Free college is still a potent rallying cry for the stalwart Bernie Sanders youth. Hope for debt-free education ought to be wilting along with Sanders’ campaign—and yet, not unlike the delusional conviction of the socialist senator’s young devotees, it has yet to fade.
For all the histrionics of campus grievance culture, many college kids face a remarkably grown-up problem: crushing debt. As long as rising tuition costs and federally (mis)managed college loans take their toll, railing hard against student debt will remain a political necessity. Tuition costs at public and private colleges and universities continue to rise, unmitigated by the 2010 federal takeover of the student loan market in the midst of the great recession and the failure of federal reforms. Hence the $1.2 trillion college loan “crisis” every candidate had to address.
