In today’s New York Times, its economics columnist, David Leonhardt, pushes the notion, so beloved of the academic Left, that our economy is in trouble because too few students graduate from college. You can read his piece here.

As one would expect, the Times has an economics columnist who is a dyed-in-the-wool Keynesian interventionist. When he writes about macroeconomics, he shows no understanding of, or even slight familiarity with, the various critiques of demand-side theories. I mention that point because Leonhardt’s current article, similarly, shows no familarity with the arguments that people such as Charles Murray, Richard Vedder, and even yours truly have been making to the effect that higher education has been badly oversold. Here, for example, is an article of mine on Liberty Fund’s Library of Economics and Liberty.

Leonhardt writes, “Yes, inadequate precollege education is a problem. But high schools still produce many students who have the skills to complete college and yet fail to do so. Turning them into college graduates should be a lot less difficult than fixing all of American education.” What does it mean that they “have the skills to complete college”? American colleges admit hordes of students who are weak in reading, writing, math, and (to use an overworked phrase) critical-thinking skills. There are many schools that have so watered down their curricula and standards that, as Murray writes in Real Education, almost anyone can get a degree “if he shops for easy courses in an easy major at an easy college.” Lots of those students nevertheless don’t persevere to get their diplomas.

Leonhardt complains that many lower-income students go to “colleges that excel in producing dropouts,” but as I have pointed out many times before, colleges produce neither graduates nor dropouts. A motivated student, no matter what his family income, can pass the courses needed if he tries to. It doesn’t seem to occur to him that many of the dropouts are intellectually disengaged kids who are not ready for college, either in academic ability or maturity. Also, it no doubt dawns on some of them that the cost of completing the degree isn’t worth it, especially when they find out that many college graduates end up tending bars or rental-car booths.

Sorry, Mr. Leonhardt, but putting more mediocre-to-weak students through to mushy college degrees is not important to the success of the economy — any more than federal “stimulus” spending is.