Inside Higher Ed today has an interview with Rep. Ruben Hinojosa, who is the new chairman of the House subcommittee on Higher Education, Lifelong Learning and Competitiveness.

Naturally, he’s pushing for more federal money and supports his position by saying that in 2003, “more than 400,000 college-qualified low-income students did not enroll in a four-year college, and 170,000 did not enroll in any college at all because of financial barriers….”

What that seems to say is that 230,000 low-income students decided that a four-year school wasn’t worth the additional expense and chose to enroll in a community college, and that 170,000 more decided that even the almost cost-free option of community college wasn’t sufficiently attractive.

Most of those students, although said to be “college-qualified,” would be academically marginal. As for the first group, spending two years in a community college before trying a more demanding (although many are not much more so) four-year school is quite sensible, and hardly indicative of a national problem. As for those who don’t even enroll in a two-year school, a) they might have good earnings prospects immediately (contrary to common belief, there are a lot of good jobs for people with skills but no academic degree); b) they might go to college later; or c) they might have figured out that quite a few college graduates now end up doing “high school jobs” anyway.

Later in the interview, Hinojosa says that “we are leaving way too much talent undeveloped.” Formal college coursework, however, is not the only way to develop talent. Often it’s a very inefficient way.

Robert Samuelson made that point in a column last September in the Washington Post:

The school system is what most people think of as “education.”… The American learning system is more complex. It’s most post-high school and, aside from traditional colleges and universities, includes the following: community colleges; for-profit institutes and colleges; adult extension courses; online and computer-based courses; formal and informal job training; self-help books.

Samuelson goes on to observe that the learning system

provides second chances. It tries to teach people when they’re motivated to learn — which isn’t always when they’re in high school or starting college. People become motivated later for many reasons, including maturity, marriage, mortgages and crummy jobs. These people aren’t shut out. They can mix work, school, and training.

In short, Americans can and generally do acquire the optimal degree of human capital for themselves. We don’t face some crisis unless we can somehow get every 18 year-old into a four-year college.