HANS BADER: Obama Backs the Worst Colleges While Destroying For-Profit Schools.

The federal government happily subsidizes inferior state colleges that graduate few if any of their students. That includes Chicago State University, which has a 12.8 percent six-year graduation rate.

The Obama administration has rewritten federal student loan rules in a way that encourages colleges to raise tuition and effectively subsidizes the worst colleges the most. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that each additional dollar in government financial aid results in a tuition hike of about 65 cents.

The federal government also subsidizes expensive, low-quality third-tier law schools whose graduates are often unemployed. It does so even though many of their graduates will never pay back their student loans because of their low graduating salaries, and the huge amount of money law students are allowed to borrow from the government. . . . As the Cato Institute’s Neal McCluskey notes, ITT Tech produced better graduating salaries for its students than nearby public alternatives. But no one is suggesting that those lousy public colleges be shut down.

Like most such things, it’s just a transfer of taxpayer resources to Democratic Party constituencies.

Related: “You’d think that there’s no inherent reason why universities should always and only ever be non-profit (or state owned). After all, we don’t demand that our cars be made by non-profit groups, and say that there’s no way a for-profit car manufacturer could ever be trusted to provide us with a quality product.”