I am afraid it has, for many if not most. It will depend on your major, of course. Here is a list of seven institutions at which total annual costs hover around $60,000. You read that right: annual costs. What do you get for that $240 K? It is obvious that you do not get an education in any serious sense of that term. (It is also obvious that most attendees have no interest at all in an education in that sense.) Nor do you get what most people (mis)use 'education' to refer to, namely, a ticket to a high-paying job.
I went to a private college, but in my day one got value for money. I worked part-time, received a California State Scholarship, and borrowed $2,000, a debt that was quickly discharged. Those were the early days of the federally-insured loan program. The program was set up with good intentions, but it had a serious unintended consequence: it provided an incentive for administrators to hike costs for no better reason than that naive students were able to pay exorbitant tuitions by floating loans. Part of what the administrators did with all this excess money was to hire more useless overpaid administrators.
Talk of a 'scam,' though harsh, is not inaccurate. There is lot to be said on this topic. But I've got to get on to other things. So I hand off to John Stossel.
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