George Leef’s latest Forbes column targets the nanny state’s latest project.
For “progressives,” the Nanny State never does enough. They always find new social problems and “unmet needs” that, in their view, can only be addressed by further expansion of government. In that vein, we now have a proposal to take the free school lunch program in schools to next level – college.
Since the federal government feeds students in K-12 schools via the National School Lunch Program, it should similarly feed college students who are “food insecure,” argues a new policy brief published by the Wisconsin HOPE Lab.
According to authors Sara Goldrick-Rab, Katharine Broton, and Emily Brunjes Colo, the country loses productivity because students who are hungry underperform and therefore don’t graduate on time, if at all.
“Insufficient attention to the nutritional needs of undergraduates,” they write, “could contribute to the inadequate production of college-educated labor.”
It is funny to hear talk about “underproduction” regarding college graduates when large numbers of them now work in low-skill jobs and have great trouble in meeting their student loan payments. It’s obvious that we have oversold higher education, and that the apparent need for more college-educated workers is mainly due to credential inflation. …
