Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars (and I’ll say, a good friend) has an insightful article on our national mania with higher education here.
He’s writing in response to the Obama administration’s desire to push the US to graduate more people from college. Currently, the US is 16th in that regard (although the numbers are rather fuzzy) and Obama declares that being 16th is not acceptable — we’ve got to be first! But Wood demonstrates that there is no connection between where a nation stands in that regard and its economic success; some countries with higher percentages than ours are economically feeble (e.g. Russia) and others with lower percentages than ours are strong (e.g. Switzerland).
What truly correlates with economic success is not how many people get college credentials, but the degree of economic freedom in a country. Hong Kong isn’t prosperous because a large percentage of its citizens get college degrees. It’s prosperous because the government doesn’t meddle in the economy. In the Index of Economic Freedom, Hong Kong has been #1 for a long time. In that same index, the US has been falling for years, and is now #10.
Too bad that Obama isn’t determined to elevate the US to #1 in that respect.
