Continued decline of the public university

[al2simon]

@dfbdfb

If you look at it in that frame, issues surrounding public transportation and public education are exactly the same thing—if you believe that the individual is the best way of dealing with things, then both publicly funded education and transportation systems are at least partially suspect; on the other hand, if the collective is the best for it, then they’re both excellent.

I believe that @dfbdfb’s framing accurately characterizes a lot of the public debate. However, it is not my view, nor do I think it is the view of some of the other posters here. Here’s what I think (this is a mixture of fact and personal opinion (that may be incorrect)):

1. U.S. public higher education is a wonderful investment. In fact, it educates about 2/3’s of all US college students and is almost always the most affordable option. As an example, California’s system is wonderful and deserves tremendous praise … they have great 2 year colleges; the CSU and UC systems are wonderful 4 year options; there is a well thought-out transfer path from the 2 year to the 4 year system; and lastly they have built absolutely first rate research institutions in Berkeley and others

2. A lot of the angst about college costs among the middle class is in fact due to the escalating tuition at public colleges. A significant contributor to this are cutbacks (adjusted for inflation and population) in state support. The escalating cost structure of higher education in general is also a contributor, but the “cuts” in state support are real.

3. Why have these cutbacks occurred? Partisan and ideological squabbles are certainly a factor. However, in my view the fundamental factor is that other state government spending is “crowding out” spending on higher education. The growth of Medicaid and government worker / teacher pensions / healthcare benefits has forced these cutbacks; there is also a limited appetite for further taxation. The constituencies for these programs are stronger and more mobilized than that for higher education, and state legislatures are responsive to them.

Personally, I think public higher education is a far better investment and I would rather see the cuts made in those other areas, but no one cares what I think.

4. Why the digression on high speed rail (HSR)? Because it illustrates this point again … to choose to spend large sums of money on HSR is implicitly to choose not to spend money on public higher education.

Why can’t we afford to do both, you ask? Well, we could if the HSR project was actually a good investment; then we could do both. But it doesn’t seem to be … (i) its costs have exploded (ii) when completed it will not serve that many people since it connects two thinly populated areas. People are claiming that this HSR project is a bad investment, and pouring money down a rathole will inevitably drain funding from other state priorities.

The valid criticism of the HSR project isn’t that it is public - it’s that it is dumb.

5. Bottom line, we can’t have it all unless we are smart about what we spend our money on. Public higher education is a smart investment, but a lot of other public spending isn’t. And more and more dumb spending is just as disastrous as less and less smart spending.

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Let me also apologize for diverting the thread by mentioning human waste. NYC subways during the 70’s and early 80’s were just meant to be an extreme example that I personally experienced of how public transport in the nation’s biggest city was allowed to degenerate, but it is clearly not a typical example. I do think that in many cities the failure to keep public transport clean and nice is an important factor in why the middle-class does not utilize it and why it therefore doesn’t have as much broad political support as it could.