Am I the only one thinking that a credit card company offering debit accounts for students to put their “excess financial aid” in for spending is an indication that we are subsidizing higher education entirely too much?

This is happening at the University of North Dakota, apparently, and I don’t like it.  Seems to me that if we are going to subsidize higher education those funds should go to tuition.  Maybe books.  That’s it.  There shouldn’t be “excess aid” in any amount significant enough to put into a debit account.

The abuse of higher education aid is rampant.  Even in my personal experience I know of several friends who used their aid not for books or tuition but rather for home entertainment systems, cars and vacations.  Clearly, this is an indication that students are getting too much.  And with colleges consistently raising tuition because of the amount of higher education subsidies available (more subsidies means that students can afford higher tuition) the conclusion is clear: We need fewer education subsidies, not more.

But that’s a hard sell for politicians.  After all, who wants to be the person to get up on the campaign stump and say “We need to give our college students less.” He or she would be immediately castigated as being against higher education simply because he/she feels the government is spending too much on it.  They’d still be right, but in politics perception is unfortunately as important as reality.