pros and cons of for profit education

[sanantone]

You're both right. Subsidies help cause tuition inflation, no doubt about it. However, subsidies are what enables opportunity for lower and middle income students. Without it, we end up with a relatively uneducated workforce and only the rich able to access higher education.

The answer is what Bernie Sanders and Pres. Obama have been talking about, free tuition. With the government paying the tuition directly, it can also control what that tuition is. That's why primary and secondary education costs don't skyrocket in the same way. Doing this would have the effect of saving tax dollars over the subsidies we use now.

The truth is that subsidizing without regulating just distorts the market and causes inflation. Conversely, an unregulated market always produces a tiny class of haves supported by a huge underclass.

BTW, That's the problem with Obamacare, it subsidizes without regulating expenses enough (it does a little bit). We will finally need to go to single payer healthcare if we ever want to truly achieve universal healthcare.

I agree with this. I do not believe in subsidizing without regulation. If the U.S. and states completely controlled the funding of public colleges and universities, they would be able to control costs. This is what some European countries do. It is true that it was very difficult for low-income people to attend college before the Pell Grant and government loans. People love to tell fairy tales about how tuition was so cheap that anyone could afford to pay for college out of pocket, but that was not true. A lot of people could not afford to pay for college out of pocket.