…This is a simple case of inflation: When you artificially pump up the supply of something (whether it’s currency or diplomas), the value drops. The reason why a bachelor’s degree on its own no longer conveys intelligence and capability is that the government decided that as many people as possible should have bachelor’s degrees.
There’s something of a pattern here. The government decides to try to increase the middle class by subsidizing things that middle class people have: If middle class people go to college and own homes, then surely if more people go to college and own homes, we’ll have more middle class people.
But homeownership and college aren’t causes of middle-class status, they’re markers for possessing the kinds of traits — self-discipline, the ability to defer gratification, etc. — that let you enter, and stay in, the middle class.
Subsidizing the markers doesn’t produce the traits; if anything, it undermines them. One might as well try to promote basketball skills by distributing expensive sneakers.
Professional basketball players have expensive sneakers, but — TV commercials notwithstanding — it’s not the shoes that make them good at dunking.
If the government really wants to encourage people to achieve, and maintain, middle-class status, it should be encouraging things like self-discipline and the ability to defer gratification. But that’s not how politics works.
Passing out goodies generates more votes, even though doing so undermines the character traits upon which prosperity depends. That may change as the global political class, pretty much everywhere, runs out of other people’s money, but it hasn’t quite changed yet.
For higher education, the solution is more value for less money. Student loans, if they are to continue, should be made dischargeable in bankruptcy after five years — but with the school that received the money on the hook for all or part of the unpaid balance.
Up until now, the loan guarantees have meant that colleges, like the writers of subprime mortgages a few years ago, got their money up front, with any problems in payment falling on someone else.
Make defaults expensive to colleges, and they’ll become much more careful about how much they lend and what kinds of programs they offer. China, which has already faced its own higher education bubble, is simply shutting down programs that produce too many unemployable graduates.
So far, Sinophile pundits like the New York Times’ Tom Friedman don’t seem to be pushing this idea for America. I wonder why not.
This writer, the Washington Examiner’s Glenn Harlan Reynolds, makes a practice of pointing out the fallacy of Obama’s rhetoric and policy by applying his standards to liberal institutions instead of just the groupd Obama and the Left say they hate.
Here, Glenn Harlan Reynolds is applying the idea of colleges standing behind their product, in this case a college education.
I recall before Obama got elected he wanted a guaranteed free 4 years of post high school education for America’s youth.
He never said it had to be university, it was OK if it was a trade school.
But he never acted on this so kids took to the streets (the ”Occupy” movement) to force America to give them university education tuition-free.
I love what China just instituted: dropping every college major that doesn’t lead to enough JOBS.
(You can still take a few of those (useless) classes, you just can’t get a degree in it.)
Here, that would mean you could take, say, a ”womyn’s” history CLASS, but you could not get your degree in ”womyn’s studies.”
Lots of popular, but useless majors would go the way of the dodo bird.
If universities were forced to back their diplomas by backing student loans they would follow China’s lead all on their own….and quickly!
In today’s world, trade related or higher education is a necessity. In many cases (due to the loss of jobs,) retraining older workers for new jobs must also be made more affordable. The government needs to reign in the exorbitant salaries, tuition and class costs of the educational system, rather than bailing out students for the educational choices.