Against Free College

All things being equal, having a college degree is better than not having one. Degree holders make more money and have an easier time finding a job compared to non-degree holders. The difference between just a high school degree and a college degree is over $400 a week (about $20,000/year!). And it's an asset that needs no maintenance and can never be taken away from you. With such large benefits, why shouldn't college be free?

(Of course it's not "free." People on both sides of this argument know it's not "free." But "subsidized so much that the price consumers pay is at or near zero" is too damn long. So I'm calling it "free" for short.)

Free college is not smart policy. For one, it's not entirely clear college debt is a problem. Average debt may be high, but it's driven largely by graduate students. Median balance is just $8,500. And that's only the people who have any debt at all. (To say nothing of subsidization causing the higher tuition in the first place.) Free college is a solution looking for a problem.

But even if this wasn't true, those large internalized benefits make the argument for free college so hard: why shouldn't you pay for something you benefit so much from? Why should other people be forced to shoulder the cost of something that benefits just you? Any externalized benefits to college degrees (slightly lower rates of crimes, for example) are tiny compared to the internalized benefits. With a tertiary enrollment rate of about 90%, any additional incentive would be wasteful. Clearly, further subsidization isn't necessary to encourage people to go to college. If anything, the U.S.'s attendance rate it too high already.

If the benefits are internalized, the costs should be as well. College is the first time in most people's lives where they get to truly customize their education. This isn't merely choosing this or that AP class. This is choosing the most defining aspect of your degree: your major. It determines not only a large share of what classes you'll take, but also the skills you develop and what it says about you as a person. It's no wonder that salaries vary widely by major.

That customization derails another common pro-free college argument: people pay for their own education through the tax system. Higher income means more taxes owed, especially with progressive taxes. It's sort of like a loan. But this is an incredibly sloppy loan system, with cost nonsensically removed from payment.

Many forms of compensation are not taxable. Jobs differ with varying levels of fulfillment, work hours, flexibility, stress, prestige, and so on. Desirable jobs will have many applicants and undesirable jobs will have few. Differences in wages compensate for differences in working conditions and the fun jobs get a modest paycheck. Yet those favorable conditions cannot be taxed (how would one possibly tax the joy of being a musician?). Some simply won't pay for their education through the tax system. They will learn while others work.

College graduates don't have to be starving artists for this play out. You can live a good life and force strangers to pay for your education without having to pay for the education of strangers. It takes a lot of money in the U.S. to enter the realm of net-tax payer. Only the wealthiest Americans pay any net tax at all. Maybe there's a tax plan out there that will ensure proper payment (and that's a big maybe), but it's unlikely to be fairer than simply paying tuition.

There are already many paths in place to address the big advantage of free college: educational mobility. Increase funding for Pell grants and other programs which target low-income students. There will be more schools like Berea College which charges zero tuition and focuses enrollment on the financially strained. Payments could only be due starting the first few years after college, when incomes are lowest and most in flux. Improve secondary education and encourage trade schools so fewer students drop out (dropouts are most likely to default). We are awash in better solutions.

Not only are these alternatives less costly and more just than free college, they're also far smarter.

How Libertarians Are Different

Tennessee Senate approved a bill allowing teachers to present challenges to evolution and climate change theories.

Conservatives: It is absurd to deny teachers and opportunity to encourage critical thinking skills.

Liberals: It is absurd that we would allow teachers to present definitely false material as credible.

Libertarians: It is absurd our only option is to choose between these two extremes.

At the heart of all of the quality and content discussions of education should be the virtual monopoly on secondary and primary education the government has. This discussion is not evidence for one or the other side; it is evidence for why we need more direct competition between schools because what's optimal depends on what families want to prioritize. The best option is the middle ground:

Yes, we should take every opportunity we can to develop critical thinking skills. If students get excited about evolution v. creationism, then the teacher should leverage that interest into instruction.

And yes, we don't want nonsense to crowd out good ideas, especially ideas which are hard to understand or have a lot of interesting applications.

Should we focus on breadth (critical thinking skills) or depth (deep understanding or an important subject)? The answer should be up to you, not politicians.

In Praise of AP Credit

Prof. Michael Mendillo doesn't like that high school AP classes can count to general requirements for college.

Lost to these nonscience students is an exposure to cutting-edge science and the methods of science taught by professors active on a daily basis in their exploration of nature. In how many AP classes in high school does the physics instructor say, "At the last American Physical Society meeting, one of my students presented a paper on this very topic"? Or, in an astronomy class, "My upcoming observations using the Hubble Space Telescope will address this dark-energy issue"? Identical scenarios exist, of course, for science and engineering students who miss out on university-level introductions to the humanities and social sciences taught by active scholars in those areas.

From what I remember of all of my introductory courses in college, there was very little "cutting edge" research discussed. And thank goodness for that! It's an introductory course. When I teaching introductory econ I rarely mention any new research and if I do, it is illustrative of some larger point (say an empirical paper on a price control). You don't want to overwhelm the students and, precisely because it's advanced, they probably won't understand it anyway. Imagine having a long discussion of the Higgs boson in Physics 101 when you're still trying to wrap your mind around Newton's Three Laws of Motion.

OK so you stick to offhanded references, not in depth discussions. Big deal. Admittedly, mentioning something cutting edge is cool to do and it can get your students interested in the introductory topic or illustrate where the puzzles in your discipline remain. Disallowing AP credit for college would generate these additional benefits but they are small. They come at a cost of the student not taking a course that's completely new or paying tuition for the semester that can no longer be avoided.

I had a student in introductory econ who didn't have to take my class: he had AP credit. He took it anyway since he'll be taking future courses from me, but I can't help but think that it was largely a waste of his time.

The Future of Higher Education

In about an hour, I'll have my first class as an assistant professor. Lo and behold I stumble upon two articles about the future of high education. The first is this article by econ prof James Miller who warns that increasing technological sophistication will eventually render flesh-and-blood professors obsolete. He advises new faculty to "get out while you can."

In contrast, the Chronicle of Higher Education reports a study of community college students who use online courses. They, in general, do worse than ones who go to a physical class. I can think of several sources of selection bias (those more likely to use online courses have less time to study, for example) but the basic theory that a lack of structure and community inhibit performance is believable as well.

I don't know what the future will hold but, in general, when technology makes things easier people favor to make up that difference with more leisure, not productivity.
Still, there's no doubt that, survive or die, online learning will be a critical skill for educators.

Interestingly, if both of these articles are to be taken seriously then this spells danger for the professors at the country's best schools since such are most likely to have (a) the funds needed to purchase the inevitably expensive super computers to run these automated classes and (b) the driven students who are the best position to take advantage of virtual learning. One must wonder how employers will read letters of recommendations from PROFESSORBOT-5000.

Local Taxes Should Go To Flower Gardens Instead of Schools

I got into a short discussion the other day about taxes to fund local schools. A friend complained about individuals who resent paying such taxes when they have no kids. "Well, shouldn't they resent that?" I asked. "No," he said and argued that education is a public good. We all benefit when more people go to school.

There's a long list of things wrong about this claim.

1. A public good does not mean "good for the public." It has a very specific definition: a good where you usually can't exclude people from using and each additional user doesn't diminish the value of the good. National defense is an example. Education is not.


2. Even if there are some social benefits to education, the gains from education are largely internalized. If local funding for schools dried up tomorrow, schooling would not cease, not by a long shot. Parents would pay for their kids to go to school. They already do, even though they are also paying for it through taxes. Schooling's so important, they pay for it twice.


3. Private education is not strictly for the wealthy. In the poorest parts of the world, the poorest people pay to send their kids to privately run schools.


4. Even if the social value of education is high, it also had a negative value. Education (especially higher education) is great for demonstrating intelligence, hard work, and other qualities difficult to observe. Having a high school or college degree shows employers you have those qualities. But when everyone has a degree, then employers can't tell the smarties from the stoners. A dumb person's degree pollutes the value of a smart person's degree.


5. Somewhat related, the whole notion of tying education to where you live is bizarre and a recipe for ineptness. Imagine that all haircuts were free, that barbers were paid with local taxes, that legal restrictions made it difficult/impossible to establish new barber shops, and that you could only get your hair cut within a 5 mile radius of where you work.

It is far more logical to send those taxes dollars to flower gardens. These gardens are a public good (it's impractical to exclude people from viewing them, assuming they are in the front yard or other public space; and me enjoying the flowers doesn't prevent you from enjoying them...unless you pick them). The social benefits are high (the person maintaining them receives just a small fraction of the total enjoyment they create), the social costs are low (all I can think of is allergies, and that's a very small addition considering what's already there). And since it's non-excludable, you can't tie a community to a pre-approved set of flower gardens.

Tuition Fee Riots

Protests against rising tuition fees in London turned violent today with massive property damage as angry students swarmed the street. I first heard this story on CNN and saw it again on the BBC. Both networks kept citing that the fees would triple, which is a very dramatic increase. But no one said how exactly how much fees were increase which told me it wasn't as high as your gt reaction might believe.

I found the actual increase (notably via the BBC...apparently it's worth writing in an article but not worth saying in a newscast). For one, they are not increasing the fees per se, but increasing the cap universities can charge. It will grow from $4,830 to $14,500 (3,000 pounds to 9,000 pounds, using current exchange rates). So yes, a $10,000 increase is quite a hunk of money. But the average in state tuition in the US is $10,674. Out-of-state tuition for public universities is much higher. And that was in 2004; average tuition is certainly higher today for the same reason the Brits kicked up fees: governments are strapped for cash.

In other words, tuition rose not because the Tories, et al are picking on students but because students have been underpaying for a long time. That's why even in the wake of the violence, the Tories aren't backing down.

Drug Legalization and the Urban Poor

Gary Becker calls for better schools and better teachers, writing

The best longer-term solution to the [income] inequality problem is to reduce the fraction of Americans who dropout of high school...This drop out fraction has been stagnant for the past several decades at about 30% for males, and a somewhat lower but still high percent for females. This is almost surely the highest fraction of high school dropouts among rich countries, and is heavily concentrated among children from African-Americans and Hispanic families. In large cities, often less than half of all the children enrolled in public schools end up graduating.

No doubt better teachers (and better incentives for teachers) would reduce drop-out rates. But let's not ignore a much simpler and (economically) cheaper way to reduce the number of drop-outs: legalize narcotics. This isn't merely about the money saved from enforcement, imprisonment, and judiciary costs. It's primarily about the choices kids face.

Kids drop out for lots of different reasons. But since the problem is so common in poor neighborhoods, where jobs and education are scarce, of course the few financially successful people in those neighborhoods are going to have a big impact. And those individuals are drug lords, people who have made a handsome profit off the black market. It's easy to look up to them and admire them. And it's easy to learn the trade since all drug lords need a large company--er, gang--to support the enterprise so they have a financial incentive to teach them well (or by fear or force). And I guarantee you, they don't require a high school education. One should not be surprised that, in a world where the choice is between learning from a poorly trained teacher with no obvious financial rewards and learning from a gangster who's involved in your daily life and will pay you for "on-the-job" training, more than a few students take the latter. Yeah, there's danger of getting arrested (though from what I gather that's more of a badge of honor) and being killed, but the payoffs are some of the best the kids can choose from and that means a lot when money is so scarce.

Yea, Governator!

I was appalled when I heard about this recent ruling against California's homeschooling families. Considering that many homeschooling parents - like my own - are better educated than our credentialed public school teachers, requiring the former to submit themselves to special training is ridiculous! I'm really happy that the Governor has made a statement against this ruling and the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) petition has racked up thousands of signers. I'd encourage Californians to contact their state legislators and House representatives about the issue.