This month’s Four Peaks Hacking Edu series draws to a close tonight – or more aptly – moves onto a new series of initiatives. Despite the month’s hyperbolic “crisis” premise, the consensus among most of the participants is that Higher Ed itself isn’t necessarily in crisis, but paying for Higher Ed is in crisis. Even Ben Huh (probably the month’s most provocative speaker) didn’t dismiss the value of a college education entirely. According to Huh, college was a place where he could study philosophy and read Dostoevsky and he valued that experience despite their relevance (or lack there of) to what he does now as a web content developer and entrepreneur.

The crisis in paying for higher education was reaffirmed yesterday when the Associated Press reported on economic figures that pegged borrowing costs for college tuition surpassing borrowing for consumer credit and auto loans. The AP reports that tuition debt is actually rising while consumer borrowing has leveled out or declined. Most of that debt is held by people under the age of thirty. It doesn’t take a Rhodes Scholar, rocket scientist or even a college professor to figure out that this debt load is unsustainable. Even Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is moving to the center on student debt. Interest rates on federal student loans was cut by Congress in 2006 from 6.8 percent to 3.4 percent. Without congressional renewal, those rates will reset back to 6.8 percent later this year. Romney has joined President Obama in calling for congressional renewal of the current lower rate. Continue reading →