sara_goldrick_rab

1. Tests of your hypothesis have revealed that the influx of loan dollars does indeed drive up tuition-- but only in the private sector. There are many parties working to keep tuition low in the public sector, so the same result hasn't occurred. Indeed, this is one of many reasons why I don't think we need to continue spending billions on loans for students to attend private colleges. Would you be willing to cut private colleges off?

2. How does the funding source of education change the level of education, in your mind? Funding four years of high school didn't make high school the equivalent of middle school.

No one has proposed this-- confiscating would mean taking private citizens' money. Definitely not. There's no need for it.

When I went to college, we were too "rich" to get aid and too "poor" to be able to afford it. I benefited from a tiny bit of savings, tuition remission (because my mom was an adjunct), and I worked 40 hours a week as a waitress to avoid having to take on debt. That plus a little help from my grandfather meant no undergrad loans. In grad school, I did take some loans, and paid them off midway through my tenure track. I understand how hard it can be to make ends meet, though don't know what it's like for the debt payment to crowd out other spending. However, I postponed home ownership and marriage (and kids) until my 30s because I was in grad school & couldn't afford it. All that said: The most important thing I do in my work is spend time with people who DO have these experiences and I listen hard to them. I believe that allows me to see and understand things others miss.

Excuse me but I was scheduled to do this from 10am-11am EST, then to do a radio interview on Sirius XM, and several phone calls. They just concluded, I have 15 minutes free, and am back to answer questions. I will return from time to time -- I assume you don't want a taxpayer funded professor sitting idly by waiting for questions to come in, do you?

I've written about a plan that simply reallocates existing dollars from private institutions to public ones. That's meant to demonstrate that there are options-- raising taxes is but one possibility. For more see: http://wihopelab.com/publications/Redefining_College_Affordability.pdf