Welcome. This is Anastasia Yuglova bringing you the Cato Daily Podcast.

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Does American education need an overhaul?

While tuition costs rise relentlessly, many are questioning what students are actually learning

and whether there's a real payoff for all the money spent.

Cato Education Policy analyst Neil McCluskey addresses these issues in today's podcast.

You're hosting a policy forum here on Wednesday on the need for Ivory Tower overhaul.

Why is this necessary now?

Well, it's kind of a complicated question.

Right now there probably is a need to overhaul the Ivory Tower, but not in the way that a new commission, well not really a new

commission, a commission that's been in existence for a year but just recently released a report to the

secretary doesn't need to be overhauled the way they want it to be overhaul.

It's important now to finally get government funding out of higher education because it's especially

a government student aid that is driving tuition to astronomical heights.

Unfortunately, what this commission is recommended to the secretary is that they have

more government money going to higher education and more control.

So the topic of our forum is to get all kinds of views on do we really need to overhaul the ivory tower?

And if so, how?

And one of those views will be the one of the Commission, but there will be other views,

mine I hope especially, on getting government out. We also have someone who's going to

speaking on a unit record data system in which the federal government would keep data on every

...