The Patricians, Part II

Looking at the second paragraph of the Patricians Proud to Pay full page ad in the Strib last week:We need more Minnesotans to acquire postsecondary degrees so they earn enough sto support a family, and so our state can be a leader in the knowledge economy. And we need to start early - it's not acceptable that only half our kids show up ready for kindergarten Why the focus on post-secondary degrees?

I mean, leave aside the obvious - that most of the signatories are probably college grads (so college must be the only valid course through life) - and that colleges tend to be a great source of indoctrination to the saws and tropes of the left.

Why?

I mean, for many people, the best path to the kind of life they want involves something other than the things that college teaches. Some people are natural tinkerers - they build houses, fix watches, repair your car. Some people like to help others; they're nurses, LPNs, masseuses, dog groomers, house cleaners - these are not only fields that don't require an expensive college education (that, for many people, is a waste of time; it's just not them), but that frequently pay pretty darn well.

But I think there's another motive.

When my grandfather went to college (class of 1934), if memory serves, his whole four years cost under $800. That was, of course, a lot of money; Grandpa was, family legend has it, the son of a not-very-good farmer, so he got through school on athletic scholarships (I think some of his records still stand) and a lot of summer jobs. But back then the average yearly income was somewhere around $4,000; in today's dollars, picture paying $2,000 a year for a four-year private school in 2006, when the average income has dectupled.

My father went to the same school about 20 years later. I think he paid $2,000 for four years, if I remember correctly. The average American income was, if memory serves, around $8K - which, assuming my numbers are correct, means the price of a college education stayed fairly steady over those years.

Back then, of course, the only government money going into education was through the GI Bill. The Bill changed the face of American education; before World War II, the majority of Americans didn't finish high school; the vets flocked to higher education (and vocational education, of course - my ex-father-in-law turned his post-Navy training in cabinetmaking into a very successful career); their children mostly finished high school, and around 40% had college degrees.

And along the way, the notion started that without a college degree - any college degree - you weren't really a success. You weren't really hitting your potential. And the notion of higher education as a right and a public good started, complete with immense federal subsidies paying for what is, in effect, a limited supply of seats at colleges.

When I went to the same college in 1981-1985 - well into the era of massive subsidy - the school was a relative bargain at about $4K a year

And what happens when you subsidize the purchase of something whose supply is inherently limited?

The price of a year at a private, four-year institution rises to $21,235 - half of an average American's annual income, and a chunk vastly higher than a year of the same type of school cost twenty, fifty and seventy years ago. (My alma mater is still a relative bargain, with a year's tuition clocking out at $10,550). A year at a state school costs a student $5,491 (although the actual cost, less taxpayer subsidy, is close to what the private student pays directly), a large enough chunk of the family income.

So what's the goal of pumping even more money into the post-secondary ed machine?

Perhaps to make public colleges and universities - with a public agenda - the only form of post-secondary education the average student can afford?