washington is funded as a public cable or salad provider. on television or online, c-span is your unfiltered view of government. you can make up your own mind. with graduation ceremonies taking place on many college campuses, it is a good day to talk to richard better and he is also the author of the new book, restoring the promise of higher education in america. mr. vedder, remind viewers what the instan independent institutd how you are funded. guest: well, the independent institute is, i guess you could call it, a think tank, which is located in oakland, california. it has been in operation for several decades. it publishes books and other monographs, journals. it has a very fine journal called "the infinite review,"

for example. it is an organization that does that. my primary affiliation has been with universities. i am with ohio university as a my 50 fourthll, in year, but i do have a long-standing relationship also with the independent institute. where funding comes from, i do not know where funding comes from, frankly. i have never asked the question. the interested in getting questions out and disseminated, and i am grateful that someone is contributing to the support. i am not sure who is. i am sure a large number of individuals and perhaps corporations -- or foundations, rather. host: we mentioned lots of students are graduating around the country. the minds ofon at least some of the students is student loan debt. in this country, the total of student loan debt now well over

,1.5 trillion when added all up which begs the question -- is college too expensive today? guest: well, i think it is. and i think, you mention that in conjunction with student loans, which i think is very appropriate. i think the student loan programs that were originally put in mainly in the 1960's and were greatly expanded in the late 1970's, these programs were for a well intended reasons. they were designed to help low income kids who were having trouble financing college to make it easier for them, but they have not had that impact. they have pushed the price of education up. administrations say that kids can borrow money to go have been so they more aggressive than they otherwise would have been in raising fees, sophie's have been

pushed way, way up. -- so fees have been pushed way, way up. college is about the only thing that is really harder to finance today than it was, say, a half-century ago. growth,of economic everything has become easier pay for some sense. cruises,tickets, electronic gadgets, televisions, all kinds of things, cars. but one thing that has become harder and harder to pay for is college. host: as we are having this conversation with richard vedder, the author of the book "restoring the promise: higher education in america," special phone lines this morning. we want you to start calling it on those lines. college graduates can: at (202) 748-8000. parents of college graduates and faculty members, (202) 748-8001. hear fromly want to you. all others can call in at (202) 748-8002. mr. vedder, i am going to show viewers this chart here from the

collegeboard.org. it shows the cost of college is from the late 1980's through today, private, nonprofit, the-year colleges used average $17,000 the year, today up to about $35,000 a year. that increase in expenses less so from public four-year colleges from about $3300 in the late 1980's to over $10,000 now, and public two-year colleges, less of an increase than that. the question for you -- is the cost of college worth it these days? for many people, it is still very much worth while going to college. college graduates on average earn up to double what high school graduates do, and college, having that visa paper,

that diploma, have a very significant value to it, but the risk of going to college are significant, and they are probably growing. 40% of the kids who enter four-year colleges full-time do not graduate -- at least within six years, not for years, but six years. four40% graduate in si years. so a large number of kids going to college thinking they are going to get a good degree, live a good middle-class than above life, and they do not even graduate. those that do graduate, that do graduate, the 60% or so who do graduate, about 40% of them, if you believe the federal reserve bank of new york, about 40% of them do not ore very high-paying jobs highly skilled jobs very fast out of school here and there was the fed calls underemployed. that is to say they are doing

jobs that high school were as often do or usually do, baristas working athops, walmart or home depot or somewhere like that. and these are jobs, and they are ok, they pay something, but you do not need a college education to have them. so for some people, a lot of people, in fact, college is a highly risky option and why many people are starting, i think, to think of options other than college. maybe becoming a welder is a good idea. welders make very good money. it is much less expensive and less training to become a welder than it is to get a four-year degree. and many other jobs like that. so i think we are starting -- enrollments are down, too. we have fewer kids going to college now than we did seven years ago. and i think the public is beginning to become a little more skeptical, and rightly so,

about the college experience. host: the title of your new book --"restoring the promise: higher education in america." what is the promise? how do you restore it? well, you know, the promise is that we are -- everyone sort of looks at college as the sort of ticket to success. is the way to achieve the american dream. that is what we wanted to see out of college. and we are finding that is starting to break down. we obviously need some reform in higher education. i think quite a bit of reform. fact, aven become in little bit over invested in higher education in the sense that there are some people going to college who do not belong, who should look to other alternatives, and we should probably, the federal government should probably revisit its role in the financing of the higher

education. besides that, there are other oo, by the way, th which i have not mentioned. kids are not learning as much today as they did 30, 40 years ago. that is an issue. the average college student spends only 27 hours a week and academic things, doing the academic things, going to class, studying, writing papers, taking exams, that kind of things. that is in average. that is down from 40 hours a week 50 years ago. people are not studying as much. they only go to school 32 weeks. so they are in class or working on academics less than eight graders are. and maybe we should revisit that. is that the right way to do things? so there are a lot of issues that need to be explored. host: a lot of issues we are exploring and is last 40 minutes or so on the "washington journal

."again, phone lines from if you want to join the conversation with richard vedder, the number for college graduates, (202) 748-8000. for parents and faculty members, (202) 748-8001. and then all others, (202) 748-8002. we will let you speak first with baltimore, in from maryland this morning, a college graduate. nat, go ahead. caller: hi. thanks for c-span. i have call before. i am a world war ii vet. in engineering and advanced degrees. my comment is, most of the problem lies with the arts degrees. the people who are taking science and technical degrees find no trouble getting jobs, because they are meaningful subjects. but if you take these abstract except, there is nobody foundation that is willing to pay you to work for them. what i would like to ask is why

can't we specifically differentiate between the technically usable degrees and uh,sort of, uh, um, non, specific product. host: nat, thanks for the question. mr. vedder? raising a very important point here at engineering graduates, science by the way come outside of the sciences, where this is true as well. , theseing, for example pretty well. my field of economics, graduates do pretty well. but there is a huge difference in vocational outcome of different kinds of college graduates, and one big problem is i do not think injuring students, students entering college, are fully aware of it. they just do not know that an engineer usually goes out and

makes $60,000, sometimes even more, eight year, right from the it is ag, where sociologist or a psychologist or a gender studies major at trouble getting a job at all. they are the ones that end up being baristas and so forth, and if they do get a job in their field, it is likely to be a salary at maybe $35,000 a year theless, $40,000 at most, a lot less money. there are huge differences there that are not being pointed out. i would maybe apply a caveat to what he said in that there are reasons that people go to college other than just to get a are sometimes some disciplines where people do not start out with tremendous salaries, but over a lifetime do pretty well. philosophers do pretty well. in midcareer, philosophers on average make as much as general

business administration majors, because they know how to thank. they have good critical thinking skills. so non some of these nonscientific areas to prepare people in some way for the world to work, if you like, but they caller makes a good point. host: "wall street journal the "wall street journal" -- host: the "wall street journal" in one of their stories talks about a little are college in vermont. and the "wall street journal" uses that story to know that small private colleges are struggling in the country. slow closure rate for nonpublic private colleges between 2004 and 2014 when triple in the next few years. more schools were likely merge with other institutions and non-arts programs like the list at green mountain college are the ones who seem most at risk.

mr. vedder, your thoughts. yes, i think that is basically right. the only issue is how big of a closure of the problem is or is going to be or issues are going to be. there is a fellow at harvard, , who thinks roughly half will be out of business in the next decade or so. i once sat at least 500 will go out of business, which is a lower percentage but still a healthy number. we will have a huge increase. it is going to because it traded amongst the not so well endowed or not very well-known liberal arts colleges, but also among state universities that ar reputations. the historically black colleges

and universities are facing enormous challenges right now. a lot of them are in financial difficulty. so people are starting to say no oneslleges, and the without large government support or a large amount of drive an endowment are the ones -- private endowment are the ones that are particularly vulnerable. host: college graduate. go ahead. caller: hi. thank you for taking my call, mr. vedder. i went to the university of wisconsin, and i love the that 1960's,and the late 1970's, and this is true throughout the midwest and elsewhere, felt that that was s sort ofhe state' charter, and they wanted to, quote, "have an educated workforce for the state," so

they supported the state universities. and over the 46 years since then, they have walked away from, in my opinion, the state legislatures have walked away from state universities, and the students, much to my chagrin, have basically been left with -- holding the bag. and i wonder why that has not been, why the state legislatures have not been criticized for that. and if you agree, mr. vedder, that they have walked away from their responsibility to educate their kids in their states. host: gary, thanks for the call. guest: well, it is absolutely true what you said, that governments are putting up a much smaller percentage, financing a much less, smaller percentage of the total bill for going to college than was the case a half-century ago. what has happened with wisconsin, which, by the way, is a wonderful school.

i agree with you. i have been on the campus many times. but what has happened in medicin madison and wisconsin hs happened throughout the country. there has been a decline in public support for hiring. gallup polls with other similar, that thereolls, show is a declining public support for colleges. there is a disenchantment with colleges. arei suspect legislators picking up on that, and they like to put their money where it will win them votes come up be popular with them, and they are finding that colleges are a little less appealing than they were 40, 50 years ago. added to that, there are some people that feel, and i think there is some truth to this, that the increased federal government role in financing education has led state governments to feel sort of like

oh, we do not have to do much more than we used to, we can be sort of modest in our support, because the fed looks at the oak of the spending, and andrew they had, by their role with the pellnt loan program, the grant program, student tax credits and so forth. host: does that mean loans are too easy to come by these days? guest: i think anyone can get a loan, practically. once, student loans were limited. 60 or 70 years ago, we did not have the program at all. the first federal program was the g.i. bill that came in 1944, sort of as a deferred compensation for veterans who had served us in world war ii. ,nd that program then led to

after the sputnik scare of the 1950's, we put in a few of the loan programs to support science and the s.t.e.m. disciplines. what we have to take him out of the higher education act of 1965 and was modest in size at first. the extent of the current size for a while in limited to very low income kids. anyone canlmost borrow money, some of it is so-called unsubsidized loans, but almost anyone can get at least some money from the federal government. people, we have a lot of , 8 million or so, who have $50,000 or more borrowing from the federal government right now. host: jane is next in north palm beach, florida. good morning. caller: good morning. you, ande word for

that is social engineering. there has been an abrupt shift, in my opinion, in the policies toward higher education. my first two kids got a lot of scholarship money. they were very well prepared and everything, so there was kind of that push for the schools to get -- especially my second oldest child. and now -- she is 18. applications and everything, and she was actually more qualified than my second child, and she got absolutely nothing. it is very discouraging to the kids, because it has been happening. and i work with low income people, so this is in no way a racial statement at all, but i can tell you that if you're not in a minority status, or most

recently, be undocumented or the dream kids, all these other kids, they are throwing money at you. so unfortunately, if you look at them, as i said, social engineering. this is not just something that is happening by accident. it has been, like, 10 years. the kids who are adults going to college, the kids who are going there, and everything that is subsidized and they get all the grants of everything, all of a sudden, overnight, if you are middle class and you're not in some social subcategory, some kind of a category that they are trying to fill the slots with, don't even bother. so in 10 years, you will see a massive shift in the lawyers, the doctors, getting grants for science or whatever. host: we got your point, jane. mr. vedder? guest: yes, this has become a

huge issue. it has been an issue that has come up. the varsity blues admission scandal recently, and more recently, just a couple of days ago, the college board created something called the adversity score, which is designed to tell the colleges and universities, where kids take the s.a.t., where they submit those scores to, to tell them -- are the kids living in a condition,economic commissi and so forth, low income, high crime, and so forth. so there is a growing feeling on the college park that we need to look beyond the merit of the student in terms of their academic preparation and look more at their background, and that college is a great equalizer. we should use college to help low income people get ahead, and

we are not aggressive enough on it. there are many different aspects of that. concern, i caller's think, that we may be going way overboard in that we are losing sight of the fact that we want kids to go to college who are likely to succeed, who are likely to learn something, who are likely to perform well in and we later in life, believe in merit. america is a nation built on merit. unfortunately, people in low income groups, racial have a small disadvantage. there is a greater issue in higher, sort of an equity versus sense, that in a

if we push for equal opportunity to aggressively, we will lower academics an standards. and i think that is an issue. there is a big lawsuit that many of you know about developing harvard university, the judge is considering the merit, the arguments regarding alleged discrimination against asian students. asian students are disproportionately underrepresented. they are underrepresented, it is alleged, in the harvard class. because they are asian. that is the argument. whether that is true or not, i do not know, but the attempt to try to equalize things, be sure that all racial groups are well represented, all ethnic groups are well represented, etc., we are compromising the concept of merit, and we are putting that at risk.

and i think that that has some possible severe negative. host: implicationshost: -- negative invocations. int: about 15 minutes left our program. pomp,howing circumstance, virginia tech university in virginia. we're talking with richard vedder about his new book, "restoring the promise: higher education in america." take a your phone calls to discuss the future of higher education. ruby, richmond, virginia, a college graduate. go ahead. caller: i am from bay city, michigan. i went to a school where they did not think that african-americans should go to college. if it had not been for the dean of women at the junior college, i would not have ended up getting what i got. i ended up getting a b.a. and a of her degree because

help. i still have my paperwork were my loan was paid off. my dad worked at the factory, my mom was a maid, but they were really smart. they did not think people can do anything -- black people could do anything but the maids and butlers. ofppreciate what the dean the junior-college did for me. i went to her funeral and everything. host: ruby, thank you for sharing. mr. vedder, what do you think about that? very: ruby is raising a important point, which goes beyond even the point she was trying to make, i think, and that his mentors or individual faculty members, the is of admissions advisors, and so forth at these schools can be very important in determining the success or failures of students. people need encouragement, particularly people from minority backgrounds, so people from low income backgrounds or people who had a poor

educational background because they went to, say, a school that the students are atwl. disadvantages, and they need help when they go to colleges. they haveoblem that among the faculty, and i am a faculty myself, 54 years standing, we put too much emphasis on publication. article in put an some obscure journal that no one rather than sitting down and spending more time with the students, talking with them about internships and forth.nity and so i suspect that problem is magnified for members of racial minorities, such as african americans. host: to tom in lakeland, florida, college graduate. good morning. caller: hi. good morning. i just want to say of all the people that i know that went to college, myself included, no one

does what they majored in, because it is not about the , it is more of the experience, and it shows a demonstrated credibility to a potential employer that you have the ability to see a path all the way through, from inception to its conclusion. it does not mean you are all-knowing, all learned, it just means you have the ability to learn. andigate through the financial aid packet, it is not an application, it is a packet, if it were not for mine, i never would have made it, because the packet is worse than doing taxes. host: tom, thank you for the call. mr. vedder. guest: that last point is particularly important. you have to fill out a form called the fafsa form that the

federal government provides before you can get federal assistance. as tom said, it is very elaborate, very complicated, and there is a very good bit of evidence that low income kids see these massive forms they have to fill out and get discouraged and often times do not apply in do not go to college. true.t point is the other point that i thought was very profound, and by the way, john, you have very good callers. you have a very intelligent audience, if i may say so. host: we think so as well. guest: it is cool. i always thought c-span was the harvard are broadcasting, as it

were. but anyway, the other thing that he pointed out in his that college is really more of a screening device than anything else. colleges sort of separate the people who are disciplined, who are hard-working, who think, from those who are less qualified in those regards and less intelligent, to be honest, lower cognitive skills. it is a screening device. that these of paper does not are an expert in economics or electrical engineering. there may be some vocational training involved with your college, but most of the extra earnings that college graduates get is not really from what they learned in college, it is from attributes that they have, some of which were nurtured a bit in college and

added a bit in college, but in many cases, even when they were in high school. these are the leaders in the high school graduating class is going to college. the people in the bottom of the high school class or not go to college, and they are not the leaders. there are differences in human characteristics, and the college degree, some people call it the sheepskin effect. you have this piece of paper, you are automatically considered to be a pretty bright guy or gal, and you are worth a little bit more money. host: we mentioned student loan debt in this country. that number again $1.56 trillion is the total student loan debt. the default rate on loans about 11.4%. about 60 million borrowers are in default over a year and a liquid of their loans. that represents about $101 billion worth of student loans. mr. vedder, i wonder what your thoughts are about legislation

proposed by elizabeth warren and others, the debt relief that is being talked about. guest: well, i am concerned about senator warren's proposal. there are some other proposals, by the way, that i think are more interesting. but senator warren's proposal is, let's just wipe out this debt, except for very high levels -- let's wipe out debts up to $60,000. they would wipe out something close to the order of $1 trillion of debt. borrower student bankruptcy relief act of 2019, we can show some parts of that on the screen as you continue. go ahead, sir. guest: ok. well, you know, it is a well intended action i think to relieve people who have some distress, but for one, there is

an inequity problem. is a lot of people go to college, run of debt, and worked very hard to pay off that debt, and they do pay it off. while there are 11% or 12% in default, there are another group of people, in fact, a much larger group of people who do pay off their loans and so forth. and if we start save people who have loans and have been very slow in paying them off, maybe not paying them off, ok, we're going to forget your debt, that is terribly unfair to the people, at least i think many would argue, is unfair to the people who worked very hard to pay off their loans. they did not go out to restaurants and do a lot of -- take vacations and also that they could pa save money to pay off their loans. other people did go out to restaurants and then take vacations at all, or slow about paying off their loans, we will tell the latter group, ok, you

do not owe any money anymore, but the former group, the one who worked hard to pay off their loans, tough. you paid them off, but we're not going to give you your money back, as it were. so there is an equity issue there. there is also another issue of -- involved here that with future people who borrow, would they ever bothered to even think about paying back their loans if they think there is a high probability there will be a forget this program down the road? there are some serious -- economists call this the moral hazard program. there are several issues with the war in proposal. there is another idea that is kind of interesting, and that is maybe colleges should have some skin in the game, that when a college admits lots and lots of students, who the colleges are unlikely to

rise way, the colleges take them because they want the tuition money, these kids do not pa graduate from school, they do not pay off their debt, maybe the colleges should be involved, runningthe colleges are up these, there is a scholar, alex, who proposes -- i think alex is absolutely right about this. it is an idea whose time has come. it is time to think about new way deal with this problem. host: about five more minutes with richard vedder. the book is "restoring the promise: higher education in america." his new book that we have been talking about this morning.

we also talk about the future of higher education. andy has been waiting in owensboro,. kentucky. good morning. caller: good morning. , ok, our colleges, i feel like they charge way too much, and there should be a cap on what they could charge for certain was to enroll and go to college. this,on the flip side of it starts back in the elementary, because our young people, they are not being taught any respect, and when they took the discipline out of the schools of the middle school and the high school,, i mean, unruly,, they are very and we need to get discipline back in, and they need to start working with our young people and saying hey, look, you need to start running. i have run for city commission a couple of times in owensboro, and i talked to scott, a guy who works for scott, and he said

kids graduating from high school are not even prepared to work in these factories, and that is set. a lot of the young people are college material. they ought to go to a trade school, where in a trade school they could probably learn faster in a traceable than -- trade school than they could college. a lot of them are not college equipped. host: that is andy. -- caps on tuition and whether kids are prepared to go to college. guest: well, i certainly agree with andy on the second one, the point that he was making. there are a lot of kids trying to go to college that simply do not belong to it i also agree with andy that the colleges have to take what is given to them. and what is given to them are the students that graduate from

elementary and secondary schools, and we have a problem in america with that. part of the problem is the disciplinary problem. part of the problem is a learning problem. and the colleges suffer from that. as to tuition cap, i have generally been against them, but i understand the argument for them as well. economists like myself do not like to try to artificially manipulate prices from what the market forces say, but we do not highertrue market in education, and true free market in higher education anyway, and some states are starting to cap tuition and have been doing so for a few years, and it is forcing the colleges to cut their costs. colleges are extremely wasteful in their spending. believe me. i have been with one for 54 years. the number of administrators is way out of hand.

there are a lot of things colleges could do to cut costs, and it may be that it will take somebody from the outside to make that happen. it is not going to happen by internal reform. host: one more call for you this morning. in kansas city, missouri, a college graduate. good morning. caller: good morning. i just wanted to call and just to say my counselor when we were kids taught us that they were sending you off to colleges, and we do not all start from the same place. you are going to go to school with kids that come from prep schools that come from backgrounds that are a little more affluent, but the mind has an incredible ability to catch up with hard work. and i have to say even with what we see of people that come from very affluent backgrounds and yet still kind of game the system, there is a disadvantage that has to be addressed with individuals that do not

particularly start from the same place but who still have the ability to catch up with hard work and then the country is willing to invest, and there is a return that the country can expect from individuals that have now provided that investment or receive that investment and gone on to contribute to society. host: thanks for the call pure mr. vedder, i will give you the last minute. guest: yeah, the point is well taken. we touched on that earlier. league,ook at the ivy the average income of a kid who goes to an ivy league school is as high as $500,000, some estimate a median income of $200,000 a year. maybe we have not done enough to allow others to get into these groups and to get ahead, and that this causes problems in america in achieving the american dream, but on the other

that is want a system also based on merit, so it is a complicated issue. i think the caller raised an issue that we talked about earlier, and we addressed it before. host: the book again, "restoring the promise: higher education in america," the author richard vedder with us this morning. thanks so much for your time. >> much commencement speeches all week on c-span. minority leader stacey abrams at american university school of public affairs. north carolina republican representative mark walker at piedmont national university. withlook back to june 1963 president john f. kennedy's remarks. watch commencement speeches tonight on c-span.

watch online anytime at c-span.org and listen on the free c-span radio app. c-span's washington journal live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. thursday morning, we will discuss special counsel robert mueller's statement on the russia probe. in afghanistan inspector general will be on to talk about his report on u.s. reconstruction efforts in afghanistan. be sure to watch washington journal live at 7:00 eastern thursday morning. join the discussion. trumpow, president delivers the commencement address at the air force academy commencement ceremony. that, a discussion on russia's role in the middle east, looking at economic,

political and security issues. the event is hosted by the atlantic council at 2:00 p.m. eastern and on c-span. saturday on american history tv on c-span3, at :00 p.m. eastern, revisiting the roots and evolution of african-american storytelling at colonial williamsburg. >> i went to his room after they had done all of this. i said, we put on 18th-century clothing, it makes you feel important. it inspires you. it makes you think that the 18th-century was what it means to be an american. when i wear the close that i way, i feel like a slave. >> on sunday, we continue our coverage of the 75th anniversary artifactsn american

with jared frederick. >> they landed half a mile off course. there was a little bit of uncertainty and hesitation as to what they should do. commander,ivision theodore roosevelt junior, son of the president, who was the oldest american participant in the invasion said very defiantly, we are going to start the war right here. talks6:30, veteran david about landing on utah beach. omaha and thebout carnage that was there. did make it look like we not have any difficulty. division lost 197 men on the beach on d-day. the next day, woodley attacked

-- when we attacked, we lost 50% of our men in three or four days. >> on c-span3. the reviews are in for c-span's the president book. reviews calls it a milepost in the ever-changing reputations of our presidents. from the new york journal of books, the president makes a engrossing reader. with father's day approaching, it makes a great gift. read about how historians rank the best and worst chief executive from george washington to barack obama. that shapedminds our leaders and the legacies that they have left behind. availableresident is online or as an e-book today.