The College Fix

Liberals should want less government spending on higher ed, not more? That’s the argument Richard Vedder makes in his essay at Minding the Campus.

Liberals for whom income equality is a paramount goal… should support:

• Ending or drastically reducing federal student financial assistance programs;
• Ending favored federal tax status of universities;
• Taxing, not subsidizing, universities, such as by making wealthy colleges pay capital gains taxes on investments and on endowment income, and  by restricting tax deductibility for gifts to colleges;
• Promoting more affordable non-degree ways of certifying employment competency, such as national examinations such as a new College Equivalence Examination that mirrors the GRE used at the high school level.

Why do I suggest this? Because I increasingly believe that public support of American higher education on balance has increased income inequality in the United States. In the interest of full disclosure, I personally do not believe that inequality is one of this nation’s top problems, and even believe that a healthy amount of it is necessary for a vibrant, growing economy. But I respect those who think differently.

Let me present a few facts that I think buttress my non-orthodox views on this topic:

• Income inequality as conventionally measured by the Census Bureau has risen sharply in tandem with the growth in the percent of the American adult population with bachelor’s degrees from 11 percent in 1970 to 30 percent today;
• A huge proportion of recent college graduates have both substantial loan debts and lousy jobs, and they disproportionately almost certainly come from lower -income backgrounds;
• Colleges that have predominately lower-income students have drop-out rates dramatically higher than those catering to students from more affluent backgrounds;
• The gap in prestige between relatively costly private and less costly state universities has widened in recent decades; in 1988, eight of the top 25 US News national universities were public schools, while now only three are;
• In 1970, 12 percent of recent college graduates came from the bottom quartile of the income distribution; 40 years later, the percentage was 7.3 percent

Read the full article at Minding the Campus.

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