As with healthcare, so with higher ed, America spends twice as much as other Western democracies and for half the return.

Seal of the United States Department of Education (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So says a new report which begins:
"America’s higher education system is gaining a reputation for high costs and large inequities. In 2012, the U.S. spent $491 billion on higher education and twice as much per student than comparable industrialized countries. Where is all that money going?
Scholars have offered several explanations for these high costs including faculty salaries, administrative bloat, and the amenities arms race. These explanations, however, all miss a crucial piece of the puzzle. In fact, financing costs for college institutional debts, equity investments in for-profit colleges, and student loans have also come to soak up a growing portion of educational expenditures by households, taxpayers, and other private funders of higher education."
Access it here:
http://debtandsociety.org/publication/borrowing_against_the_future/

Let me repeat here what I have written many times before:  Health care and education are human rights and public trusts.  Turning them over to the for-profit sector is a breach of that trust.

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