American Thinker:

In June of 1965, I graduated from high school in Knoxville, left my job as a bagboy at the A&P, and became a salesman at Sears, making $1.25 an hour.

I worked full-time that summer and part-time after starting at the University of Tennessee in late September.

I have enjoyed shocking students at U.T. in recent years by telling them it was $90 a quarter my freshman year — $270 for the school year.

Telling students about my tuition has allowed me to then tell them a simple but important lesson that they have seemingly never been taught: that costs simply explode on anything the federal government subsidizes.

This is because most of the pressures or incentives to hold down costs that are constantly present in the private sector are not there when the federal government takes over.

Over the last few weeks, I have heard both Senator Elizabeth Warren and Congresswoman Maxine Waters crying crocodile tears about outstanding student loan debt being an astounding $1.5 trillion. What they do not seem to realize or would probably never admit is that it is their own federal government that has turned millions of young people into student loan slaves.

Big government always ends up helping a few at the top while hurting or giving a few crumbs to everyone else. The federal student loan program has been great for college and university administrators and some tenured professors but harmful to a great many students and their families.

Before the government and the higher education lobby started really pushing the student loan program mainly in the ’70s and ’80s, college tuition was cheap all over the country.

I once heard House majority leader Steny Hoyer say tuition at the University of Maryland was $87 a semester when he started there in the ’60s.

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