AGAINST ACADEMIA
I found this argument in Tech Central long overdue. Arnold Kling argues that large-scale state subisidies to college and universities are not justified. More specifically, he argues that:

- the large income gap between college and high school graduates probably owes mostly to signalling (you don't become more talented, employers merely see that you are more talented) and to the fact that people who go to good schools are smarter and would earn more under any circumstances.

- subsidies to state schools largely subsidized life-style improvements for already affluent students

- if college really makes people so much more productive workers, they should be willing to invest in those skills on their own, without encouragement from subsidies

- it's a "puzzle" that tuitions have been rising so much, and his explanation is a "segregation equilibrium," by which rich parents send their kids where they will be with other rich kids

- barriers to entry and exit allow faculty to accumulate salaries and benefits far exceeding their "opportunity cost," i.e. what they could earn outside academia

- subsidies to colleges are regressive, helping the middle classes and the rich more than the poor.

Kling is right about all this, but he ignores the one truly plausible raison d'etre of America's Big Academia: to conduct research, to expand knowledge, to serve Truth and "speak truth to power" (also a journalist's raison d'etre this one). Knowledge is a public good, and therefore deserves public subsidy. That's the theory anyway. And yet in many branches of academia, this argument would seem so quixotic as to be almost risible.

A suggestion for the agenda of a new populism to emerge sometime in the near future. Roosevelt's populism was against Big Business. Reagan's populism was against Big Government. The new populism-- against Big Academia and Big Media, these ostensibly truth-seeking industries which have betrayed their callings and grown corrupt, arrogant, and obese. Possible policies for the new populism: 1) Prohibit price discrimination, forbid universities from looking at private financial records to determine financial aid allocations. 2) Large campaigns of student debt forgiveness that will wreck the system by which colleges fund themselves by massive indebtedness. 3) Develop large federally-funded training and testing programs which will allow people to develop good job skills outside of (and much more efficiently and quickly than in) college. If this reduces the supply of students, and professors feel the pinch, we can help them out by distributing large amounts of grants to academics to start blogs. The grants will depend on getting readership as well as on approval by fellow academics. Thus the ostensible higher purpose of the universities-- to create the public good of knowledge for all our benefit-- will be served much more directly: instead of having to pay tens of thousands of dollars to be enlightened by America's finest minds, we can all click a website and get it in a frequently-updated free format from these minds, forced to work hard by skinflint legislators. (hehehe :)) These, in turn, would undermine Big Media, forcing them to retreat to their comparative advantage, reporting in the narrow sense.

As a toiling student slave (they put me $90,000 into debt for getting a degree in how to help the poor!!!) I would pick up a pitchfork and march against Big Academia behind any firebrand who comes along. On the other hand, I'd like to be a professor at some point, too. But there's no contradiction here, I think. Big business and big government were not permanently damaged by the populist campaigns against them. The fierce critical spotlight had a salutary effect on these institutions. I anticipate that a populist fight against Big Academia and Big Media would have the same impact.