Call Me Stormy

Freeloader U.

If you haven’t noticed, colleges are getting filthy rich with the massive subsidies and tax breaks they receive from government–all at the expense of students and taxpayers. To put it in perspective, the college business model is actually totally dependent on taxpayers.

And rest assured that their spending habits have gone through the roof. Take Yale University, which pays no property tax on its dining hall, much to the chagrin of surrounding restaurants in New Haven, Conn., and even boasts its own pizza oven in addition to a luxurious golf course on campus. Farther west, the University of Utah has used some of its riches for a student crying room! You just can’t make this stuff up.

A closer look at government tax breaks reveals that colleges and universities are doing quite well, thank you. Yale boasts a $31 billion endowment, while fellow Ivy League school Harvard’s fund is at $40 billion. Yet taxpayers keep doling out the moolah in the way of cash grants and more than $1 trillion nationwide in student loans. It’s how colleges have gotten away with jacking up their tuition at four times the rate of inflation.

Inez Stepman, an education policy researcher at the Independent Women’s Forum, says almost half of the students don’t graduate in six years and end up with an $80,000 debt without a degree. “They’re not making wiser citizens,” she says. “They’re making citizens who hate their country.”  Here’s more with Stepman and consumer journalist John Stossel.