Anya Kamenetz’s shot at my Cato colleague Neal McCluskey is….well….I don’ t really know what it is.

She seems to disagree with him. On something. I’m just not exactly sure what it is. Health insurance? Is tied to aid for higher education? And something about corporate welfare? What the hell? Has anyone seen my pants?

McCluskey responds here.

From what I gather from Kamenetz’s mess of a critique, the key concept she can’t seem to wrap her brain around is that government aid drives up the cost of higher education, by creating a seller’s market. With everyone and his brother now going to college, and with a good deal of them spending someone else’s money to do it, there’s no consumer pressure on colleges to keep costs down (say, maybe it is a little like health care!).

It also diminishes the value of a bachelor’s degree by flooding the job market with BAs. Moreover, the glut of college applicants with “free money,” many of whom are underprepared, forces colleges to teach to the lowest common denominator, robbing more prepared students of more rigorous curriculum.

Kamenetz pretends to recognize all of this. Yet her solution is — you guessed it — more government aid! Only in the form of grants, instead of loans, which she says are burdening young people with debt. Of course, grants afford even less accountability than loans. Which means colleges will be even less suceptible to market pressures. Kamenetz’s solution to this is of course more government control over private ed. Which means she basically wants to make higher ed more like the public schools. Take all that nasty “profit” out of it. Sweet. Because the public schools are doing swell (if only they had more money!). She then cites Australia has a country we ought to emulate, I guess because everyone is rushing to Australia for the prestige that comes with a U. Melbourne degree.

Frankly, I haven’t the slightest idea why Kamenetz invokes the “46 million Americans with no health insurance!” (exclamation point, hers) red herring. Maybe she just wants us to know that she’s into, like, other important liberal (sorry, “progressive”) causes and stuff. The kind that affect people other than privileged white kids. Also, income inquality sux, man. No logo! Free Mumia! And down with down with government.

That someone with so lacking critical thinking skills is oft cited as the “voice” of the under-30 crowd is about as apt a critique of what government meddling has done to higher education and Kemenetz’s generation as just about anything I could write. You want college kids to graduate with less debt? Cut federal grants and subsidized loans. Let private organizations and charities fund scholarships for qualified low-income kids. And let the colleges fight it out for the natural market of qualified, prepared, college-bound types. Tuition costs will drop, the quality of higher ed will improve, and a degree will be worth more than the paper it’s printed on.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 20th, 2006 at 10:11 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.