Debunking Another Shibboleth

The Democratsâ presidential nominee, Al Gore, says post-secondary education is high on his priority list. One of the vice presidentâs goals is to raise college attendance rates. Indeed, education is critical to individual success and that of our nation. But is increasing the rolls of college students ö government-sponsored ö necessarily a good thing?

No, opines George C. Leef, director of the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy in Raleigh, N.C. Mr. Leef writes in the August issue of Freedom Daily magazine that too many people subscribe to the conventional wisdom that because education is good, more education ö and usually heavily taxpayer-subsidized ö is better. They are wrong, he argues:

ãWe donât have prosperity because so many people are going to college; so many people are going to college because we have prosperity,ä Leef says. ãWe wonât get a better educated populace merely by throwing money into the education machine.ä In fact, he says, thereâs ample evidence that this long-running practice undermines academic standards.

ãBecause we have a high degree of prosperity, we can afford to lavish resources on universities that teach less and less,ä Leef added. A better solution is to end governmental subsidies and, in the process, have college costs borne only by willing parties and, thus, preserve the real, abiding and true value of higher education.

All of this, of course, might prove to be a shock to many, Leef argues. That would, he says, include the marked reduction in unpaid, low-interest government loans, an end to publicly subsidized college football stadiums and convocation centers, and ãno more $100,000-per-year Marxist professors.ä

Ouch. And touchŽ.