Protecting the Privileged from Competition: Limit Enrollment

Alex Contarino demonstrates how not to think about issues of access, arguing "Yes, There is Such a Thing as Too Much Enrollment Growth." 

That may well be true -- if you don't want the privileged to compete with talented folks of modest means. 

Follow the link for Contarino's essay; I post my response here.

This essay is rife with weak and self-serving arguments. Let's start at the end and work back:

1. Universities do not create jobs -- job creators create jobs, and they have been asleep at the wheel for quite a while now. US capital investment has declined, short-term high returns have become normative for investors, and inequalities of wealth have skyrocketed. If Contarino is going to blame universities for failing to create jobs, perhaps he should advocate giving those bushels of capital to innovators and entrepreneurs in higher education, and let them make the jobs that the job creators aren't. There are a lot of very good job-creating ideas that are going unfunded because reasonable returns on investment are not the get rich quick schemes that are preferred today. It may be politic to cite one's Pope Center colleagues when writing for the Pope Center, but Jesse Saffron completely misses the point that the distortion in labor markets is on the demand side, not the supply side. There is a lot of talent out there if investors were willing to take the risk (isn't that part of doing business too?) of putting that talent to work rather than hoarding capital or cash reserves.

2. I daresay (and research shows) that many students who regret going to college are saddled with debt, and many quit school before they finish because they can't afford to continue. But let's be clear about why that happened, and what it means: The feds, the state, and even the Board of Governors has made it more difficult for smart students from underprivileged circumstances to get financial aid, and -- this is the big one -- since 2008 the legislature has cut UNC per-degree appropriations by $6865, while individual spending on tuition per degree has increased by $6537. You can do your own math on that one, but the implication is clear: the legislature has disinvested in an essential public good, and individual students and families have picked up the tab. The effect (as Suzanne Mettler has shown) is that there now are more "less talented" students from privileged backgrounds than "talented" students from poorer backgrounds attending and graduating from college -- and that is using the problematic measures of SAT and GPA numbers, which also discriminate against students from under resourced backgrounds. Which brings us to point 3:

3. Research and those pesky facts show that students who attend and finish college aren't necessarily smarter or more likely to make significant contributions to job creation than those who don't. (I leave aside the likelihood of discovering a cure for cancer, or figuring out renewable energy alternatives to fossil fuel consumption, or ending poverty -- but of course those kinds of civic contributions are not a consideration in Pope Center defenses of the economic status-quo). In short, "college ready" is not a surrogate measure for intelligence and ability, however convenient that assumption might be for those who get themselves or their children into good colleges. Imagine all the great things our state might get out of kids who can't get in, or can't afford to stay in, if we could give them a chance, and help them realize their talents.

4. Finally, to the opening premise of Contarino's essay: the simple and now very well established fact of the matter is that communities with more educated populations (and that means years of schooling, not necessarily those who complete degrees) are way better off than communities with less educated populations. Health, longevity, K12 school quality and performance, infant mortality, crime rates, poverty, investment in public goods, etc, etc: All of these change for the better in educated communities. General quality of life increases as education levels increase. I'll take my funky Chapel Hill vibe, with all of those college drop outs and part time students and life long learners, over the armed and frightened fortresses and ghettos for the rich in the gated communities of Los Angeles, New York, Johannesburg, or Mexico City.

In sum: An educated population may not be good for dollar store shop keepers who want to pay low wages and provide limited benefits to employees, and it may be useful for shop keeper hirelings to butter up the owners by making claims that there are labor market "distortions" created by having too many educated people around. But speaking for myself, I would much rather live with educated mechanics, carpenters, plumbers, taxi drivers, bank clerks, day care providers, or grocery store cashiers. Those folks -- and I know many-- can have interesting lives, and ideas, and friendships as rich as (maybe moreso than?) the diploma elite at the Pope Center. But whether that snippet of snark is justified or not, a college educated population is going to be much more fun to live with than under educated citizens who live in quiet desperation, thinking that the whole purpose of life is to get enough money to fix the car or pay the rent, and blaming their plight on the "natural laws of the market." (Some of which, by the way, Mr Contarino recently discovered are merely social constructions, and about which some varied historical and philosophical perspective might provide a bit of intellectual stimulation).

Mr Contarino is fortunate to be able to attend a good college like UNC Chapel Hill. I just hope he does something useful with that education beyond making a few extra bucks for that bourbon he likes to drink with his UNC Young Americans for Liberty buddies. I would be the last to begrudge any man a good bourbon, but the real point here is that I hope he doesn't really think that being at UNCCH and in a position to drink good bourbon means his compatriots are smarter than all of those who couldn't get admission, or couldn't stay in school, or couldn't afford -- let alone have parents clever enough to help them navigate -- the application process.

If he doesn't, then he shouldn't write opinion pieces rife with euphemisms that shout that he does. Contarino should be aware (as Adam Smith well noted -- in the Theory of Moral Sentiments) that the European aristocracy made itself irrelevant by refusing to recognize that privilege is not necessarily a predicate of merit and ability. The American shop-keeper classes -- always alert to the advantages of self interest? -- would be wise not to make the same mistake.