Since the 1970s, many colleges and universities have become predatory financial giants, while mountains of student debt pile up and academic work becomes ever more precarious. An ascendant academic labor movement may be key to reversing these trends.
College graduates earn a big wage premium over those who doesn’t attend university. After deducting student debt, their lifetime earnings still remain significantly higher than nongraduates. Add to this the fact that graduates disproportionately hail from well-to-do families, and it’s clear that any policies involving broad giveaways for graduates (e.g. mass forgiveness of student debt) are super regressive and should be at the bottom of the political priority list.
Another complication for US policymakers looking at tinkering with the university system is that US universities, for all their high costs, remain unparalleled talent magnets and generators of research. This is not to say the the universities in (say) Europe are bad, but the US system is much more competitive, productive, and focused on excellence. It’s not even close, IMO. This is a massive advantage for the US, which they should be wary of squandering.