The Patriot Post® · Freeloader U

Colleges get massive subsidies and tax breaks. They get rich. Taxpayers and many students are hurt. Yale University’s dining halls don’t have to pay any property tax. That’s unfair to surrounding restaurants, who do have to pay. Yale does well with its tax breaks. It has a $31 billion endowment. Harvard has $40 billion. Yet we taxpayers keep giving them more.

In addition to the tax breaks, the U.S. gives colleges cash grants and guarantees more than $1 trillion in student loans. It’s how colleges have gotten away with jacking up tuition at 4 times the rate of inflation. This hurts both taxpayers and many students. Today, almost half don’t graduate in six years.

Students end up with “$80,000 in debt, without a degree to show for it,” says Inez Stepman, an education policy researcher at the Independent Women’s Forum. Colleges say they deserve every break because they’re making wiser citizens. But Stepman says, “They’re not making wiser citizens. They’re making citizens who hate their country.” I push back: “Most colleges educate … rather than indoctrinate.” “I wish that were true,” she replies. “I was part of the College Republicans, so we were registering voters … I actually had a professor walk up and spit on me. We had another professor call us the Nazi Youth.” Taxpayers shouldn’t subsidize that.