We should discourage students from attending college, not make it free
"It’s a staple of the Democratic Party in 2019 that we need more college for everyone. Part of the liberal argument for “free” or subsidized college is that education makes us richer. Many Democrats now even extend this argument to say we as a society would be richer if we taxed ourselves to send everyone to college for free. This position depends upon the idea that college really does make people richer, a phenomenon that has, historically, largely proven true. But it appears that this is changing. The value of education is inherently subjective. Some might say four years swooning over French sonnets makes the individual richer in some intellectual sense, or that courses in puppetry or gender studies are somehow helping students grow as humans. This academic wishfulness, though, isn't sufficient justification for making taxpayers finance higher education. If Democrats intend to ask taxpayers to foot the bill, they need to prove that we are indeed made richer in real financial terms, demonstrable on paper, by expanding education. The usual proof is that we can see in real-world financial results the value added to an individual’s lifetime wealth due to a college degree. Essentially, we can observe that those with a college degree make more than nongraduates and acquire more wealth over their lifetime. In this, the degree is adding value and wealth to us all. Therefore, the argument goes, we can cough up more taxpayer cash for "free" tuition and still come out ahead. This logic completely fails if there is no such college premium. If the higher incomes don't appear, then the value isn't being added. This means the whole process isn't worth it. Unfortunately for Democrats, this seems to be the case. According to new research from the St. Louis Federal Reserve, the college degree income premium has substantially declined, and for all non-white students, the college degree’s wealth premium is “statistically indistinguishable from zero.” The gains from a college degree haven’t totally evaporated, but they’re certainly shrinking and quite fast at that. Soon, the college premium might not even exist at all. Why is this all happening? Well, the St. Louis Fed is a little reticent to dive into this because it's the result they're reporting, not the cause. We get to have the fun of trying to work out why this is happening. One answer could be that the modern college experience doesn't teach students much of anything that’s actually useful. Perhaps the combination of excessive grievance studies such as critical race theory or revolutionary sexual politics and a lack of useful skills such as plumbing or car repair does, in fact, diminish the real-world value of degrees. The most likely answer, though, is that college is still of great use to some folks and does indeed add lifetime value for a certain portion of the student population. But it clearly produces a negative return for another portion of society, leading our average premium to spiral downwards so rapidly. The simple solution is that we need fewer students to attend university, not more. We ought to divide young people into groups, those who will likely benefit from a college degree and those who won't. We should encourage the first to attend but strongly deter the second group from enrolling in university. How? Well, start by making those going pay the full cost of their education. Classes such as accounting, engineering, medicine, and so, which do produce those higher incomes, will gain students. Classes that don't will lose enrollment, and hopefully, will ultimately be extinguished from campus. Still, if people want to waste their money on a degree in gender studies, go ahead. As a philosophical liberal, I do believe that people should get to spend their dime their way. But government resources should only encourage the first subgroup of prospective students to attend university and that will largely require focus on productive areas of study. The last thing we should do is embrace the Democratic proposal and make college “free,” aka taxpayer-funded, for all students and all majors. Rather, we want students to carry more of the cost of their studies precisely to get both fewer students and students in more productive fields, thus educating only those who will actually financially benefit from earning a degree. The current system is an utter waste of economic resources. Making it free for everyone to go to university will just spend more societal wealth spiraling down the waste pipe." As I have said for many years, the college wage premium is based on looking at the financial history of people who are now old, who attended college when it made academic and economic sense. People retiring now went to college when the course work was still rigorous, the courses made sense, and there was less fluff. They also paid far less in real after-inflation terms. We oldsters did well. But since then, things have collapsed. Universities are now cabals of highly paid, administrators who seem intent on inflating the administration, strangling the professoriate, and charging the students for the deed. They have also managed to sell the idea that 70% or more of the matriculating high school class needs to go to college creating a sinecure for themselves and debt slavery for the students whether they obtain a degree or not. But one cannot compare how we oldsters did back during the Jurassic and the current crop of students because too many of them are majoring in worthless degrees, and running up astronomical student debt. These students will have little if any college wage premium.
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