One of the new casualties of the "credit crunch" that's tightening its noose on Americans is the student loan business. Now that middle class kids are finding it more difficult to get loans for their colleges of choice, parents and pundits will turn to the government to "Do something!"

Frankly, I hope the government does little or nothing. Only then will college costs stop escalating, as student and parent loans are the lifeblood of soaring college costs.

It's not that I want today's high school graduates to watch as their dreams are blown up, collateral damage in the subprime mortgage fiasco. It's more that I wouldn't mind seeing private colleges and universities go on a fiscal diet, and feel a little pain. It's long overdue.

Colleges have become very, very expensive. Some observers even believe they may not be worth the sky-high prices anymore.

Last year, former U.S. House Speaker and educator Newt Gingrich asked the question in a Fox TV special "Why Does College Cost So Much, And Is It Worth It?" There were eye-opening examples of what some would consider waste - the 53-person Jacuzzi installed at Washington State University for the students, for instance. Or Ohio State's new $140 million recreation complex. Pay up, mom and dad. The kids like life comfortable.

The enormous tuition debt is crashing into the economic reality of globalization, a new world where America's best and brightest college grads find it hard to make a good living after college, with cheap, educated labor abroad taking many good-paying jobs overseas.

Some people believe that education costs the same as it always did, plus inflation, but that's just baloney. I can cite my own experience as an example.

From 1971-1975, I spent three summers in Woonsocket's Coby Glass mill earning minimum wage, and a summer's work gave me a year's tuition at Rhode Island College. I earned $1.70 per hour and took home about $50 per week. Ten weeks work gave me the $500 annual tuition I needed for RIC. (I also worked an additional 25 hours each week at Almacs, for books, fees and spending money.) Today, if a kid works full time for the minimum wage of $7.40, he'll take home about $250 per week, or $2,500 for the 10 weeks of summer. And he won't even be close to paying the $5,250 in-state annual tuition at RIC. And that's a taxpayer subsidized state school!

Make no mistake about it, today's kids are far worse off than I was in 1971.

That's where the student loan industry comes in. For a generation now, the spigot has been wide open to parents who were happy to empty their bank accounts and drain their home equity. Home values were rising, and the economy was roaring along.

Now we're in a new era, and it doesn't look like things will be changing very fast. Home values are dropping, and the available home equity to parents (and colleges) is shrinking fast. Parents and students are worried, too, about the high cost of food, gas, heating and all the other necessities of life. More affordable state colleges are looking better and better to many families.

Available private and bank loans are drying up, too. There's less to borrow, and fewer companies to make the loans. Sadly, college tuitions just keep rising as if nothing is wrong. But there's a lot wrong, and I expect there will be a lot of pain ahead for private colleges in the next few years.

Without easily available loans that choke parents, delay retirements, and put many students in financial quicksand, many private colleges will begin to be forced to make the painful changes necessary that bring their prices down. I say, "Good!"

Sorry, professor. Economics happens.

- Ward is publisher

of The Valley Breeze newspapers.