American higher education badly needs reform. Over
the past two decades, universities have regarded the availability of
hundreds of millions of dollars in federal student loans as an excuse
for staggering tuition increases. Now students graduate with intolerable levels of debt, in an economy where they often can’t find jobs to pay it back. And too many universities have become political-indoctrination factories or intellectual babysitters instead of providing useful educations and preparing students for the adult world.
But there’s a silver bullet that could cure all three ailments: bankruptcy.
In
an entrepreneurial society, it’s essential to know that you can take
risks and, if you fail, there is a path to try again. The ability to
declare bankruptcy as a last resort and to start afresh has long been a
vital element of American dynamism, yet it is denied to young people who
borrow for their education.
That
wasn’t always the case. Until the late 1970s, Americans unable to pay
off education loans were permitted to dispose of them with a Chapter 7 bankruptcy
petition. That changed in 1978 when U.S. bankruptcy rules were
overhauled. Defaults on student loans weren’t a significant problem —
tuition was much lower then, and jobs awaited most graduates — and
legislators simply decided that it was a bit much to expect the
government to guarantee loans and then absorb the cost of bankruptcy.
No
one thought that we’d see anything like today’s student-debt levels or
that bankruptcy rights for education loans would be desperately needed.
In assessing 20 years of tuition increases, U.S. News & World Report found
last year that tuition at national universities (defined as those with a
full range of undergraduate majors and master’s and doctoral programs)
spiked 157 percent for private institutions. At public national
universities, out-of-state tuition and fees rose 194 percent, while
in-state tuition and fees swelled 237 percent. Inflation across that
period was 53 percent.
As
the cost of education mounted, so did the student debt load. Since
2006, the amount that Americans owe in education loans has tripled, to
$1.53 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve. Once again, ill-advised government interventions played a role, including the 2005 Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act, which barred private student loans from protection, and the Affordable Care Act, which in 2010 largely made the government directly responsible for student loans. About 80 percent of student loans are owed to the feds.
If
many millennials have been radicalized, if they’ve given up on free
markets, it’s hard to blame them. They’ve been slapped in the face by
free markets in the form of the student-loan racket. What many young
people need is relief from overwhelming debt burdens through bankruptcy.
Private
lenders would object, naturally, as would people who’ve struggled to
pay off some or all of their student debt. Problems like that arise
whenever a country transitions to a more efficient regime, but it
shouldn’t get in the way of urgently needed reform. The U.S. deficit
would increase if direct government loans were made dischargeable. But
it’s not as though everyone would stop paying off student loans:
Declaring bankruptcy comes at the price of damaged credit ratings and
years of being unable to obtain loans or credit cards, or doing so at
much higher interest rates. Most people who have jobs and are able to
continue paying their loans would want to avoid bankruptcy. But
countless other young Americans would be liberated from debt and more
likely to invigorate the economy, helping make up for government’s added
costs.
What
about the universities themselves? They’ve created the problem, and
they should be part of the solution: Hold them financially accountable,
in whole or part, when their graduates declare bankruptcy on student
loans. Universities should be given time to clean up their acts — say,
until 2020 — and after that they would have to agree to indemnify the
federal government for student-loan bankruptcies. Schools would think
twice before running up the tuition tab. They might even start bringing
it down.
Universities might also rethink the
kinds of courses they offer. If they bore some or most of the cost of
bankruptcies, they no doubt would start paying close attention to
whether their graduates can get jobs. Too many universities offer too
many frivolous courses, and majors, that make employers run the other
way from applicants. Such graduates aren’t good bets to repay their
loans. If the university bore the financial risk, it would almost
certainly change what it teaches.
Would all
this be thoroughly disruptive? Most certainly. But U.S. higher education
badly needs a measure of creative destruction.
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