With Hope ‘n Change, we’ve had massive public funding of just about everything else – why not higher education? In fact, that’s what happening – quietly and largely off the radar screen. From Reason TV:
President Barack Obama has declared that his administration aims to make college affordable to everyone by greatly expanding government aid to middle class families. The Washington Post says that Obama’s higher education proposals, which include creating a brand new Pell Grant entitlement, “could transform the financial aid landscape for millions of students while expanding federal authority to a degree that even Democrats concede is controversial.” But what if President Obama has it backwards? What if America is sending too many people to college?
A recent study found that “Nationally, four-year colleges graduated an average of just 53% of entering students within six years.” If 40 percent of students who enter college drop out before graduation and over 50 percent of students take six years to graduate, perhaps Obama is focusing on the wrong issue.
Reason.tv’s Michael C. Moynihan sat down with Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and the American Enterprise Institute’s Charles Murray, author of the recent book Real Education, to analyze how Obama’s higher-education plans will impact the economic and cultural future of the United States.
As noted by the Reason report, only a fraction of the pool of 18-year olds are truly smart enough to do college work – a fact that was taken for granted by educators and the public alike until the last generation. Massive government grants and loans for education creates demand and demand drives up prices. It’s pretty much a truism that private colleges have raised their tuition every year in lockstep with increases in grant funding. As a college tuition-paying parent, I’m fascinated – in a brink of destitution sort of way – with the economics of higher education and how colleges can justify yearly increases in a deflationary economy. As usual, one need look no further than the funding mechanisms involved – meaning the taxpayers.
Hat tip to Mark Perry at Carpe Diem.
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The way I see it…
The forces at play in higher education are in the direction of fewer, bigger, costlier (in tuition terms) institutions, and more emphasis on graduate education. In my eyes, grad school has become (for the enterprisers) the equivalent of college 50 years ago. Why? As we’ve created more and more subsidies for dilution of education quality (Affirmative Action, focus on quantity of education versus quality in public schools, etc.), those at the top are left wanting and in short supply of the skills required to compete globally. Hence professional graduate schools, which have become a sine qua non for those wanting the education they thought they had paid for at their 4-year institution of choice.
When I went to work in a community college in 1972 a primary concern was to reduce the 40% attrition rate. This was the subject of innumerable conferences, workshops, books, articles and memoranda.
When I retired in 2004 this was still a hot topic. The attrition rate was still 40%. The chief difference was that in 1972 the established wisdom held that a key to retention was to coax students into choosing a major. In 2004 the doctrine held that retention could be improved by steering them away from majors in general studies.