if everyone flunks, maybe your standards are too high?
A funny headline-- in combination with the sub-header-- in today's C-J...
Indiana is 'failing' in college affordability
Report: Kentucky, 48 other states also flunking
The writer takes it all very seriously-- and extends the findings of the report by exploring the ways in which Indiana and Kentucky have flunked.But if everyone flunks, maybe the problem is with the standard. (An interesting exception: Christian theology teaches that "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God". The result: "the wages of sin is death". Thankfully, the last part of the verse is "but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus"!)
Reading further, we learn that "California is the lone exception, receiving a B". It looks like she's promoted D.C. into a state!
Finally, it's interesting that something which receives so much subsidy is seen as unaffordable. (See also: health care.) Although tuitions have been rising substantially over the past decade, it should be noted that the "cost" of college has only increased moderately. The key: reduced subsidies for tuition have resulted in students picking up a greater proportion of the cost. Taxpayers are still on the line for massive (but fewer) subsidies-- as money is taken from them and given to support unsuccessful students or successful students (who will have above-average earnings).
posted by Eric Schansberg @ 9:22 AM
4 Comments
4 Comments:
Until Reagan was governor of California, the University of California had no tuition; it was free. California made an extraordinary investment in higher education, and it had the finest university system in the world. As a result, California is still the world leader in high technology; the largest and most advanced high technology corporations are headquartered there, such as Intel and Genentech.
That was a long time ago!
I don't know much about tuition by state over time, so I can't speak on the relative impact of CA's choice. I do know that tuition was really cheap at George Mason and Texas A&M when I attended there in the 1980s. (My first tuition bill at GMU was $512, I think.)
Beyond that, why would you say "as a result..."? I can imagine a causal connection there, but it's not a cinch that A leads to B in a significant way-- or certainly, that the diverted resources are a net gain when used in that manner.
That's what I've always assumed, from what I've read. But it is surely true that California's investment in higher education had a great deal to do with the flourishing of high technology. Indeed, this is an excellent example of "diverted resources" (public investment) that paid off magnificently. More generally, the public investment in "pure" science research, as well as specific applications (often for military purposes, such as the DARPA research that led to the Internet), has paid off tremendously. All of this was mapped out in 1945 in the famous report by Vannevar Bush, Science, the Endless Frontier," which advocated the public commitment to science research and education that we now have. Here are two paragraphs from the summary:
One of our hopes is that after the war there will be full employment. To reach that goal the full creative and productive energies of the American people must be released. To create more jobs we must make new and better and cheaper products. We want plenty of new, vigorous enterprises. But new products and processes are not born full-grown. They are founded on new principles and new conceptions which in turn result from basic scientific research. Basic scientific research is scientific capital. Moreover, we cannot any longer depend upon Europe as a major source of this scientific capital. Clearly, more and better scientific research is one essential to the achievement of our goal of full employment.
How do we increase this scientific capital? First, we must have plenty of men and women trained in science, for upon them depends both the creation of new knowledge and its application to practical purposes. Second, we must strengthen the centers of basic research which are principally the colleges, universities, and research institutes. These institutions provide the environment which is most conducive to the creation of new scientific knowledge and least under pressure for immediate, tangible results. With some notable exceptions, most research in industry and Government involves application of existing scientific knowledge to practical problems. It is only the colleges, universities, and a few research institutes that devote most of their research efforts to expanding the frontiers of knowledge. [My emphasis.]
Great value-added from an obscure source (at least for me)!
A number of thoughts:
-To say CA was effective, we would need to know what other states did. For example, if all states provided free education, it would not be appropriate to ascribe glory to CA's policy choice.
-It's an interesting and complex project to measure the costs and benefits of such a thing. I'm reminded of a funny line from Dennis Miller. Commenting on Tang coming out of NASA spending, he said "how about we spend that money on Tang and see if a cure for cancer comes out of it". The point: it's quite easy to see the explicit benefits, but often far more challenging to imagine (and measure) the abstract opportunity costs of the diverted resources. If we're not good at this sort of analysis, we'll fall prey to all sorts of proposals that sound good.
-Accepting the premise that science education should be subsidized to reach the goals outlined, note that we're subsidizing all sorts of education in order to reach that goal. So, it is not a particularly well-targeted subsidy. It might be better to make (upper-level) math and science courses cheaper (and perhaps for "qualified" students).
On the Bush report:
-As an aside, the opening sentence reflects the Keynesian perspective and emphasis on "full employment" (FE). The greater goal, however, is "full productivity". In other words, thinking about FE lends one to creating make-work jobs or pursuing jobs for their own sake-- rather than jobs as means to greater ends.
-Bush seems to be speaking both to the accumulation of human capital and the incentives for engaging it. The latter takes us into familiar and important economics and public policy territory: marginal tax rates, etc.
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