Last week the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) picked up this nugget about the declining value of a college education from Instapundit blogger, Glenn Reynolds.
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 more people go to college and own homes, we’ll have more middle class people.
But home ownership and college aren’t the 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.
Enough said?
Glenn has been blogging about the HigherEd bubble for quite a while now. At first it was annoying, now it’s starting to feel prescient. His recommendation that universities will essentially have to co-sign with student borrowers is genius: “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.”
Again, enough said.
For profit education is the problem.
Randwrong thinks for profit is the problem with everything.