I write this letter in response to Wayne Bredtze’s letter “Government Can Be Good” in last week’s issue. At first glance federal loans and grants indeed do seem like an essential part of higher education, though upon closer inspection they are quite counter productive. Federal aid is one of the main causes of the sky rocketing tuition costs over the last several years. Our parents’ and grandparents’ generation could afford a college education working hard during the summers and maybe a part time job during the year without taking out mounds of debt that they would spend several years paying off. In this day and age with ever-expanding federal aid this would nearly be impossible.
I don’t believe anybody would argue that the quality of higher education has increased in relation to cost. Federal grants distort the market by creating excessive demand for higher education without taking any steps to increase supply. With a basic understanding of supply and demand we know that this will lead to increased tuition costs.
Some argue that “everyone” should go to college. While a higher education is a great thing, this argument is simply not true. With that mentality shouldn’t everyone have their MBA or Ph.D?
Institutions know that the government will continue to subsidize students through loans and grants no matter how high prices get and how inefficiently they run. At the end of the day we must think of it simply; is it right to tax someone who may have never had the opportunity to go to college, in order to pay for someone else to go.
Kyle Rasmussen
This article appears in Sep 24-30, 2009.
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Kyle
In a way you are denying the existence of “Society” – denying the notion of the collective good.
“At the end of the day we must think of it simply; is it right to tax someone who may have never had the opportunity to go to college, in order to pay for someone else to go”… yes, it’s nice to put things simply at the end of the day but unfortunately Life is not simple. I could ask for instance if it is “right” for the government to tax my ass off to fund a war that benefitted no one but Bush’s friends (I am of course referring to the Iraq war, Bush’s Folly, Rush’s Great Lie). Similarly, I’m not particularly pleased with the 20,000 nuclear warhead stockpile of my taxes (and I mean “me” synecdochically of course)funded.
There are hundreds of examples of where we pay taxes for stuff we don’t agree with and don’t benefit from… it’s called “Society” or “Civilization” – now, as to Education… I’m not impressed with the standard of product that comes from American Universities, but I argue that in general, it is better for all of us (even those who never make it to university!) to have a stock of educated (albeit not particularly well educated) people than not. And so, for the good of all, we pay
Methinks the question, or comment, was that federal aid drives the cost of higher education up, and the quality down. Of course, Mr. Shortall ignores that with his rant about Bush’s war which profited people like Pelosi, Soros, the Johnsons, etc. Guess they could somehow be called “Bush’s friends”.
And lets ignore the fact that the 20,000 nuclear warheads are now down to about 12,000.
Course, we need more “educated idiots” at taxpayers expense. Never know when one party might need them to vote.