The Higher Education Boondoggle is Coming to an End

Only Americans tolerate what is, in effect, a systematic fleecing by the higher education establishment

Even before the COVID crisis hit, university education in the United States was in serious trouble.

As of 2025, updated figures from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center show that college enrollment in the U.S. has fallen by about 15% since 2011, which is a decline of roughly 2.7 to 2.8 million students.

The decline has hit every sector, public and private, four-year and community college.

What’s more, 41 percent of students who start college fail to finish after six years, often because they can’t afford to continue.

In 2025, the average net cost to students in the U.S., after financial aid, is $20,800 per year for public universities and $36,000 for private universities.

As a result, fully 70 percent of U.S. college students now incur student loan debt. 

The most recent figures are that some 44 million Americans now owe an estimated 1.7 trillion in student loan debt – an average of $41,000 per student for the class of 2029.  That’s more than all auto loan or credit card debt.

This is not true in most of the world. 

Only Americans tolerate what is, in effect, a systematic fleecing by the higher education establishment – which has raised costs at 8 times that of U.S. wages over the past decades.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the cost to attend a four-year public university has risen by an astonishing 31 times since 1969, far outstripping the rate of inflation. The average cost of tuition at U.S. schools is now a whopping $25,000, after aid.

In contrast, university education throughout most of Europe is virtually free.

That’s partly because European universities are stripped down, no-nonsense affairs with an emphasis on learning over lifestyle and a centuries-old commitment to meritocratic testing as the key to advancement. 

A few years ago, during a research trip, I toured a number of universities in Berlin and Vienna, schools where the likes of Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein received their educations. 

There are no climbing walls at Berlin’s famous Humboldt University, no gourmet cafeterias at the University of Vienna. 

The marble floors are cracked, the walls often need paint.  German students complain that there are often not enough desks for everyone to sit.

As a result, the cost to attend these prestigious universities, even for foreign students, is often less than $5,000 per year.

The average net cost for students at an undergraduate university is $500 per year in Germany, Norway and Finland, and $182 per year in France.

Netherlands, Spain and Austria can be more expensive with undergraduate tuition being between $1,800 and $4,500 per year.

(The UK is more like America, with the cost to attend elite universities like Oxford or Cambridge being as much as $12,000 per year for a British student.)

Coronavirus gave online education a big boost

Providentially, the explosion in online classes that the coronavirus crisis forced upon America’s universities and colleges was the catalyst for a long-needed reform of America’s over-indulged, over-priced higher education establishment.

A year before the pandemic, I took a year-long online course in German through a community college.

I travel to Germany frequently on business, and, after seven years of visits, wanted a thorough overview of German grammar and basic vocabulary.  It was an excellent course, difficult and thorough. 

My teacher prepared weekly videos that summarized the topics of that week.  I had about 15 to 20 separate assignments to complete every week, including video dialogues, along with quizzes and tests. 

I also interacted with my fellow students through Skype and telephone calls.  My professor also spoke to us regularly to see how well our conversation skills, practiced with fellow students, were progressing.

The course surprised me.  I have taken “in person” language classes most of my life – including four years of French in college and two years of Hebrew in Israel.  

Yet I was astonished to find that my online German course was nearly as rigorous as, and in many ways more challenging than, the traditional language classes I have taken in which 40 students gather daily in classrooms. 

I also saved a tremendous amount of time that would have come with driving 30 minutes to and from the college, finding parking, and sitting at a desk every day for 50 minutes.

The cost:  $264 per semester. 

Had I taken the same class at the private Catholic college my daughter then attended, I would have paid $7,500 per semester – or 28 times more.

Of course, it’s true that some fields, such as engineering and medicine, require intensive, in-person instruction that simply cannot be replicated adequately online.  And there is no doubt that at least some traditional in-classroom teaching would be ideal.

But many of the courses that now constitute the “core curriculum” at colleges these days – often taught by exploited adjunct instructors no more qualified than their community college counterparts – could be acquired just as easily, and far more cheaply, with online classes.

Students and parents have discovered how effective online teaching can be, and so the decades-old boondoggle that is higher education in America – the $60,000 a year in tuition at private liberal arts colleges – is slowly coming to an end, especially since Donald Trump was reelected in 2024. 

Studies show that, on average, a bachelor’s degree results in greater earning power over the course of a lifetime, roughly double that of someone with only a high school diploma. 

However, this advantage declines precipitously when coupled with massive student loan debt.  In fact, one recent poll found that fully 42 percent of college graduates now believe that college isn’t worth the often crippling debts incurred.

What’s more, a study by a Princeton economist found that, while graduating from college does make a difference in lifetime earnings, overpaying to attend an elite or private university likely does not. 

Despite what the recruiters at elite schools claim and hapless applicants believe, the study found no significant difference in the salaries of similar college graduates from elite schools versus four-year public universities.      

In the end, the coronavirus crisis bequeathed to us at least one unintended but salutary side effect: the re-examination of the costs and benefits of university education and the opportunity to reconsider how students can best acquire such an education at an affordable price.

Thanks to the recent explosion in online classes, the reform of America’s over-priced, pampered university establishment may be beginning at last. American universities are among the best in the world, no doubt about it. The problem is, a huge number of young people can no longer afford them.

Robert J. Hutchinson is the author of numerous books of popular history, including Searching for Jesus: New Discoveries in the Quest for Jesus of Nazareth (Thomas Nelson), The Dawn of Christianity (Thomas Nelson), The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Bible (Regnery) and When in Rome: A Journal of Life in Vatican City (Doubleday). Email him at: roberthutchinson@substack.com