The View from Right Field

Is “Free College for All” a Good Idea – Or Just More Welfare for the Rich?

A popular issue on the left these days is free college.  It was a big part of Bernie Sanders’ campaign in 2016.  Jeremy Corbyn pledged to abolish tuition fees in the UK during the campaign there earlier this year.  And in the campaign that just ended in New Zealand, the Labour leader, Jacinda Ardern, promised one year of free college in 2018, increasing to three years in 2024.

The usual reasons for this are college affordability and the high levels of debt so many college students are incurring.  With college costs seeming to be on a forever-upward trend, more and more students are incurring more and more debt.  Others don’t or can’t go at all.  And so, the promise of free college: To end the burden of debt and to make sure everybody can go to college.

Do They Ever Learn Anything in Washington?

Donald Trump.  Bernie Sanders.  Occupy Everywhere.  The Cubs winning the World Series.  So many things have happened that nobody ever expected that the Tea Party has become a distant memory.  An even more distant memory is what started the Tea Party.  It wasn’t Obamacare or the bailout of the Wall Street bankers, though both of those added to the Tea Party’s fury.  Rather, the Tea Party started on February 19, 2009 on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange when CNBC reporter Rick Santelli unleashed a rant, on air, against an Obama administration plan to bailout homeowners facing foreclosure and help them refinance their mortgages”:

“Do we really want to subsidize the losers' mortgages?  This is America!  How many of you people want to pay for your neighbor's mortgage that has an extra bathroom and can't pay their bills?” 

Colleges Come Up With Another Way to Get More Money Out of Students

Last week The Wall Street Journal reported on a new idea some colleges are promoting to reduce the amount of debt students have to incur for college: parent loans.  Instead of getting students to take on more debt, colleges are pushing parents to take out loans.  And the nifty thing about these “parent loans” is that they aren’t included in the scorecard that the Education Department created in 2013 to help students figure out how much debt they would incur at various colleges.¹

Obviously, if the problem is the affordability of college, more loans isn’t the answer.  The answer is better run colleges that charge lower tuition.  I have talked about this before.  (See “The High Cost of College Tuition” – Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.)  I am not going to repeat all of what I said there.  However, in Part 3, which was the longest, I suggested one solution to the rising tuition/debt problem:

The High Cost of College Tuition – Part 1*

Last summer, even though limits were put on government spending as part of the agreement to increase the national debt limit (and there may have even been some cuts in spending), one thing that did not get cut or limited was spending on Pell grants.**  In fact, it is my understanding that spending for Pell grants was even increased.  And recently, President Obama announced changes in federal college loan programs that are supposed to make college loans a little cheaper for some students.

All of this is in the name of making college “more affordable”.  Which got me to thinking about what I paid for tuition to Yale Law School 40 years ago (ouch, I’m old) and wondering what the tuition there is now.  I remember that, at the time, I thought the tuition was pretty high – and it was given the money we had and the value of money back then.  For the three years I went to Yale, from 1971 to 1974, the annual tuition was $2800, $3100 and $3300, respectively.  It was a total of $9200 for three years, which was a lot of money.

Then I checked to see what Yale’s tuition is now.  The tuition for the 2011-12 school year is $50,275.***  In other words, what I paid for three years would cover 37% of just one semester now.  But that’s unfair.  There has been a lot of inflation since 1971-74.  You can’t compare prices now with prices then without factoring in inflation.

So I went to the U.S. Department of Labor records to see how much inflation there has been since the early 1970s.  I used the Consumer Price Index-All Urban Consumers because the DOL has numbers for this index all the way back to 1913.  For ease of calculation I decided to compare the CPI number for January 1973 (midway through my time in law school) with the CPI number for September 2011, the start of the school year.  The January 1973 number was 42.6.  The number for September 2011 was 226.889.  Doing a quick calculation tells us that $9200 in January 1973 is equal to $49,000 in today’s money.  (See, algebra does come in handy in the real world.)

My first reaction was that $49,000 is about the same as today’s tuition of $50,275 – until I remembered that $49,000 represented three years of tuition, not just one.  In other words, while the cost of living went up 430% from January 1973 to today, Yale Law School tuition went up over 1500%.  In “real” terms, tuition more than tripled.  The tuition I paid for three years wouldn’t cover even one year of tuition today.  Which is, of course, ridiculous.

[ End of Part 1]

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* I have been wanting to write about increases in college tuition for quite a while.  I have come to the realization that I am not going to be able to do one long post, which is what I wanted to do.  So, I have decided to write several shorter posts that will hopefully tie together.  This is the first.

**  Laura Meckler, "College Grants Spared From Spending Cuts," The Wall Street Journal, August 4, 2011. Pell grants are grants (not loans) given by the federal government to college students, mostly to undergraduates, with financial need.  For the 2011-2012 school year, the maximum Pell grant is $5,550 per year.

*** For 2011-2012 there are also administrative and activities fees of an additional $2,250, but I don’t know what those were back when I was there, so I will just look at “tuition”.

How Government Makes College Even More Expensive

During the presidential campaign last year, Barack Obama said the rising cost of college tuition meant the federal government needed to make more loans available for college students because that would make college more affordable. This is standard Democratic policy, and a lot of Republicans favor it, too. Except it won’t work – and may actually make things worse. This article in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal explains why:

"Also, the rising levels of borrowing may ironically be contributing to the accelerating cost of college, say some college-finance experts. Loans can give colleges an artificial sense of a family's ability to pay tuition. … Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, says this phenomenon is playing a role in why tuition grows at about twice the rate of inflation. ‘Instead of imposing tougher choices’ on college costs, he says, it's ‘easier to raise prices … because this additional loan amount is made available.’"

It’s very logical. If students, and their families, have more money available to pay tuition, colleges will increase the tuition they charge. College won’t get cheaper until people refuse to pay constantly increasing tuition.

Northern Illinois University and the Face of Evil

A headline on page 1 of today’s Chicago Tribune read: "Foolproof gun laws elude states". A headline on page 10 read: "Angry parents push for gun control". But gun control was not the problem at Northern Illinois University. While the gunman bought two guns legally, he bought two others illegally. Even outlawing guns would not prevent tragedies such as this – unless we are willing to search every house and take every gun away from every person.

Another headline on page 10 read: "Schools more proactive on mental health". There is a scary thought: University administrators deciding who is mentally healthy enough to attend college.

While it is easy for me to say this since my children were not at NIU, it is still true: A free society involves risks. It is impossible to avoid all risks, and any attempt to reduce risks too far will result in society that is not free. But even life in unfree societies involves risks. They cannot be avoided.

Basically, the tragedy at NIU was not about gun control or mental health or anything like that. It was about evil. The person who shot those students was evil.

We are not supposed to talk about people being good or bad. We are supposed to say what they did was bad, not that they themselves are bad. That is true in many cases. But not this one.

What happened at NIU was not a result of a good person doing a bad thing. It was the result of a bad person doing a bad thing. Some people may find that view hard to accept, but it is the only way what happened at NIU can be understood. It was an evil act of an evil person.

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* This was the headline in the Chicagoland Final print edition.

The High Cost of College

A week ago Margaret Spellman, U.S. Secretary of Education, said that colleges and universities need to be more affordable and that they need to better show families what they are getting for their money.

A couple of comments: First, in order to make college more affordable, Secretary Spellman’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education recommended an increase in federal Pell Grants, the major aid program for needy students. While I understand the hopeful spirit behind the recommendation, I doubt it will help. It seems likely that increasing the amount of money available to poorer students will not make college more affordable but will merely allow colleges to raise tuitions even higher than they are now.

Like any seller, colleges charge as much as the market will bear. If students, and their parents, have more money, whether because they have more of their own money or because they are getting more grants (and loans), colleges can, and will, increase their prices. In other words, it is entirely possible that, instead of making college more affordable, making more grants and loans available to needy students will just mean that most students will just graduate from college with even more debts than they have now because the colleges will raise tuition in response to the increase in grants and loans.

Second, I agree wholeheartedly that we need to get more information about colleges into the hands of students and their patents. Secretary Spellman said evaluating colleges should be as easy as deciding what car to buy. I agree. What we need is the college equivalent of the Consumer Reports April Auto issue. However, we should not expect the colleges and universities to provide the information for such comparisons. Perhaps the government can get some information, such as graduation rates and the number of students in a class. (They can use their hammer: If you want our money, give us this information.)

However, most of the information and the work is going to have to come from independent groups. US News & World Report is doing some of this, as are other publications, but we need a lot of more of it.

Finally, in evaluating colleges, both students and parents need to remember it is not where you go, it is what you do with it. According to a report in The Wall Street Journal a couple of weeks ago (September 18, 2006; subscription required):

"Most CEOs of the biggest corporations didn’t attend Ivy League or other highly selective colleges. They went to state universities, big and small, or to well-known private colleges."

The high cost of college is a problem that is not going to be solved any time soon. What I have written is not a solution. Instead, I have tried to mention some things to keep in mind when looking at solutions other people suggest – because the only thing worse than today’s high cost of college is a "solution" that only makes the problem worse.

Six of One, Plus One More

I have been away for a while. Instead of something long, here are some thoughts on things that have come up in the last two weeks.

The Cost of Going to College

On Thursday Mayor Richard Daley (of Chicago, of course) suggested high school should be expanded to five years, so college could be shortened to three years. He suggested it as an idea to help parents with college costs. It would be one more year of low-cost high school and one less year of high-cost college.

While a fifth year of high school is not the answer, college costs are a problem. College costs too much. There is no good reason for it. Colleges are not well run from a financial point of view, but they do not have to be. The good ones can get all the kids they want no matter how much they charge.

It is like a really sick person. He or she will pay just about anything to get well. When it comes to college, there are lots of parents who are willing to pay anything to get the best college for their child. And if they are willing to pay almost anything, the colleges will charge it.

We are not going to get college costs down until we introduce some market discipline into college tuition. Once enough people refuse to pay what colleges charge, colleges will lower their tuition. Until then, it is not going to happen.

Iraq – Comment #1

Why is it that just about the only time the media reports on our soldiers in Iraq (or Afghanistan), it is about claims of abuse or violating rules?

I was at least happy to see the Chicago Tribune ran an article about a Marine investigator who said that what the Marines did at Haditha* appeared to have been appropriate. But even here, the article is about an alleged massacre and violation of rules. Where are the articles about the tough fights and the heroic efforts, the good deeds and the brave soldiers? They are happening, but the news media is not reporting them.

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* This is the incident Democratic Representative John Murtha called a cold-blooded massacre before the investigation was complete – but don’t worry, Representative Murtha supports the troops, even if he does think a bunch of them are war criminals.

Katrina – It’s Really Rudy’s Fault

I see Mayor Ray Nagin of New Orleans has said, in response to a question about the slow efforts to rebuild New Orleans, "You guys in New York can’t get a hole in the ground fixed and it’s five years later. So let’s be fair."

Actually, Nagin does hit on a point (unintentionally, of course) that I have not seen mentioned in all of the finger pointing over the response to Hurricane Katrina. One of the people I think needs to be blamed for the poor response to Katrina is Rudy Giuliani.

I think FEMA and the rest of the federal government were misled by Rudy Giuliani’s response to September 11. Rudy Giuliani led the feds to think local government could actually be competent in an emergency and could actually do something to help its citizens. Ray Nagin has reminded us how wrong that is. If you really want to see what local government can do in an emergency, don’t look at Rudy Giuliani, look at New Orleans.

It All Makes Sense If You Think George Bush Is the Biggest Terrorist

The anti-war Democrats (which, it seems, are most of them) have had a lot to cheer about lately. First, Ned Lamont beat Joe Lieberman. Then a federal judge in Detroit, Anna Diggs Taylor, issued an opinion holding Bush’s Terrorist Surveillance Program, which monitors phone calls and Internet activity between suspected foreign terrorists and people in the United States, was not only illegal under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 but also unconstitutional. Her opinion, including such carefully restrained statements as "there are no hereditary Kings in the America," read more like a Teddy Kennedy campaign speech than a judicial opinion.

And this is the problem. If you are going to let judges decide questions like this, it has to be on the basis that they are making their decision on the law, not just their political opinions or their politicized view of the law.

If judges’ decisions reflect nothing more than their politics, if judges’ opinions are nothing more than campaign speeches in black robes, then why is a judge’s decision any better or deserving of respect than a President’s or a legislator’s. Presidents and legislators take oaths to defend the Constitution, too. Why should we defer to judges, if they are nothing more than politicians appointed for life?

At some point I hope to come back to this, but for now let me just raise the question.

Danny Davis Finds an Interesting Travel Agent

I see Representative Danny Davis of Chicago went on a junket to Sri Lanka last year that was paid for by the Tamil Tigers, a terrorist group. As the Chicago Tribune asked on Friday, "What, was Hezbollah’s junket filled?"

In any case, how long do you think it will be before the liberals who criticized Tom DeLay say something about Representative Davis? I am not sure, but I think the answer involves the amount of time it takes light to travel to the edge of the universe – and come back.

Iraq – Comment #2

With all of the articles in the newspapers and claims by politicians that our soldiers are committing atrocities and deliberately killing civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is amazing to me that any of the members of our Armed Forces are reenlisting. Except for a very few, these are good people doing a tough job while being criticized by a bunch of people who have no idea what they are talking about.

Vacation Plans

I am going on vacation in October this year. Next year, however, we will have to go in September. I’m going to be busy in October.