Stop subsidizing worthless graduate programs with taxpayer dollars, education researcher argues | The College Fix

Stop subsidizing worthless graduate programs with taxpayer dollars, education researcher argues | The College Fix

"A recent Wall Street Journal article detailed how schools like Columbia University take in millions of dollars in guaranteed federal student loan dollars while delivering worthless graduate degrees.

This is why there should be an end to the federal graduate student loan programs, Preston Cooper, a research fellow with the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, said in a recent essay.

“The existence and scale of these subpar graduate programs is tied to irresponsible federal lending practices, which extend unlimited lines of credit to graduate students with no regard to their ability to repay,” Cooper wrote recently for National Review.

He gave one example of why he wants to “Defund Columbia”:

Students in Columbia’s Master of Fine Arts in film program typically accumulate $181,000 in federal debt, according to the report. But when they enter the labor market, their median salary is just $30,000 — less than one-sixth of the debt they took on. Few, if any, of those students will fully repay what they borrowed from taxpayers...Read all.

Read the essay.