"Yay, College!" Part 1 - The Narratives of American Higher Education and Their Imminent Collapse

American higher education has sold us a story about social mobility and self-discovery that masks a far different reality. It's a cost-plus machine that jacks up prices with one hand while providing infinite government debt with the other. The narrative is cracking under the weight of $1.6 trillion in suspended student loans that must eventually be repaid, a moment that will expose the entire system as a con.

• College tuition has increased 13.5 times since 1980, while wages have only quadrupled. Relative to what we earn, college is now 3.4 times more expensive than it was forty years ago. There's no measurable improvement in the actual quality of education delivered.
• The price increases track perfectly with federal lending policy changes. When the government created direct lending programs in 1992 and expanded them in 2003, colleges accelerated tuition hikes. The system discovered that every dollar spent on administrative expansion or new facilities generates more than a dollar in new tuition revenues when wrapped in the "Yay, College!" narrative.
• Over 90% of the $1.6 trillion in student loan debt is now financed directly by the US government. Since 2020, all repayments and interest have been suspended. This is a form of stimulus worth more than $400 billion that no one discusses as part of federal spending or inflation policy.
• The resumption of repayments this fall would function as the largest tax hike in American history. A $180 billion annual cash transfer hitting Democrat-leaning voters hardest. It arrives during a recession, after a debt-ceiling crisis, heading into the 2024 election cycle.
• What happens when Americans realize college is functionally free if you just borrow from the government? What happens when those who sacrificed to repay their debts discover they were played as fools by the system itself. The narrative collapses, and the institutions that depend on it face something far worse than financial crisis.