The rating system, which the president called for in a speech last year and is under development, would compare schools on factors like how many of their students graduate, how much debt their students accumulate and how much money their students earn after graduating. Ultimately, Mr. Obama wants Congress to agree to use the ratings to allocate the billions in federal student loans and grants. Schools that earn a high rating on the government’s list would be able to offer more student aid than schools at the bottom.
Many college presidents said a rating system like the one being considered at the White House would elevate financial concerns above academic ones and would punish schools with liberal arts programs and large numbers of students who major in programs like theater arts, social work or education, disciplines that do not typically lead to lucrative jobs.This controversy will get derailed into the usual complaints that education is too ineffable to judge accurately, but that misses the point. The ratings system is designed to help people decide whether the federal government should subsidize tuition. No matter how ineffably fabulous a basket-weaving studies degree is (and it would appeal to me enormously), the federal subsidies should be tied in some rational way to an increased ability to earn a living. Cold and bourgeois of me, I know. But when you look at a university's rating in that light, it's no mystery how to craft it, and no need to confuse the result with whatever personal views one may hold about the abstract value of education.
How did we get to the point where we worry that a system for deciding how to allocate federal subsidies elevated financial concerns inappropriately?
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How did we get to the point where we worry that a system for deciding how to allocate federal subsidies elevated financial concerns inappropriately?
By operating from the false premise that there should be Federal subsidies. James Madison had the right of it on the question of Federally-funded relief for Haitian revolution refugees: Mr. Madison wished to relieve the sufferers, but was afraid of establishing a dangerous precedent, which might hereafter be perverted to the countenance of purposes very different from those of charity. He acknowledged, for his own part, that he could not undertake to lay his finger on that article in the Federal Constitution which granted a right of Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents. (Annals of Congress, House of Representatives, 3rd Congress, 1st Session.)
Aside from that, the government has no business in creating a school ratings system and then using its creation as an excuse for spending our money. And your basket-weaving studies degree? Any Department of Education that's capable of stripping a student of his due process rights and allowing a sex abuse "trial" to be repeated as many times as necessary to get the accuser the outcome she wants is capable of correcting moral equivalence (to say nothing of economic equivalence) misapprehensions between basket-weaving and electronic engineering.
federal subsidies should be tied in some rational way to an increased ability to earn a living.
You have just cited the only valid argument for implementing "Common Core," which is a Bismarck-ian vocational-school program.
However, the purpose of an authentic education is NOT earnings. See Newman, J.H. "Idea of a University."
Whatever authentic education is, I'm not persuaded it belongs in the federal budget. No one loves knowledge for its own sake more than me, but it's no one's business but mine--or my most intimate loved ones--to see that I acquire it.
In a rational evaluation, a society should subsidise only what it thinks will benefit itself. Those will be evil things in evil societies, perhaps.
Good societies might subsidise targeted improvements. We used to regard HS civics classes as an example of that. I could still be on board there.
There is no reason why you shouldn't be educated vocationally as well as authentically (as Dad29 is putting it). The two functions are not at cross-purposes: to fully pursue a virtuous and flourishing life, you need both the ability to make a living and the ability to understand how to fit that work into a broader life.
Whose job is it to pay for that education? Actually, my sense runs opposite Tex's: the business of making money is a part of household management, and belongs to the household. If the government or broader society chooses to support what is a wholly private benefit, it is something like an act of charity.
The building of a virtuous citizenry, however, is something in which we all have an interest. I don't care if you go to plumbing school or art school, but I do care that you learn at some point to do your duty, keep your word, respect beauty and honor those who merit it. That's all of our business, in a way that vocational education is not.
College is the place to learn to do your duty and keep your word? People need federally subsidized student loans to do that?
What I said was that it was more obviously a public concern.
One place you might learn it is at West Point, which is a federally funded college. (Or the Marine Corps, which is also a federally funded education in a real sense!)
I could get behind federal subsidies for student loans for West Point--not because I expect it to do for students what their parents did not, but because that culture will surely help students learn something that will make them a benefit rather than a burden to society someday. Unlike, say, an expensive degree in Studies Studies.
But I really resist the notion that the average federally subsidized program is likely to produce graduates to do their duty and keep their word.
Well, the conclusion is that only such programs could merit public support.
"I could get behind federal subsidies for student loans for West Point--not because I expect it to do for students what their parents did not, but because that culture will surely help students learn something that will make them a benefit rather than a burden to society someday. Unlike, say, an expensive degree in Studies Studies."
West Point and the other federal service academies don't charge tuition anyway; once the cadets graduate and are commissioned, they incur a 5-year service commitment as an officer.
We can certainly agree that almost ANY Gummint subsidy desperately needs re-examination, and can begin with the proposition that the Feds are empowered only to deliver the mail and defend the shores.
That's where the debate should start.
On the other hand, the several States can subsidize whatever they wish to, per the long-dead 9th/10th Amendments.
Matt--I didn't know that, but it suits me even better. The subsidy isn't about a generalized federal brief to improve citizens, but to confer a training for a purpose specifically within the purview of the national government.
Dad29--right there with ya, with a few more exceptions like federal courts (for much more limited purposes that they serve today).
almost ANY Gummint subsidy desperately needs re-examination
Couple things: no "almost;" ANY Gummint subsidy desperately needs re-examination. Second, on that reexamination bit, Jimmy Carter (!) showed the way: zero-based budget every subsidy as part of that examination.
the Feds are empowered only to deliver the mail and defend the shores.
Nothing in the Constitution about the Feds being empowered to deliver the mail. And the government's mail delivery is...weak...as is typical of anything that's not the government's business that it arrogates to itself, anyway.
Eric Hines
"I didn't know that, but it suits me even better."
Glad to know that I wasn't just repeating common knowledge there. I believe the tagline among cadets at the USAF Academy while I was there was something like, "a free $200,000 education -- shoved up your tuckus one nickel at a time." :)
"Nothing in the Constitution about the Feds being empowered to deliver the mail."
Actually, it pretty much is -- the Postal Clause (Article 1, Section 8, Clause 7), empowering Congress to "establish Post Offices and Post Roads." Although I'll grant there's room for debate on how much collection, delivery, carriage, etc. that actually includes.
Establishing them and running them are two different things, as was well-known even those 225-ish years ago. The government's monopoly on mail delivery was holed as a practical matter when private enterprise was "allowed" to compete on delivery for everything but first class (and, I think, one or two other types, but those escape me).
It's also flawed by the enforced monopoly of the use to which the government's (not your) mailbox is allowed to be put--only for that mail--vs the use to which the post roads are allowed to be put--most assuredly not exclusively for mail delivery.
The legal status of the monopoly has been flawed from the jump. Say I.
Eric Hines
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