This is the fourth (final) part of a series related to
higher education costs. (See Part I, Part II, Part III, and also check out the
president’s speech offering to help that led to this long and emphatic “no
thank you.”)
The original government interference in higher education is
the refusal to allow businesses to use their own hiring policies. While I think
IQ tests are limited in many ways—they fail to measure life experience combined
with drive—they are significantly useful in predicting job performance in many
fields. This is from 2002:
Cognitive ability tests represent the best single predictor
of job performance, but also represent the predictor most likely to have
substantial adverse impact on employment opportunities for members of several
racial and ethnic minority groups.[1]
What happened was, it became “unconstitutional” for
businesses to use an extremely useful colorblind tool in hiring decisions,
because the results might end up appearing to be racist. So businesses found
another way—they let higher education institutions do the IQ testing, and
subsequent weeding out, for them.
As a result, getting an education at a premier university
that would provide the same cachet as a high IQ score became the path to career
success. And students were willing to pay a premium for that credential.
Costs for the coveted scarce commodity rose. Fewer students
could work their way through college. So government stepped in to “help” with
guaranteed student loans (which may not be low interest, and cannot be
dismissed even in cases of bankruptcy or disability). More students with
apparent financial ability to go to college meant greater demand for limited
college admittance, which meant ever higher education costs. Current costs for
a degree in many mid-range skills far outpace wages. The result is essentially
indentured servitude.
Incidentally, schools are rated by the percentage of
students they accept compared to how many apply—so they recruit so that they
have more to turn away—which makes them more exclusive, literally, so they can
then charge higher tuition. [I’ll refer you again to the Uncommon Knowledge
discussion I mentioned in Part II.] Some of the ultimate schools, such as
Harvard, take in so much money, they have literally billions of dollars in
their permanent endowment fund. They could expand easily and offer the
education to greater and greater numbers. Or they could provide full-ride
scholarships to all their students for the next century—just off interest,
without touching principal. But they don’t do that, because being exclusive,
more than offering an excellent education for the next generation, is their
business.
So now the president, who can do nothing about the third or
half of high school students who fail to graduate, offers to step in to make
sure everyone (sweepingly including the dropouts) gets a higher education. The
premise is that a college education is the passport to a comfortable middle
class lifestyle, and that should be available to everyone. It’s hard to argue
with the “everybody should have the same opportunity” concept. But logic holds
that there will always be a lower 50%; speaking it out of existence isn’t going
to work. (I’m thinking of Lake Wobegon, where “all the children are above
average,” even though that’s not mathematically possible.)
If you know how to translate the president, you know he
doesn’t really care about basic fairness—or else he’d be in favor of the free
market. Power mongers grasp opportunities to be the deciders of who gets access
to a certain level of lifestyle.
If the government is “helping” to make higher education
opportunities, then of course it will have an interest in what is taught and
how. So that means greater control over accreditation. Accreditation now is
done by private entities, but does indeed have a certain point of view. For
example, an accredited law school is required to teach not only that Roe v.
Wade is the law of the land but that it was a correct Supreme Court
decision—even though hardly anyone believes that, including the liberal members
of the current SCOTUS. Accreditation is not a guarantee of education quality;
it is a controller of documentation used for granting or denying access to
opportunities.
Having more government influence on accreditation and other
markers of success can only lead to weeding out dissenting opinions. And that
is likely the intent.
Government could also affect choices by limiting use of
student loans to those institutions it approves, thus limiting choice.
I am not in favor of encouraging diploma mills. I am in
favor of my own children, at this point, getting their degrees from good
universities—because right now that is still the gate to certain career
advantages.
But, unlike our president, I trust the free market. If
businesses were allowed to make hiring decisions their way, and students were
free to get their education any way they chose (probably a combination of
guided university education and much free online study), then costs would
dramatically drop. Then hard work, effort combined with good character would be the
gateway to success—rather than agreement with a tyrannical, interfering
government.
[1] Murphy, K.M., “Can
Conflicting Perspectives on the Role of g in Personnel Selection Be Resolved?” Human Performance, 15(1&2):173-186
(2002).
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