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bubble !!
college !!
debt !!
Education !!
education bubble !!
fafsa !!
free lunch !!
gi bill !!
government !!
inflation !!
jobs !!
student aid !!
surplus !!
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Author's Note: This blog post was originally published in my previous (and less successful, and now defunct) blog in 2010 while I was still living in the United States. Though the data, where applicable, might be a little dated and the references are US-based, the main points are still relevant today not just in the United States, but in Korea, too.
A college education seems to be one of those things that most everyone wants. Parents want it for their kids, employers want to hire those who have had it, a lot of college students think that it ought to be a right, and politicians extol its virtues.
Getting a college education is indeed a good thing. In my own experience, I can tell you that it has helped me to understand complex ideas and philosophies and especially because I studied the social sciences, going to college has helped me to reaffirm some of my own beliefs, changed some of my opinions and has also helped me to understand ideas that I do not agree with. My college life, with everything else that came along with it, was a wonderful journey and it’s a memory that I will forever cherish, even if I do not remember some of those nights.
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Now there are several government aid programs that allow students to pursue higher education.
As for the GI Bill, it allows enlisted men and women in the armed forces to pursue an undergraduate or graduate degree at a college or university, a cooperative training program, or an accredited independent study program leading to a degree. It is the least that the men and women of uniform who have fought for their country deserve. On the other hand, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) ensures that all eligible individuals can benefit from federally funded financial assistance for education beyond high school. The stated intentions of those two services are difficult, if not impossible, to argue against.
Now that I have gotten all the niceties out of the way, it’s time to rip them a new one.
The GI Bill was established in 1944 and it was the first of the federal government’s many forays into higher education. It wasn’t until 1958 that the National Defense Education Act, which was the precursor to the Federal Perkins Loan program, the very first federal student aid program for low-income students, was passed by Congress. Before 1944, politicians in the federal government did nothing to subsidize or regulate education.
Conventional wisdom dictates that the GI Bill and FAFSA (and all of its successors) allowed countless students to afford a college education; and had those services not been enacted by Congress, the United States would be lagging far behind other industrialized nations and could not have achieved the rate of economic growth that it has experienced since the end of the Second World War. What we have to ask ourselves is whether or not that conventional wisdom is actually correct.
The philosophical argument that is given in support of getting a college education is education itself. Education is indeed a journey that begins at birth and ends with death and the more educated people are, the better off everyone’s lives is.
But what is the practical argument that is given in support of getting a college education? I can think of only one – to be eligible for a better paying job. For that reason, many people who support the subsidization of education claim that the GI Bill and FAFSA have allowed for many people to escape from the drudgery of manual labor to become doctors, engineers, accountants, lawyers, etc.
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Don’t get me wrong; I’m certainly not against higher education. However, the problem is that many people seem to make the mistake of judging the GI Bill and FAFSA to be good because of their stated intentions rather than their results.
If the only argument in support of the GI Bill or FAFSA is the philosophical one, then my argument would be merely philosophical as well – as much as I agree that having an educated populace is a desirable thing, I do not think that the government subsidizing education is the best way to approach that goal. The thing about philosophy, however, is that it is something that people are free to, and do, disagree with ad infinitum. However, once people try to make the practical argument in support of the GI Bill or FAFSA, then my argument becomes more fundamental – has it worked?
Case in point, how many new college graduates do you know who deliver pizzas or bag groceries or sell insurance over the phone or bartend or work entry-level jobs of one kind or another? In other words, how many new college graduates do you know who work jobs that really do not need 4-year degrees to accomplish? How many college graduates do you know who absolutely needed the on-the-job training that they received from their employers because the four years that they took to major in English or Music Education or Communication or Political Science did not teach them anything about escrow? Or how many times have you personally not been able to apply for a job because one of the job requirements is work experience and that seems to be the same requirement that all other businesses require? I know many such people and considering my readership, chances are that you are one of them.
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Considering the fact that less than 30% of college graduates get into professions that are related to their college majors, basically, by subsidizing college education as heavily as it has done for the last several decades, the federal government has turned the college degree from a mark of important personal accomplishment into just another credential that doesn’t necessarily mean anything except that the student managed to accumulate enough college credits.
It’s true that many employers now require a college degree as a job qualification. But how many of those jobs actually require particular skills or knowledge that an applicant could have acquired only in college? The vast majority of the time, the college degree requirement is generally used by an employer as a screening device to keep from having to interview applicants with only a high school diploma or less even for the most mundane jobs because of the perception that those with only high school diplomas are less reliable than those with college degrees. Then the question that arises is that if a college degree for the most part acts as merely a screening device rather than a sign of acquired knowledge that is in need, is that expensive college degree worth it?
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But what does the cost matter to the recipient of government aid to go to school? He/She is not paying for his/her education; not directly out-of-pocket anyway. It matters for two reasons.
Firstly, nothing is for free. Just because the recipient of the GI Bill is not paying for his/her education doesn’t mean that taxpayers aren’t paying for it. And is it right for taxpayers to be forced to pay for an education whose value is not worth the price tag?
Secondly, it matters because after the government began meddling in education, it has arguably cheapened education. The GI Bill was signed into law in 1944 in order to reward the millions of soldiers who were forcibly drafted into the Second World War. Originally, it was not meant to go on after all of the military personnel who participated in the Second World War who could take advantage of the program had chosen to do so. It was supposed to be a temporary thing but then came the Korean War, the Vietnam War and so on and so forth and so not only did the GI Bill remain, it also got a post-9/11 makeover.
As Dr. Milton Friedman once said, it just goes to show you that there really is nothing as permanent as a temporary government program.
As Dr. Milton Friedman once said, it just goes to show you that there really is nothing as permanent as a temporary government program.
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However, people do argue that government needs to subsidize education because it is so incredibly expensive. “Think of the poor,” they say. But they are not asking the important question – why is college education so expensive?
Since 1985, overall inflation in the US has been about 107.05% whereas the inflation rate for college during the same timeline has been around 466.8%.
When something makes no mathematical sense, it’s usually because government is involved. If you are a recipient of the GI Bill’s benefits or that of FAFSA loans, think of how readily the bursar at whatever university or college or accredited school you attended accepted those checks without ever asking you a lot of questions. And why wouldn’t they? Those checks are never going to bounce. After all, it is guaranteed money by the government – it’s free money, money that has either been taxed or practically freshly printed, or in some cases, yet to be printed.
When there is subsidization and guaranteed money involved, two things happen.
Firstly, subsidization inevitably always leads to overproduction. Just ask the Iowa corn farmers.
Secondly, guaranteed money inevitably always leads to higher prices. If I can charge any price I want for the product that I am selling and I am guaranteed to be paid no matter what, what reason would I have to not increase my price? The same logic applies to colleges. If the GI Bill allows you to go college for up to $100,000 or if FAFSA allows you to borrow up to $100,000 in student loans, then like magic, the cost of going to college goes up to $100,000. Never mind the fact that the value of your education might not be worth $100,000.
By subsidizing education, the government has transformed the college experience from being one of expanding the mind to becoming a mere credential to get an entry-level job for which people are mostly over-educated. It has raised the cost of going to college so much so that very few people can now go to college without the GI Bill or FAFSA thus creating a vicious never-ending cycle. And it has allowed the marketplace to be so saturated with college degree holders that despite the fact that so many young people are in serious debt, many young people can only find work in entry-level jobs that pay peanuts, which in turn compels people to support higher minimum wage rates, which in turn exacerbates things even further. It's a vicious cycle.
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So the next time you hear someone say that education ought to be a right that the government ought to help pay partially for or fund outright, people ought to be reminded to think of one very important thing – that famous road to hell that has been paved with the purest of good intentions.
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