This is several days old, and my lack of haste in replying reflects the importance I attach to Chris Fitzsimon’s attack. He wrote about both the “National Report Card” on higher ed (praising it) and my “Overselling of Higher Education,” giving it the back of his hand. I copy only the latter:
The Pope Center for Higher Education Policy also released a paper this week, arguing just the opposite, that fewer people should go to college, federal financial aid programs should be abolished, and states should dramatically raise tuition at public universities.
The report seems to pine for the good old days before World War II when a college education was ?largely regarded as mind-broadening study in such fields as literature, history and philosophy for those who could afford to delay the beginning of their careers.?
The author quotes an economist saying that keeping the price of college ?artificially low? (through modest tuitions and financial aid programs) results in even highly-motivated students studying less. Apparently financial aid means lower grades. Who knew?
The report goes on to challenge the conventional wisdom that college graduates earn higher wages by, among other arguments, pointing out that someone with a high school diploma who becomes an auto mechanic makes more money than a college graduate who is working as a theater usher.
Sound logic there. It must follow that since Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard and he is the richest man in the world, making significantly more than an usher, maybe the key is to attend college, but never graduate. At the heart of the criticism of the group, which ought to be renamed The Pope Center to Dismantle Public Universities, is the fact that the evil government is investing tax dollars in a pubic institution that serves the people of the state (including those who study literature or history).
Never mind that in addition to educating thousands of people in North Carolina every year, the university system is an important economic engine for the state. Forbes.com recently mentioned the universities when it ranked the state as the third best in the nation as a place to do business and it?s hard to imagine Research Triangle Park existing without the research universities that surround it.
But investing in public anything is inconsistent with the free market fundamentalism that seems to drive much of the anti-government crowd. No room in their radical world view to make opportunities to succeed available to everyone. If the market doesn?t do it, it shouldn?t be done.
The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education Policy report includes a benefits category that ?measures the economic and societal benefits that the state receives as the result of having well educated residents.?
Most of us implicitly understand those benefits. This week, the radical right once again denied them and showed how far from reality their philosophy has strayed.
This is amazingly feeble. Since when is it a response to an opposing point of view to smirkily write, “who knew?” As to my contention that having a college degree is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for making a good income, Fitzsimon tries to be clever, but just ties himself in knots evading my point. Then he lets fly with some snide stuff about what he says is my world view that is against allowing people to have opportunities.
The main argument of my paper was that a college degree is not the only, or for many people the best opportunity. Regarding the supposed economic benefits of increasing “investment” in higher education, it’s pretty dishonest to toss that in as a refutation when the paper demonstrates that the belief that ladling more money into higher ed is at this point a poor use of resources. To his readers, Fitzsimon appears to have landed a solid punch to the jaw, but to anyone who has read my piece, it would be obvious that he is just swinging away wildly.
