Counterpoint: 4 ways to keep college accessible, affordable

In a recent commentary ("Student debt: This one's on you, higher ed," Oct. 29), Andy Brehm asserts that the student loan debt crisis is principally the fault of colleges and universities themselves. He accuses academic institutions of jacking up tuition and encouraging students and their families to assume unreasonable debt to pay for fluff and frills.

Alas, this analysis of the seemingly intractable nature of college costs is simplistic and glib.

All of us have a stake in keeping student debt within manageable limits and ensuring that graduates can pursue their dreams without crippling financial burdens. There's plenty of shared work and responsibility to correct the current state of affairs.

For our economy to be strong, we need our colleges and universities to be bastions of academic quality, accessible to all qualified students from Minnesota and beyond.

How do we achieve this?

First, we must demand transparency about costs and debt loads — and punish predatory institutions that encourage irresponsible levels of student debt. Ninety percent of students attending for-profit colleges borrow an average of $40,000 to pay for their schooling — but only 23 percent of those students will earn a degree within six years. Many such colleges exist only by churning federal student loan dollars; 75 percent of the revenue at for-profit colleges flows directly from the federal government. The average default rate at for-profit colleges is 19.1 percent, as compared with 3.6 percent at the University of Minnesota or 2.3 percent at Carleton College.

Second, all schools, including elite nonprofit colleges, should work aggressively to prevent students from borrowing too much. Smart approaches would include linking or capping loan charges based on graduates' disposable income, and loan forgiveness programs for graduates who go into public service work. Schools, banks and regulators should make it easy for students and families to consolidate loans, as with consumer debt.

Fourth, and most important, we in higher education have a serious responsibility to contain costs — but not by decreasing quality. Tuition increases aren't driven by bloated administrations and gold-plated recreation centers. Many thoughtful books have analyzed the complicated economics of higher education. Those who care about this issue might read "Why Does College Cost So Much?" by Robert Archibald and David Feldman. Spoiler alert: Superb quality comes at a cost, and the extraordinary education delivered today at America's best colleges and universities — with small classes, individualized attention, research opportunities with committed teacher-scholars and technology-rich learning — is far superior to what most of us experienced in our far-off college years.

When colleges have added administrators, it is usually in response to growing federal regulations (e.g., immigration compliance and preventing sexual assaults) or to meet pressing student needs (e.g., career counseling, job and grad school placement, psychological and disability services).

One promising way to contain costs is to collaborate with other colleges — Carleton's growing partnership with St. Olaf College is helping both schools improve academic offerings and student service, while also seeking efficiencies through economies of scale.

The pressing and interconnected issues of college access, student debt and post-graduation prospects require thoughtful, multi-actor and multi-pronged solutions. Keeping faith with the next generation demands wise but difficult action by families and students (not taking on unreasonable debt), academic institutions (not raising tuition without concomitant increases in financial aid; being careful fiscal stewards and cutting costs), and government (no more unfunded mandates; penalizing schools with exploitative loan programs). Loyal alums can also help by giving to need-based scholarships.

All of this depends on better reasoning and tighter analysis of the underlying issues, which, of course, is what colleges and universities are supposed to be equipping their graduates to do.