SHIRLEY SVORNY: MAKE COLLEGE COST MORE. “The state’s prosperity rests on public policies that encourage economic activity, not on heavy subsidies to higher education. Moreover, artificially low fees attract some students to higher education who simply aren’t suited to the academic rigors of a university. Ultimately, the presence of these lower-achieving students hurts those who are more academically inclined, as they end up in watered-down courses in which professors have to focus on bringing the low achievers along.”

Related: The Five-Year Party: Is College Worth It? “About 70 percent of high school graduates start college, but only half complete a degree within four years. A large number of those who do graduate have trouble finding good-paying jobs or end up doing something for which they do not need a college degree. Brandon’s conclusion: Millions of people would be better off doing something else with their time and money.”

UPDATE: Reader Tim Maguire writes:

I think Ms. Svorny misses an important point about college subsidies. Ending them might make college marginally more expensive in the sense of out of pocket expenses of the student, but the harder truth is that the subsidies themselves have made college more expensive.

Tuition inflation has largely tracked the increase in aid available so that, far from making it easier for people to attend college, it has functioned as a wealth transfer from taxpayers, parents and students to college administrators. Given that so much of college costs today are merely time shifted into the student’s future through loans that must eventually be repaid, there is every reason to believe that ending government aid will reduce the real costs of a college education.

Indeed. That’s what the higher education bubble is all about.