STUDY: Federal student loans to blame for skyrocketing college tuition

STUDY: Federal student loans to blame for skyrocketing college tuition | EAGnews.org:
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – The latest research in the never-ending debate about skyrocketing college tuition costs suggests federal student loans could be the underlying problem.
“Student aid accounts for most of the tuition increases between 1987 and 2010, according to a working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research,” Inside Higher Ed reports.
“The more money students can borrow, the idea goes, the more colleges can charge.”
The study, conducted by professors at Indiana University and the University of Missouri, points to the increased availability of subsidized and unsubsidized loan programs that don’t offset tuition increases.
Colleges charge more, because financial aid bridges the gap, according to the news site.
“You’ve got to somehow tie aid to lowered tuition if you want to give money to students,” Grey Gordon, co-author of the working paper told Inside Higher Ed.
“You have to somehow structure it so college can’t just increase tuition and capture that money.”
Gordon’s research backs what some call the “Bennett Hypothesis,” named after former Secretary of Education William Bennett, who wrote in a 1987 New York Times editorial that “increases in financial aid in recent years have enabled colleges and universities blithely to raise their tuitions,” the American Enterprise Institute reports..."