See Thru Edu is a project of the Texas Public Policy Foundation
Thomas K. Lindsay, Ph.D., Editor in Chief and Director, Center for Higher Education, Texas Public Policy Foundation
There is a fundamental contradiction in the data relating to college graduate vocational success—a contradiction that can lead to radically different conclusions about the need to invest resources in higher education.
The near addictive habit of some schools to use massive building programs to perpetuate the academic arms race is being encouraged by a Federal Reserve that has distorted financial markets, something that rarely has positive long term outcomes.
Both are nice guys, decent, fine human beings, but both also can strike terror into college presidents or even academic regulators like Arne Duncan.
Would the U.S. be better off today if the department had not been created? A review of the pre- and post-Department developments in higher education shows why I favor eliminating the Department—at least regarding authority over universities.
While our federal student financial assistance programs are not the cause of all that is wrong in higher education, they are a contributing factor. Senator Alexander single-handedly managed to kill off, at least temporarily, the Perkins student loan program by keeping it from coming up for a Senate vote.
The findings confirm that the problems with American higher education are not mere blemishes, but deep wounds. In particular, the federal student loan program is something of a fiscal disaster, and obtaining a college education is a riskier investment than previously portrayed.
When six or seven percent of the entire American population is in college, that means a significant reduction in work effort occurs because otherwise highly productive persons in the physical prime of their lives are only lightly utilized in making things or providing services.
The prosperous and stable Claremont Colleges are increasingly the exception, not the rule, in American higher education. Department of Education data confirm: enrollments in total in higher education have been in decline the last few years.
What is happening at Sweetbriar is beginning to happen at a lot of places. The pool of 18-to-22 year olds is stagnant at the moment. College costs have risen relative to the perceived benefits. Overinvestment in higher education has lowered the rate of return and increased the risks.
Let’s push to have universities adopt the Chicago/Princeton policy nationwide. Ask schools to reiterate in no uncertain terms a dedication to the principle that universities and colleges are marketplaces for ideas, and that attempts to suppress expression of free speech are not to be tolerated.
