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The Kosher Gourmet by Megan Gordon With its colorful cache of purples and oranges and reds, COLLARD GREEN SLAW is a marvelous mood booster --- not to mention just downright delish
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Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Clarifying one of the greatest philosophical conundrums in theology
John Ericson: Trying hard to be 'positive' but never succeeding? Blame Your Brain
The Kosher Gourmet by Julie Rothman Almondy, flourless torta del re (Italian king's cake), has royal roots, is simple to make, . . . but devour it because it's simply delicious
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Rabbi Dr Naftali Brawer: Passover frees us from the tyranny of time
Eric Schulzke: First degree: How America really recovered from a murder epidemic
Georgia Lee: When love is not enough: Teaching your kids about the realities of adult relationships
Gordon Pape: How you can tell if your financial adviser is setting you up for potential ruin
Dana Dovey: Up to 500,000 people die each year from hepatitis C-related liver disease. New Treatment Has Over 90% Success Rate
Justin Caba: Eating Watermelon Can Help Control High Blood Pressure
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Susan Swann: How to value a child for who he is, not just what he does
Susan Scutti: A Simple Blood Test Might Soon Diagnose Cancer
Chris Weller: Have A Slow Metabolism? Let Science Speed It Up For You
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Jonathan Tobin: Why Did Kerry Lie About Israeli Blame?
Samuel G. Freedman: A resolution 70 years later for a father's unsettling legacy of ashes from Dachau
Jessica Ivins: A resolution 70 years later for a father's unsettling legacy of ashes from Dachau
Matthew Mientka: How Beans, Peas, And Chickpeas Cleanse Bad Cholesterol and Lowers Risk of Heart Disease
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Dana Dovey: Coffee Drinkers Rejoice! Your Cup Of Joe Can Prevent Death From Liver Disease
Chris Weller: Electric 'Thinking Cap' Puts Your Brain Power Into High Gear
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Amy Peterson: A life of love: How to build lasting relationships with your children
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Sarah Boesveld: Teacher keeps promise to mail thousands of former students letters written by their past selves
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Dan Barry: Should South Carolina Jews be forced to maintain this chimney built by Germans serving the Nazis?
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Jewish World Review
April 29, 2014 / 29 Nissan, 5774
The payoff of a college education
By
Michael Gerson
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
In one of the lower policy points during the 2012 Republican primary campaign, Rick Santorum told a tea party group, “President Obama once said he wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob.”
It was a complex electoral maneuver: Take a fragile middle-class expectation — and a powerful immigrant and working-class hope — and make it into an object of populist derision. Do you really want all that pipe smoking and port sipping and late-night dorm planning to undermine the Constitution? Santorum was, in fact, the GOP candidate most conspicuously attempting to address working-class concerns. But the paradox only heightened the symbolism. Americans seek a valuable but increasingly overpriced good for their children. Republicans answer with a heaping helping of ideology. The indifference hurts as much as the issue. Recent figures indicate that growing numbers of high school graduates are taking Santorum’s career advice. The share of high school graduates (66 percent) entering college last fall was the lowest since 2006. This may be the result, in part, of improving job prospects for those without post-secondary education. But it is difficult, in an economy that places a premium on skills, to regard a smaller aggregate stock of skills as a positive development. We should want more people to go to college — and to find effective apprenticeships, occupational certificates and job training. A steady rise in the percentage of people who graduate from high school is one of the (rare) success stories in U.S. education. The graduation rate increased from 71.7 percent in 2001 to 81 percent in 2012, with serious gains for Hispanic and African American students. Maintaining this trajectory, graduation rates could reach 90 percent by 2020. But after high school, what then? The benefits of a college education — in wages, employment levels and avoiding poverty — remain comparatively robust but largely because the prospects of those with a high school diploma have dimmed. In 1979, according to the Pew Research Center, the typical high school graduate earned 77 percent of what a college graduate made. Among millennials, that figure is now 62 percent. For the poor, a college degree remains an important avenue of upward mobility. But for those in the middle class, the aspiration of a diploma is increasingly mixed with fear. The economic returns of a college degree are stagnant. Many who hold one are underemployed. Still, the alternative is worse. At the same time, the cost of a four-year college degree has ballooned. For the middle class, an average year of tuition is roughly half of household income. So both students and parents borrow massively to purchase a degree that can cost as much as a house, knowing it has diminishing value and used to cost less. It is not a wrong decision but hardly a satisfying one. “In a modern, knowledge-based economy,” says Paul Taylor of Pew, “the only thing more expensive than going to college is not going to college.”
But the fact that college costs have risen faster than nearly any other good or service is not a law of nature. Higher education is a failing market, in which most of the incentives are set toward higher tuitions and higher borrowing. The student loan system makes it easier for students to pay more than they can afford and so for schools to charge more than they are worth, while the accreditation system restricts experiments with new methods of teaching and learning. Market-oriented conservatives should be coming up with ideas to shift the incentives of the system, rather than continuing to inflate the bubble with additional debt. Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) have set out proposals that would widen the accreditation process for lower-priced educational alternatives and increase the data given to students about potential earnings in various fields — allowing them to make an informed decision about incurring debt. It is a start. Barely. For Republicans, the issue of higher education is emblematic. There are a number of vital but creaky social systems — elementary and secondary education, health care, the tax code, the immigration system, the social safety net — in need of serious, market-based reform. A party of innovation, redesign and repair might have considerable appeal. It would, among other good things, directly address many of the concerns of the working and middle class. But a party of opposition, faux populism and reflexive anti-government ideology is not up to this task. Given our level of institutional dysfunction, the country needs Republicans to be a source of solutions.
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Previously:
04/04/14 Our dysfunctional Senate
03/25/14 Obama is learning is learning the lessons of inaction -- one hopes
03/21/14 The GOP's need for creative policy
03/18/14 Can Obama Rise To Carter's Level?
03/11/14 Ukraine shakes up the GOP debate over foreign policy
03/07/14 The U.S. retreats: History tells us who will fill the vacuum
02/28/14The GOP is struggling to redefine itself
02/25/14 Physics is enjoying a golden age
02/18/14 Syria's refugees: Assad uses mass atrocities in the civil war
02/11/14 Burke and Paine, a rivalry that still reverberates
02/03/14 A rendezvous with irrelevance
01/31/14 Obama's thin agenda: The State of the Union lacked a theme
01/28/14 Obama breeding distrust of liberalism
01/24/14 Our complex president: Is his intellectual style actually good leadership?
01/21/14 The power to intimidate . . . on the Left
01/17/14 Gates hits his target
12/31/13 A dismal year in politics, for Republicans and Democrats alike
12/24/13 The war on Christians
12/17/13 The exhausted parties: What have politicians accomplished?
12/06/13 My numbered days: My cancer diagnosis gave me the clarity of mortality
11/22/13 C.S. Lewis: Rescuing desire
11/19/13 Former bridge burner starting to build them to save GOP
11/15/13 Entrepreneurs of outrage: Fear and anger sweep up policy issues
11/01/13 What Obamacare has cost Dems
10/29/13 In 6 months will this column prove prophetic?
10/22/13 Obamacare repair: It could become a crisis for modern liberalism
10/04/13 The GOP should speed Obamacare's demise. Right now, it's not
10/03/13 The tea party's revolt
09/30/13 The end of compromise?
09/17/13 A state of paralysis: Congress, Obama need to act
09/12/13 In full retreat on Syria
09/10/13 Obama misunderstands wartime leadership
09/09/13 Rallying around a gesture
08/30/13 The preacher and the politician
08/27/13 Is Obama's oft-cited best-case scenario in Syria still even possible?
08/23/13 Jordan's wary welcome
08/20/13 The hardest goodbye: A parent letting go
08/16/13 For GOP, opposition shouldn't only mean obstruction
08/13/13 Crazy, humane determination creates breakthrough for millions
08/09/13 America's bubble of complacency
07/01/11 The GOP's ideal America
03/04/11 The last doughboy and the emergence of a great nation
03/01/11 Conservatives shouldn't be so surprised by freedom
02/22/11 The progression of pain
02/18/11 The seriousness primary
02/11/11 Do Egypt's protests mean American decline?
01/27/11 No-bend Obama
01/21/11 Two good arguments for civility -- and passion -- in politics
01/11/11 Obama's staff changes give him a second chance
01/11/11 Is Arizona shooting an empty search for meaning?
01/07/11 WikiLeaks gives dangerous ammunition to a tyrant
01/04/11 Michael Vick: Symbol of the second chance
12/28/10 Social Security reform is the answer to Obama's problems --- and the nation's
12/21/10 When foreign policy realism isn't realistic
12/17/10 When it comes to politics, Obama's ego keeps getting in the way
11/26/10 Libs resort to conspiracy theories to explain Obama's problems
11/19/10 With Holder at the helm, detainee policy is a disaster
11/12/10 Blue-state budget crises spell even more trouble for Dems
10/19/10 Obama the snob
10/12/10 Seeds of victory in Afghanistan
10/05/10 Believers' remorse
10/04/10 Pound-foolish on national security
09/28/10 Babylon on the Potomac
09/27/10 Our reluctant commander in chief
09/21/10 Blue strongholds are becoming Democratic graveyards
09/17/10 For the GOP, a bittersweet brew from the Tea Party
09/15/10: Insanity's great enablers
09/13/10: The lost communicator
09/08/10: Will 2010 midterms be 1994 all over again?
09/01/10: Obama's economic wandering
08/27/10: Miracles from abroad
08/25/10: Address these issues in order to strengthen the Tea Party
08/20/10: The lost promise of Barack Obama
07/23/10: Obama's greatest nightmare
02/04/09: The Reality of Innocence
01/07/09: The Risks in Obama's Ambitions
12/31/08: Support Obama Will Need
06/13/08: Prince Charles, Organic Conservatism Icon
06/11/08: No longer a bankrupt political joke but still overshadowed
04/23/08: McCain's anger management
04/10/08: A Country for Old Men
03/06/08: Does the America Need a Hug?
03/06/08: Obama's First 100 Days
02/29/08: Words Aren't Cheap
02/22/08: He Said, They Said
02/20/08: Dying silently in Zimbabwe
02/15/08: Hillary's Unappealing Path
02/13/08: NATO's Afghan Stumbles
02/08/08: Why McCain Endures
02/06/08: One surge that led to another
02/01/08: In North Korea, Process Over Progress
01/30/08: Compassionate to the end
© 2008, WPWG
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