Polarizing Plutocracy: Our Broken Higher Education System

Kathleen Geier
June 5, 2014

The American political system is broken, and one unmistakable sign of it is our inability to bring down soaring levels of student debt or to regulate predatory for-profit colleges. The best solution the Obama administration has been able to propose in this area is a college ratings system that would evaluate colleges on the basis of factors like graduation rates and graduates’ earnings and debt loads.

Frankly, the idea that a ratings system will fix what ails American higher education is a little nuts. It views education as if it were a market like any other, and treats colleges like consumer products. “It’s like rating a blender,” burbled Education Department official Jamienne Studley last week to the New York Times. But while blenders can be tested in a lab, employment statistics can be all too easy to game, as anyone who’s followed recent reporting about bogus law school employment rates can attest.