My friend George Leef, research director for the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, writes here about a new book called New School, written by University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Harlan Reynolds.
Reynolds concentrates the first part of the book on higher education, which he argues is a bubble that’s ready to pop. For the last several decades, the federal government has been pumping up college enrollments with easy grants and loans. That big infusion of money led to steadily rising costs as colleges and universities figured out that the greater the federal support, the greater their budgets.
Hordes of students flooded into colleges, paying ever-higher tuition and fees, with the expectation that the degree they’d eventually earn would pay off in good, lucrative jobs. Until several years ago, most Americans believed that, but now it’s apt to be scoffed at. “Bubbles burst when people catch on,” Reynolds observes and many Americans are catching on to the fact that college degrees can be investments with negative returns.
That is absolutely the case with regard to Reynolds’ own academic post as a law school professor. Up until a few years ago, getting a law degree was generally regarded as a smart move, but the bloom is off that rose. With law schools belching forth graduates (a phrase I first heard from a law professor of mine—back in 1974!) at a rate far in excess of the creation of jobs that call for legal training, enrollments are way down at many schools. Some lower-tier schools may soon enter a “death spiral.” That’s what happens, again, when people catch on.
For the last 30 years or so, lots of young Americans went to college (usually with a parental push) out of fear that not getting a degree would consign them to lives of drudgery. Now, however, that fear is being outweighed by another fear—fear of being trapped in an avalanche of college loan debt and having no job that pays enough to cover the cost.
For that reason, Americans are beginning to look for solid value in exchange for their tuition dollars. And that, in turn, is why Reynolds foresees gale force winds of change blowing through our higher education system.
Changes are coming to K-12 education as well, and here in North Carolina, we can thank the school-choice majority in the General Assembly for empowering parents with more choices to fit their child’s individual needs. Among the new choices are opportunity scholarships for low-income families and families with kids with special needs, which I write about in this piece. Predictably, Leftists are seeking to take away those opportunities that are outside the traditional public school classroom. What a shame.
