Colleges can do more to cut costs

A truck dispensing free ice cream drives around a beautifully appointed 140-acre setting.

Motorists take advantage of a valet service that will park their cars for them.

And, most importantly, there is a concierge desk to take care of all the needs you can't get to.

Is this a description of some lush resort? No, it is High Point University in North Carolina.

The school's amenities provide an extreme example of what's happened at too many American universities in recent years. They have been adding frills left and right to entice doting parents choosing which college to spend their own or borrowed cash on.

Even as the cost of a college education keeps it out of reach for many families, and even as it becomes more and more difficult to turn a degree into a job that pays well, college spending hasn't received the scrutiny it deserves.

Few would doubt that the colleges' costs have gone up while their state support has gone down and stock-market dips have eaten into their endowments. Most colleges have tried to trim their expenses to a degree, but too frequently they just put more of their costs on the backs of students in the form of higher tuition and fees.

Although the colleges are at fault, their enablers have been the federal and state governments that encourage tuition hikes by making it so easy to obtain student-loan funds without asking for much in return.

With so much emphasis being placed on borrowing your way through school, it's no wonder that college-student debt today stands at $1 trillion, which is more than all the credit-card and car-loan debt in the country.

President Obama has signaled that he would like to steer more government aid to colleges with lower tuitions that are offering degrees that lead to meaningful employment. Now it's time for his proposal to evolve into policy, with clear and reasonable spending guidelines for universities that will help lower their expenses and ultimately allow more young people to take advantage of higher education.

In this still-uncertain economy, government at both the state and federal levels should provide adequate support for colleges. At the same time, schools should be reassessing their curricula to make sure they are properly educating a workforce ready for the future job market.

Without compromising academic standards, the colleges also must do a much better job of saving money where they can. Free ice cream is great, but parents who succumb to such temptations in helping their children select a college are overdue for a refresher course in economics.