Earlier this week, we highlighted a column by Lee Siegel of the New York Times who described defaulting on his student loans.

Kevin D. Williamson of National Review offers a response.

Student-Loan Deadbeats: Fashionable Theft

I’d like to go on record here pledging to cover the full cost of a monthly bus pass for Lee Siegel, the somewhat less exalted writer and critic who in the Sunday New York Times explained: “Why I defaulted on my student loans.” And maybe why you should, too.

Siegel’s story is more than familiar to me, having been at one time in precisely the same position: forced to decide between pursuing my education at a less expensive and less prestigious state school or taking on a great deal of debt to finance an Ivy League education. My Calvinist terror of debt preceded, and has survived, my conversion to Catholicism, and I like to think that Yale’s loss was the University of Texas’s gain, though the view from Austin may be different. I was very fortunate to finish my college years with a net worth of approximately $0.00 — no assets to speak of, but no debts, either, which enabled me to go work as a newspaper editor in India without having to worry about much other than my immediate household expenses. To the taxpayers of Texas and the world oil markets — both of which contribute mightily to subsidizing English majors at the University of Texas — I am grateful.

Siegel went the other way, borrowing what one assumes is a great deal of money to underwrite three degrees from Columbia University in New York City. Columbia is one of the most expensive institutions of higher learning in the world; New York City is not the least expensive place in the country to live.