The college-loan scandal

Two choice quotes from Matt Taibbi on Rolling Stone:

“But the dirty secret of American higher education is that student-loan interest rates are almost irrelevant. It’s not the cost of the loan that’s the problem, it’s the principal—the appallingly high tuition costs that have been soaring at two to three times the rate of inflation, an irrational upward trajectory eerily reminiscent of skyrocketing housing prices in the years before 2008.”

“In a way, America itself is violating the Truth in Lending Act. It’s cheering millions of high school graduates toward college every year, feeding them into the debt grinder under the banner of increased opportunity, when full disclosure would require admitting that there isn’t a hell of a lot waiting for them on the other side, where the middle class has nearly vanished and full employment is going the way of the dodo.”

A sad state of affairs this.