Not All ‘Robber Barons’ Are Created Equal

Regarding Phil Gramm and Amity Shlaes’s op-ed “The ‘Gilded Age’ Myth, Then and Now” (May 8): The robber-baron title is better ascribed to the modern university system, which loads the young with debt, than to our present-day tech titans. Some of the damage from the universities is caused by giving loans to those whose studies in Middle English or gender may not result in the salaries requisite to pay off their obligations. But there will be no tuition crash so long as the debt is backstopped by government and then redistributed in what is falsely termed debt “forgiveness.”

Sadly, college credits, unlike homes, aren’t assets that can be repossessed. Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Morgan et al. left us with railways, shipping and energy. But colleges that take students’ money with no regard for the quality or relevance of their instruction impoverish the nation and leave nothing of value behind.