In a column for The Michigan View, Fix Contributor Graham Kozak criticizes University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman, who sent an open letter to President Barack Obama in which she called higher education a “public good currently lacking public support.” Kozak writes:
In one fell sentence, Coleman justifies virtually unlimited future spending (much of it taxpayer-financed) on public education and reveals the disastrous mentality behind so many of our nation’s failing enterprises, from the Postal Service to Amtrak to higher ed.
Once something is declared a “public good,” normal laws of economics go out the window. For if something is a public good, we must have more of it at all costs. Even those who don’t enjoy the good directly become indirect beneficiaries. Criticism is self-defeating, It is anti-social. Hence, calls for more state support for universities that most folks will never attend – along with more grants and more federally-backed student loans. More, more, more.
But to advance this argument is to claim that every labor-saving, productivity-increasing, or wealth-creating technology or product is also a “public good” needing public support, since more of those goods increases the wealth of society as a whole. Just imagine if the government tried to guide the production of, for example, cars through a series of incentives, subsidies, and mandates. The results would be horrifying. And costly.
If we assume that increasing the number of workers with a four-year college education is beneficial – and then assume that our universities are equipped to provide that education in the first place – we should subject the process of attaining a degree to efficiency-maximizing market forces, not cry for more public aid.
Coleman’s statements demonstrate higher ed’s pathological inability to diagnose its own deepening problems. Barring a shared epiphany, we can expect Coleman and her colleagues to continue demanding that society foot the bill for academia’s costly indulgences.
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