Free Republic

A continuing refrain of Occupy Wall Street protesters has been “student debt is too damn high,” as James Surowiecki wrote in The New Yorker. In some cases — like for the college graduate profiled in a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education who has $100,000 in debt and uncertain job prospects — this is unarguably true. But such cases make for dramatic reading precisely because they are so rare. The first thing to note is that most of those with that much debt have graduate degrees; it is difficult to accumulate that much debt in an undergraduate program....

The number of students in the University of Chicago program that bestows a Master of Arts degree in social sciences has quadrupled since 1989, jumping to 160 from 40, and despite a tuition price tag of $37,000, every year more students clamor for admittance. “It’s an expensive degree, but students have calculated how fast they get their investment back,” said John J. MacAloon, an associate dean at the University of Chicago and director of the program. “And it is beneficial for the university because there is a lot of tuition income to be had.” More students than ever have started...