Every industrialized nation recognizes that to remain competitive, it must have an educated population and therefore invest heavily in higher education. Our system of supporting higher education has caused us to push students away from studying mathematics and science, left us facing a debt bubble and has become a drain on economic recovery. Perhaps for fear that the government would waste money if it directly funded higher education, or perhaps to put more government money into the hands of private lenders, the federal government decided higher education would be best supported through a system of subsidizing student loans.