The Wall Street Journal has launched a campaign to convince the American people that
increased government aid, especially under Obama, has caused the incredible
rise in the cost of going to college. In
the same day, the false notion that increased government support of education
is the real cause of the rise in tuition appeared twice in the Journal: in an
editorial
and in an Op/Ed interview of the director of the Center for College
Affordability and Productivity (CCAP), which is funded by Project Liberty, a
nonprofit organization with neither website nor mission statement.
It’s as ridiculously wrong as saying that blame for the real
estate bubble belongs not on the banks that made bad loans, nor the investment
bankers who sold these loans knowing they were suspect, but on the Clinton
administration for making more money available for mortgage loans. In the case
of the real estate bubble, the Wall
Street Journal analysis was faulty because no federal official approved or
suborned “liar loans” or selling bad paper to unknowing investors.
In the case of the high cost of college, the Journal and its columnists are trying to
rewrite the facts of history. The federal government has made more money
available—in loans more than grants—because the cost of college has
skyrocketed. The high costs caused government to act.
I wonder of the Journal
editorial staff believes that a fish makes a bear dip its paws in the river and
eat it. Or that Stalin forced Hitler to invade the Soviet Union.
CCAP director, conservative economics professor Richard
Vedder, does have a good point when he chides colleges for building expensive
luxury dorms and climbing walls. I have a feeling that most parents would
rather see their children in more modest surroundings—perhaps with fewer
distractions from studying—and pay less in tuition and housing for their
precious scholars. Keep in mind, though, that these colleges are not building these
Taj Ma-Dorms for the poor and middle class who need to borrow, but for wealthy and
upper middle class students.
Luxury amenities are trivial, though. By far the biggest
reason college costs have gone up is because states are contributing less to
them. As the states have gradually cut
back on support for education since the beginning of the Reagan era, college
costs have ballooned beyond general inflation.
Even while the Journal
editorial board blames the Obama administration, which began in 2009, for the
30-year rise in college costs, it finds room to denigrate intellectuals and the
academic world. They do it in a transitional paragraph about the potential
impact of the new college costs standards that President Obama wants to
implement (FYI, I don’t think the standards are a good idea, but I disagree
with the Journal’s reasoning):
“And
we concede that this latest Obama regulatory onslaught couldn't happen to a
nicer bunch than the university elite who did so much to elect him. But while
shifting control of universities from lefty professors to the U.S. Department
of Education may seem like a transition between six and a half-dozen, it is
not.”
I’m willing to believe the Journal when it implies or states that left-wingers people
academia. Certainly virtually every scientist has liberal or left-wing views
favoring evolution and human-caused global warming. Moreover academic studies in
economics and sociology routinely disprove the myths espoused in the Wall Street Journal. Yes, there has been
an enormous net transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the
wealthy over the past 35 years though tax policy, privatization and
union-bashing. Yes, a poor child is less likely to rise to middle class or
wealthy status in the United States than virtually any other developed country.
No, raising taxes on the wealthy does not destroy jobs, it creates jobs.
So many of the principles of the free market that the Wall Street Journal and its contributors
promulgate have been proven false by serious objective academic research. It’s
no wonder the Journal and other mass
media outlets actively mock and scorn academics whenever they get a chance, be
it snide side remarks in editorials or the many geekish, snobbish and
ineffectual academics in mass entertainment like ”Frasier” and “The Big Bang
Theory.” The believers in the religion of the unregulated free market don’t
have the facts on their side, but they do control most of the ink.
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