I've had my skirmishes on this blog with readers who don't see why I have a problem with the government's takeover of health care--or, more broadly, why I have a problem with big and bigger government. It's not that I don't want reform--I do. It's that I don't think this albatross of a bill is going to give us what we need--and that it's a Trojan horse (mixed metaphors courtesy of pre-caffeinated state) for a style of government that should have us all worried. Now, as the health care takeover becomes--almost as an afterthought--a means of securing quite a federal hold over higher ed as well, I wonder what those readers are thinking about.

Here's Peter Wood on why academics--and anyone who cares about free inquiry, quality education, knowledge creation, and all the good stuff that is supposed to happen at our colleges and universities--should be more than worried:

Congressional Democrats have added President Obama’s takeover of the student loan industry to the health care reconciliation bill. It is a troubling development, but not because of the finances. The trouble comes from the specter of federal control of American higher education. “Obama loans” may seem benign but they threaten academic freedom and may compromise the quality of academic programs.

The move by the Democrats forestalls a debate we need to have over who controls this key institution. Since 1965, the federal government has subsidized colleges and universities by guaranteeing loans that students take from private lenders. Obama’s idea is to cut the banks out of the picture as loan-originators and have the Department of Education lend directly to students.

On the surface this so-called “Direct Lending” sounds thrifty. Over ten years the government would “save” billions of taxpayer dollars that would otherwise be spent in fees and subsidies to private lenders. The Congressional Budget Office has slashed the projected savings from $87 billion to $67 billion over eleven years. But that’s still a lot. What’s not to like? And Direct Lending has been in place on a smaller scale for about fifteen years. Lots of colleges already do it and like it. We know it works.

[...]

The federally subsidized student loan system surely stands in need of reform. But “Direct Lending” may well be a cure that is worse than the disease. The main problem is not financial but political. It will make American higher education extraordinarily vulnerable to political interference. Will Congress, presidential administrations, and the Department of Education resist the temptation to misuse their new power? Direct Lending will give the federal government decisive if not quite total control of higher education finance.

t is not as if the federal government has taken a hands-off approach in the past. Consider what happened to men’s teams in sports such as swimming and wrestling. They have been eliminated in most colleges because Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 has been read as requiring equal numbers of men and women in college athletics. The law itself was anodyne: “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance..." But one faction read that qualifying phrase, “receiving Federal financial assistance..." and saw an opportunity. They succeeded in transforming Title IX from a law against discrimination into a system of quotas. Too many boys playing college sports? The Department of Education will knock your college off the list of institutions eligible to receive federally-guaranteed student loans. That would be a death sentence for most colleges. In the name of “gender equity,” the government used its financial aid muscle to impose its own agenda on one dimension of college life.

Or consider the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights which has more than once used the government’s financial leverage to foster racial preferences in college admissions and hiring.

But it is not just the Left that has attempted to tell colleges what to do. Under President Bush, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings attempted to change the nation’s college curricula to produce college graduates whose skills mesh better with the needs of business and industry. Discovering that she had no direct say over what colleges teach, Secretary Spellings tried to get the nation’s accreditors to implement her plan for her. She didn’t succeed—but then again, she didn’t have the advantage of having total control over student loans. Direct Lending will change that, and future Secretaries of Education, whether moved by Obama-style progressivism or Bush-style utilitarianism, will have a great deal more power to get their way.

[...]

My biggest worry is that American higher education already tends towards stale conformity. The Climategate scandal provides a dramatic example of how genuine debate was for a period of years shut down in favor of an enforced “consensus” based on social pressure rather than scientific evidence.

We have a system of higher education that is highly vulnerable to such groupthink. If we add to that an arrangement of institutional funding that has no practical firewalls against being turned to ideological purposes, we face the likelihood of serious damage to the quality of American higher education.

Are these well-founded worries? Am I taking alarm at a measure that is really just a common sense step toward better government stewardship of an expensive program? I am not an especially humble critic, but sure, I could be wrong. I have been painting the picture in primary colors. But here’s the thing. I am raising questions that really ought to be examined thoughtfully by our legislators and not just brushed aside in a slapdash effort to get the bill on the President’s desk by the end of this week. I don’t think anyone in Congress intends the sort of consequences I have been describing. They just haven’t thought much about how higher education actually works. My point is that Direct Lending creates a huge opportunity for mischief, and the mischief-makers will figure that out soon enough.

The reason that Direct Loans are being bundled into the reconciliation bill is that the Democratic leaders of Congress reckon that they do not otherwise have the votes to get it passed. When it comes to health care, the Democrats defend this parliamentary maneuver by saying that, over the last year all the arguments have been heard and weighed, and that it is at last time to act. I don’t find that a very compelling argument for health care, but be that as it may, the same cannot possibly be said about Direct Loans. This is a dramatic restructuring of higher education finance with implications far beyond the dollar amounts, and yet it has received barely any public notice at all.

Note to students: Don't take on tremendous debt to pay for college. Go to a school you can afford and work your butt off to make sure you don't fall between the cracks and you get the courses and the guidance you need. Be focussed and purposeful. Make it work--and shed any latent fixation you may have that if it's not private and costing $50K a year, then it's not a good school.