University aid: it is education bureaucrats, not students, who will profit from the president's proposals.(Barack Obama)

AMERICA'S higher-education lobby has enjoyed spectacular success over the past three decades. By zealously marketing their degrees as indispensable to employment and a ticket to personal fulfillment, universities have convinced millions of mediocre students to enroll, spend gobs of (mostly) other people's money, and then fail their way off the campus to make room for warm bodies. In a cycle as regular as the tides, administrators first raise tuition, then go before state legislatures and Congress complaining about rising tuition, seeking more subsidies purportedly to benefit their cash-strapped customers. At the same time, universities have vastly expanded business ...