non-profit grift-- you can't take profits out of a non-profit directly, but you can give particularly robust salaries for yourself and your friends, use the funds to build powerful influence networks by directing projects, build prestigious glittering facilities, etc.

It's difficult to control because an outsider isn't in a position to know the best way to allocate funding. The best control is to not provide funding in absence of performance, which it sounds like this rule is all about.

[mishellaneous]

another possibility to combat grifting would be to have competition. another university comes up and provides the same service as the wasteful university at a smaller cost, and thus displaces the wasteful university. the advantage is that we don't need performance measurements and similar things that can create distorted interests / be gamed (just like the proposed profit limit). that's the theory, at least

[nullc]

Who does the choosing?

Today it's the students but they significantly don't pay the cost, so competition can be gamed by wasting money on student perks.

This is generally a problem that comes up when the party that pays isn't the party that gets the benefit-- it breaks competition's utility for getting good results.

[janalsncm]

From the article this mainly affects for profit colleges.

Also, if history and philosophy are so important maybe we can come up with a more affordable way to teach them to people those things than university.

[delis-thumbs-7e]

> if history and philosophy are so important

Jesus Mary and Joseph we are cooked.

[collinmcnulty]

Aggravating the issue is the administration’s goal. They want an undereducated population and are using the more popular issue of student debt as a fig leaf. Note especially how it’s on the university to prove that each program justifies itself economically, increasing the administrative burden on colleges. If they really cared about limiting taxpayer burden, they’d exempt in-state tuition at state schools from this rule.

[nullc]

> Less federal aid means fewer students can afford our insanely expensive educational system.

A significant reason it is insanely expensive is because we keep shoveling public money into it.

Higher ed is a cash incinerating inferno. When there is an out of control fire you must stop throwing fuel into it.

[tencentshill]

Well, these Heritage Foundation guys in charge are all about the big picture. Less educated populace? Make it happen, I don't care how.