The Case Against College

President Barack Obama has declared that his administration aims to make college affordable to everyone by greatly expanding government aid to middle class families. The Washington Post says that Obama’s higher education proposals, which include creating a brand new Pell Grant entitlement, “could transform the financial aid landscape for millions of students while expanding federal authority to a degree that even Democrats concede is controversial.” But what if President Obama has it backwards? What if America is sending too many people to college?

A recent study found that “Nationally, four-year colleges graduated an average of just 53% of entering students within six years.” If 40 percent of students who enter college drop out before graduation and over 50 percent of students take six years to graduate, perhaps Obama is focusing on the wrong issue.

Reason.tv’s Michael C. Moynihan sat down with Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and the American Enterprise Institute’s Charles Murray, author of the recent book Real Education, to analyze how Obama’s higher-education plans will impact the economic and cultural future of the United States.

Reason.tv video here (Thanks to Russell Harris).

MP: Maybe there is an analogy here: just like the government contributed to (or largely caused) the mortgage tsunami, the housing bubble, and the global financial crisis because of its obsession with home ownership, it might also be likewise contributing to growing problems in higher education because of its obsession with college affordability and college enrollments?

In other words, just like government policies and easy credit “turned good renters into bad homeowners,” it might also be “turning good high school graduates into bad college students.”

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