6/20/00 8:45 a.m.
Collective Oblivion
The President returns to college.

By Dan Mindus, NRO

he Senate now sits on a bill, passed overwhelmingly by the Judiciary Committee, which should make China and India, among others, laughingstocks. S. 2045 would, for the second time in as many years, nearly double the number of H-1B visas the U.S. offers to highly skilled foreign workers. What's funny is that foreign nations are spending billions to bring their people up to speed in math, engineering, and computer programming, only to have the best and brightest skip off to America. But no one is laughing, for that would require some self-reflection about our own sentimental education policy.

America, too, is subsidizing the systematic over-education of her population. The only reason we don't suffer the fate of India, Pakistan, and Korea is that the greenest pastures for highly educated workers are right here. Those pastures — our laws and institutions — play a far larger role in the story of American wealth than the college degrees of those who happen to graze there. But that has not prevented our best and brightest from returning, every year, around this time, to campus greens, to sing the praises of higher education.

President Clinton's June 10 commencement address at Carleton College was notable only for the sheer number of cliches it contained. "Every American needs more than a high-school education," the President insisted. Disbelievers in dialectical materialism once quipped, "Who will sweep the floors under a communist regime?" That sardonic question could easily be turned against Clinton: "Who will sweep the floors when all Americans have a bachelor's degree?" Well, maybe some graduates. Clinton bragged about greater funds for work-study programs, which subsidize the hiring of college students to do menial jobs (at the expense of the less-educated, who might otherwise have landed those jobs). And higher levels of college enrollment have had an inevitable leveling effect, forcing many institutions to become the functional equivalent of day-care centers. Sweeping-101 as part of a larger Cleanliness Studies program? Might not be too far away.

Clinton recited the obligatory, "You should be very proud," but that only makes sense in a world where spending other people's money for the opportunity to watch MTV, drink beer, and occasionally sit through a lecture are activities worthy of pride. Most students know that they would be more likely to feel true pride had they spent their days otherwise, but it's still nice to take comfort in the collective oblivion nourished by the charm of the commander-in-chief.

Some students — probably the majority at a place like Carleton — do take advantage of their college years. But that's exactly what Clinton cannot allow, for college is supposed to be advantageous to everyone. The President notes that the average high-school graduate will earn $600,000 less in his life than the average college graduate, knowing full well that most citizens, even in the latter category, can't distinguish between causation and correlation. The average college kid would have earned more than his "under-educated" contemporary, even if he had never set foot on campus.

Carleton graduates were treated to a recitation of programs through which the Clinton administration has subsidized them: the Direct Student Loan Program, Pell Grants, AmeriCorps, Education IRAs, HOPE Scholarships. Joking that he wished he weren't term-limited, Clinton proposed one more such program (a targeted tax cut), declaring, "investment in human capital is even more important than investment in physical capital." This notion fits neatly with the idea of education and work as self-empowerment and self-improvement; but its pseudo-economic language contradicts what reason tells us about the value of higher education.

Justifications for government support of higher education are generally presented in list form, since most speakers believe that such policies really require no justification. Universities "give our economy the skilled work force we all need; and give our nation more active, informed citizens," Clinton purred.

The first justification — that government subsidies foster a skilled work force — reduces universities to vocational training. Such training may be appropriate for many students, but that hardly means we must tax Peter to pay for Paul's vocation. High-school graduates have always had a wide range of inexpensive options for vocational education: private technical schools, internships, apprenticeships, night-learning, on-the-job learning, training academies, etc. It might be nice for a second-rate student to study psychology or environmental studies for four years at taxpayer expense, but it's hardly something "we all need."

Top students also appreciate four-year, responsibility-free stints away from home. But studying Plato and Milton and linear algebra are a privilege, and hardly required for the eventual job as consultant or investment banker. Does Shakespeare really need a subsidy? Will he ever be universal (in the Clintonian sense)?

Although "for the children" has replaced it as catch-all justification number one, some variation of "for our international competitiveness" still has a strong appeal — and defenders of higher-education subsidies are the first to invoke it. But if tax-and-spend policies won the international competition, the educated would be flocking to places other than the U.S.

The results of our education system elicit a sad chuckle. Every test of educational achievement that isn't relative (i.e., "test scores are up," or "more kids reading at grade level"), shows a pitiable knowledge of American history and political affairs. My personal favorite: Only 22% of seniors at the 55 best colleges in the nation (according to U.S. News and World Report) were able to identify "Government of the people, by the people, and for the people" as a line from Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. Throwing money at higher education shows no signs of producing more literate citizenship — one of its vaunted "spillover effects" — and yet the myth persists, perhaps because most elected officials became politically aware in college.

College-loan programs might not enrich our democracy, but they do fatten pocketbooks. Lawyers and accountants are hired in droves to shuffle family finances so that aspiring scholars meet federal guidelines of need. Loan collectors are hired to collect from the inevitable delinquents, who were offered taxpayer dollars without the scrutiny typical of private lenders. And college administrators, whose ranks have grown far faster in the past 25 years than those of the burgeoning student population, are able to raise tuition, for the government is footing an increasingly large portion of the bill.

Even with growing federal subsidies, almost universal popular support, burgeoning endowments and an increasingly wealthy clientele, universities occupy a precarious position. For-profit vocational schools are increasingly popular. Private companies' R&D has ventured into large-scale theoretical work, once thought the exclusive province of government and universities. Both job-seekers and the public view the private sector, more than universities, as on the cutting edge of scientific innovation. And distance learning is becoming all the more attractive. In addition to online degree programs administered by existing universities, one billionaire has announced plans to found an Internet university with no fees, featuring the best lecturers in the country. Another group, including junk-bond king, Michael Milken, has teamed up with professors from the University of Chicago to found a for-profit Internet university. With these startups garnering growing support from politicians, top academics, philanthropists, and, not least, investors, it's hard to see how traditional brick and mortar universities can long maintain their privileged position.

Plans to eliminate the federal Department of Education have been shelved for now, but, over time, Republicans might be able to build support for eliminating university subsidies. They could suggest that, with a growing stock market — which they will do everything they can to encourage — universities can make it on their own. And they could cheer the new Internet universities, insisting on policies that protect them from unfair competition. By coupling an appeal to the Internet and the stock market with a condemnation of the relativism and multiculturalism rampant in today's university, the elimination of subsidies to the university might just be a political winner.