Education

Education policy spans K–12 school finance, higher education access, student debt, and workforce development. The economic case for public education funding rests on positive externalities (an educated population benefits everyone, not just the individual), imperfect capital markets (families can't borrow against future earnings to finance schooling), and equity concerns.

Higher education has become increasingly expensive over the past four decades — driven by a combination of reduced state funding, administrative cost growth, amenity competition among universities, and federal student loan availability that may have allowed tuition increases (the "Bennett hypothesis").

Student debt cancellation has become a major policy debate. The economic analysis is more complex than political arguments suggest: debt cancellation is regressive in absolute terms (college graduates earn more), has uncertain macroeconomic effects, and doesn't address the underlying cost problem. But it has real distributional effects among borrowers, particularly those who did not complete degrees.