Biden Administration Ignores the Growing Tuition Crisis, Filling Ivy League Coffers

The Biden administration, in its vehement pursuit of student loan forgiveness over the past three years, has conspicuously ignored the fundamental issue of spiraling college tuition costs. Despite causing the national crisis of student loans and college affordability, the administration, particularly the Justice Department and Education Department, pretends to battle predatory institutions and decrease college fees. Flimsy evidence of their so-called efforts is the recent focus on antitrust enforcement, which they claim tackles exorbitant tuition costs and holds institutions responsible for anticompetitive activities.

Doha Mekki, a deputy assistant attorney general in the DOJ’s antitrust division, recently tried to convince us in a Politico interview that their administration is addressing college affordability, with antitrust enforcement playing a pivotal role. It apparently ensures that ‘education’, however one defines the term, is accessible and affordable to all Americans. Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter also jumped on this bandwagon of hollow promises, heralding antitrust enforcement as a milestone for the Biden era’s Department of Justice.

Kanter daringly invoked an incident of university price-fixing financial aid as proof of DOJ’s strong stance, claiming that their interference led to college students being reimbursed for the harm caused. Referencing the case Carbone v. Brown University, where high-end colleges allegedly conspired to fix financial aid bursaries for students under the 568 Presidents Group, Kanter’s words echoed empty justice. These colleges resolved the case without accepting any blame, offering no real implications for their actions.

Kanter’s reference to this egregious scheme’s impact on young aspirants looking to settle and begin a family is, unfortunately, nothing more than a token act of pretense when compared to the mammoth issue of rampant price gouging. This distressing problem continues unregulated due to the covert alliance between the federal government and higher education institutions. Yet, amid this bleak scenario, the Department has chosen to target peripheral players in the higher education world, not the principal offenders.

In January, the Department made waves by backing a lawsuit disputing the NCAA’s authority to regulate student-athlete transfers. One might also recall the antitrust lawsuit against the National Association for College Admission Counseling filed during the Trump administration in 2019. However, the actual physical institutions, the prime culprits of tuition price hiking, remain untouched and terrifyingly immune.

The Ivy League colleges, revered and unmatched in their stature in the national mind, enjoy this undue privilege. Graduating from Harvard or Yale bestows an undue perception of supremacy and capability, ignoring merit and focusing solely on ‘brand’. Harnessing this ill-gotten influential status, these Ivy League schools are predictably listed among the country’s most exorbitantly priced private universities.

An alarming prediction indicates that five of the eight Ivy League schools will impose a hefty tuition fee exceeding $90,000 for the 2024-2025 academic year. The ‘cheapest’ among them wouldn’t charge under $82,000. However, this outrageous pattern of high costs is not confined to the most prestigious schools.

Since the dawn of the 21st century, the average private university tuition has ballooned by $10,000, even after adjusting for inflation. Public school tuition has mirrored this upward trajectory, swelling by over $4,000, simultaneously paralleled by skyrocketing federal and state funding for higher education.

The higher education monopoly’s ability to burden generations with crippling debt has expanded in step with escalating federal higher education spending. Instead of holding this monopoly to account, the federal government, including the Biden administration, incentivizes universities to exploit taxpayers, creating an enormous class of debtors. The system already resembles a cozy amalgamation with the government, which startlingly seems to lack the willpower to rectify this.

Rather than combat this issue, the Biden administration has only exacerbated the college tuition crisis. One glaring example of their missteps is the widespread student loan forgiveness policy. It flagrantly transferred wealth from those without student loans or those who diligently repaid them to those still struggling with their loans. This policy, condemned by the Supreme Court last year, only exacerbates the college tuition problem while keeping the money tap flowing generously towards higher education institutions.

Even after identifying universities as contributors to the mounting student loan debt plaguing millions, the Administration showcased no eagerness to hold them accountable for continuous tuition hikes. In an absurd twist, those educational institutions that managed to keep expenses low bore the brunt of legal action. Last October, Grand Canyon University was slapped with a hefty fine of $37 million by the Biden Department of Education for allegedly understating its doctoral programs’ costs.

However, the irony lies in the fact that Grand Canyon University, one of the nation’s largest and most successful Christian institutions, hasn’t upped its tuition for more than ten years. At $16,500 per year, the cost is rather modest compared to the staggering $92,288 price tag sported by the University of Pennsylvania.

Access to thorough investigation into alleged antitrust violations and misrepresentations is open to the DOJ or the Department of Education, which could provide relief to countless administration victims buried under student loan debt. But no elite or legacy nonprofit institution has endured nearly as much scrutiny as previously for-profit institutions like Grand Canyon.

This selective scrutiny is puzzling, especially considering that many of these overlooked institutions enjoy sizable endowments that often dwarf the market value of considerable companies. Yet, no Democrat seeking to ‘tax the rich’ has suggested any actionable legislation or policy targeting these vast university endowments.

In its quest to portray a veneer of commitment to addressing higher education’s exploitative practices, the Biden Department of Justice has allowed its officials to boast about their sporadic, low-impact legal briefs. The reality, unfortunately, stands in stark contrast with their portrayal.

This administration’s core commitment points in only one direction: safeguarding the long-established institutions of higher education in their quest to profit from taxpayers and generations of students, who view a college education as an essential stepping stone towards a successful future.