Will College Bubble Burst from Public Subsidies?

Floor Speech

Mr. DUNCAN of Tennessee. Mr. Speaker, it shocks students at the University of Tennessee when I tell them it cost me only $270 tuition my freshman year and $405 my senior year in 1969.

George Washington University, where I attended law school, was private and "expensive'' at around $1,000 a semester. Students there now marvel at that figure.

Students could attend college in the late 60s and early 70s and pay all their expenses just by working part time.

No one got out of school deeply in debt for tuition and fees.

But costs simply explode on anything the federal government subsidizes. Healthcare was cheap and doctors even made house calls until the government got into it.

Since the federal student loan program started, college tuition has gone up three or four or five times the rate of inflation, ranging from school to school, almost every year.

Before the government started "helping,'' tuition went up at the rate of inflation. Now costs are 300 or 400 percent higher than if we had just left things alone.

A few years ago, I heard excerpts from a book called Going Broke by Degree. That is what many students are doing today by incurring huge student loan debts.

And the colleges and universities have been able to tamp down any opposition to tuition increases by encouraging an attitude of "don't worry--we'll just give you an easy, no-interest student loan.''

I have been concerned about this for several years and especially after I started noticing so many college graduates working as waiters and waitresses in restaurants.

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