The GOP package, called the “Lowering Education Costs and Debt Act,” consists of five bills that the senators say will address the root causes of the student debt issue such as the increasing price of college and students taking out loans they can’t afford.
The fourth bill does seem like it has the potential to have a devastating effect on mass accessibility to formal college-level education in liberal arts. Such programs would seemingly find themselves merely enrolling either the very wealthy or the very talented, who were either wealthy enough to afford the cost of American university straight-up or talented enough to receive scholarships.
Anecdotally, most of the adults that I know who are struggling with student loans as adults have undergraduates in liberal arts. I guess you could make an argument that not funding students taking such programs is a more fiscally responsible move.
The fourth bill gave me ‘no child left behind’ vibes. I feel like it would go exactly the same way to cut funding to smaller schools and/or prevent the development of new academic institutions.
I like the idea in practice. We really need to hold institutions accountable for outcomes. But, I think there’s probably a better way to do this with less collateral damage on liberal arts.
Flip side, maybe we need to rethink these programs if it really isn’t leading to student success.