In refuting Obama’s claim that more black men are in prison than are in college, George F. Will alludes to a report by the Pew Center on the States that declares the U.S. incarcerates too many people and in so doing diverts funds away from higher education.

James Q. Wilson, who has demonstrated that a high risk of punishment significantly reduces crime, faults this same report for not examining “whether society gets as much from universities as it does from prisons.”

An interesting query, although, as Will notes, “not one apt to be studied in academia.”