Trump’s crackdown on colleges is a good start — but more is needed to fix higher ed

Education Secretary Linda McMahon nailed it: Higher ed is a downright scam.

Her Wall Street Journal column last week announcing an end, as of May 5, to President Joe Biden’s student-loan repayment pauses and forgiveness plans should force every taxpayer, official, student and parent to rethink the nation’s perverse system of financing higher ed.

Here’s how McMahon describes the scheme: “Colleges and universities call themselves nonprofits, but for years they have profited massively off the federal subsidy of loans, hiking tuition and piling up multibillion-dollar endowments.”

A 2015 study found for every dollar jump in caps on subsidized loans, tuition rose 60 cents.

Schools have used the extra cash not just to goose endowments but to hire more staff — assorted bureaucrats, like DEI counselors — and raise salaries.

Government aid, in other words, mostly helps greedy colleges. Not kids.

Meanwhile, the “students graduate six figures in the red.”

Worse, “many of the degree-granting programs that qualify for student loans are worthless on the job market.” Yet “colleges continue to accept students to these programs and encourage them to borrow to pay for them.”

It’s a government-created ripoff: Young adults are left with a massive debt that jeopardizes “their ability to achieve the American dream.”

McMahon vows to “push colleges to be responsible.” And on Tuesday, Team Trump announced that it would target the pensions, tax refunds and even wages of student borrowers who refuse to repay their federal student loans.

It’s a great start, but far from sufficient to fix the problem. The whole model needs to be rethought.

For starters, students and, probably more so, universities need more skin in the game.

Biden’s loan write-offs weren’t just unfair to those who didn’t get them, but they sent a message that, were they to continue, students could try out colleges on the taxpayers’ dime, and thus would have nothing to lose. It wasn’t their money at stake.

That blunted a key incentive for them avoid dropping out and learn useful knowledge and skills.

Colleges, too, see loans as an invitation to accept kids for the dollars they bring rather than the likelihood they’ll succeed academically, and graduate with skills that will make their educations financially justifiable.

Several ideas over the years — like making higher ed pay at least a portion of the loans their students default on — attempt to get at the problem.

And with Team Trump looking to shake up US education even more broadly, starting with scrapping DOE itself, there’s no better time to address this perversity and rethink college financing.

Yes, plenty of universities do a commendable job — not only educating young adults but turning out valuable research, particularly in the hard sciences.

But too many have become money-focused, leftist bastions that inflame hatred, often along racial, ethnic or religious lines.

They’ve put social activism over actual knowledge.

It’s a mammoth problem — but one ripe for someone like Donald Trump.

Here’s hoping he tackles it soon.