Stop subsidizing soaring college costs
http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/22/opinion/bennett-college-costs/index.html?hpt=hp_bn6
It makes a huge amount of sense to me that if there is no price pressure on producers then there is no profit pressure, hence no benefit to producing something more efficient. If schools fail to attract students because the price of their product is higher than the product’s value (I am starting to finally see some of this now even with the presents of student aid), then the school either changes its ways or goes out of business. It might take a few years for the situation to improve (the situation is pretty damn dysfunctional at present) but I feel quite certain that if we simply eliminate student loans (meaning no more loans to people with no proof of ability to repay, to students or parents!) the schools will drop the costs of attending (or go out of business, something I think a whole lot of law schools need to do). Perhaps the quality of higher education never actually improves, but if the cost to obtain the crap that is being offered now drops enough, then the payback to get it eventually reaches positive.
Post WWII there was a period of great prosperity. People with high-school educations, or even less, were making enough money that they actually had funds available for discretionary spending (a rare circumstance).
Many of them were determined that their children would benefit from their success, and be even more successful. They would send their kids to COLLEGE.
It was a good idea. A college education was actually worth something. Those who had it were equipped for better, higher-paying jobs.
When EVERYONE goes to college, things change. Even supposing that each attendee learned as much as previously, there would be more competition for the jobs available. Some would have to flip burgers.
The huge demand would require expansion of the colleges and an increase in teachers. The pool of teachers available is like every other pool: get Gaussian. To fill the slots, one would have to employ a corp of teachers whose average intelligence and ability was lower than that previously attainable.
More students, dumber on the average because of the same curve, would require even more teachers, even dumber, on average, than before. Brighter students would have to sit on their thumbs and be denied greater knowledge, simply because the institution had to cater to the average or below.
It’s a feedback situation and the results are entirely predictable: worthless institutions of higher learning, costing more because of trapped parents determined to give their children “more,” staffed with teachers who can’t pass high-school requirements for their own discipline.
Despite our desire to make everyone “equal,” it ainnagonna happen. The best one can do is provide equal opportunity so that each person has no gripe when it turns out that they’re not actually the best thing since sliced bread.
Unfortunately, providing equal opportunity when the number of opportunities is fewer than the number of applicants leads to inequity: either the better are sacrificed for the worse, or the worse are sacrificed for the better.
Making the simple, correct decision is not going to be popular. Popularity and political correctness are such big things that we’re continually shooting ourselves in the ass. Our international competitors must be thrilled.