For rich universities, billions in bailouts

[Geee]

American Thinker

When the first global pandemic in more than a century began spreading around the world in early 2020, the U.S. government mounted a shock and awe response worth trillions of dollars.

The inflationary and market-warping effects of this spending binge will reverberate for years, as will the debt payments -- U.S. government debt just surpassed $30 trillion for the first time in our history. That is a growth-sucking 130% of annual GDP.

For a preview of the effects of a huge sum of government money flooding any market, look at higher education. My firm, Nelson Partners, manages 23 investor-owned apartment complexes near 15 campuses in 13 states.

The COVID crisis produced a windfall of billions of dollars for colleges and universities, even as they shut down most of their operations and taught courses online -- and kept charging full-boat tuition. My company lost $12 million and managed to get a $1.2 million loan.

In the 15 years since I formed Nelson Partners, tuition at public four-year schools is up 180%; at private universities the cost is up 124%. In fact, college costs have risen more than four times as fast as the inflation rate for fifty years!