For better or worse, the United States government is deeply entangled with the financing of college educations. Much of the money flowing in to Harvard via tuitions is involved in government-related loans in one way or another.
The idea isn’t to make demands of how a private institution spends their money. The idea is to add conditions to government-sponsored loans such that they could only be used at institutions that meet specific criteria. If a university doesn’t meet the criteria, then we don’t give government-sponsored loans to attend that institution.
Harvard isn’t the best example of this idea, but consider how much better the student loan crisis could have been if we attached even minimal criteria that degrees must reasonably be associated with job placement and a minimum level of student earnings after graduation.
It’s not a great idea to let the government essentially funnel money into these institutions at large scale via student loans, then leave students entirely on the hook for consequences, without at least minimal expectations that the universities use this money wisely.
The idea isn’t to make demands of how a private institution spends their money. The idea is to add conditions to government-sponsored loans such that they could only be used at institutions that meet specific criteria. If a university doesn’t meet the criteria, then we don’t give government-sponsored loans to attend that institution.
Harvard isn’t the best example of this idea, but consider how much better the student loan crisis could have been if we attached even minimal criteria that degrees must reasonably be associated with job placement and a minimum level of student earnings after graduation.
It’s not a great idea to let the government essentially funnel money into these institutions at large scale via student loans, then leave students entirely on the hook for consequences, without at least minimal expectations that the universities use this money wisely.