The Root Cause of Market Failure In Higher Education

Real Clear Markets

excerpts:

• A little noticed Associated Press news story last week reported that China now plans to phase out college majors that consistently produce unemployable graduates.
• Here in the U.S.... education policy is geared not toward maximizing the employability of graduates, but toward garnering votes for politicians.[ Comment:  Exactly.  You can extrapolate that over the entire government budget.]
• Countless politicians now call college education a "right," alongside food, housing, and medical care. [Comment:  There's no such thing as a free lunch.  They still taught that in Economics 101 in my day, but who knows what they teach now.]
• And just as the federal government was forced to nationalize Fannie Mae ...Uncle Sam has now nationalized the college loan business with an eye on disguising the coming tsunami of student loan defaults.
• College participation rates will have to go back down to historical norms. 
• This may seem like common sense to most people, but it strikes horror into the hearts of the liberal professoriate. [ Comment:  Good point.  Academia is a hotbed of leftism.  They know who signs their paychecks, and they also know who doesn't mind that they don't teach anything useful.]

Comment:  We were told that the Reagan Revolution failed.  However, the drift has been back towards the left with the usual bad outcomes.  Seems like we made a wrong turn back in the nineties.