A post on one of my favorite economics blogs has really touched on a topic near and dear to me; that of subsidizing education for the marginal student and its impact on the educational establishment. 

Full Disclosure:  I derive a portion of my income as an adjunct instructor in computer science at a local technical university.

A paper by George C. Leef expands on the consequences of an "Everybody goes to college" policy by state and federal governments.  Part of the argument for universal college education is that college graduates make more money so government should subsidize education in order to improve society by raising the median income by insuring more people graduate from college. 

Unfortunately the reality is not so rosy.  When you dump a bunch of Nascar yahoo's into the input hopper of a university do you get well educated high income earning professionals in the output bin four years later?  No.  Many of these people will not graduate or will start with high ambitions like becoming a mechanical engineer so they can design Nascar vehicles but will end up choosing easier degrees such as history or political science. 

So what you are doing is subsidizing the partying of Nascar fans at a four year university and delaying their entrance into the careers that they really should be training for in the first place.  There is certainly nothing wrong with a degree from a vo-tech.  It's two years of industry specific training that prepares you for a good job upon graduation.  I have a brother and sister-in-law that enjoy the benefits of a vo-tech education.  Here is the interesting part.  My wife and I both have degrees from the state university.  We both started at about the same salaries as my brother and my sister-in-law.  Interesting, no?

Since that time I have changed careers and obtained an MS and have progressed rapidly up the pay scale.  There is nothing inherent in a college degree that guarantees higher income.  To many employers it servers as a crude pre-screening instrument to weed out those individuals a company feels may be undesirable.  But why does a credit card collector need to have a college education.  Well, in a strong economy you find out that they don't as hiring standards are relaxed.

So what impact do these marginal students have on the colleges they attend?  Lowered academic standards across the board.  I remember my History of Economic Thought class fondly.  The professor was excellent, he was young and enthusiastic and his classes were great.  However, the students left something to be desired.  We were to debate the merits of classical liberalism and socialism.  Unfortunately, many of the "students" couldn't wrap their tiny pea brains around the dualing definition of liberal.  Far too many were wrapped up in what Rush Limbaugh thought (actually that's probably pretty advanced compared to most of the undergrad population) instead of reading the source material.  I remember how disappointed I was as I would bring up topics from the books my class mates would make comments that indicated they had not bothered to read the material.

In my experience as an adjunct I can tell you that most students only care about the degree, not the learning.  It's unfortunate because I don't think the goal of smart people should be a job after college.  I think it should be to start their own business.  And I think that entrepreneurism is what keeps the U.S. strong.  I CAN learn skills on the job.  I can pick up a book and learn a new programming language.  However, the framework exists for a person with on a high school education to become astronomically successful. 

So, college is water-down.  It's consuming a large amount of resources and it's not living up to it's promise to repay.  We need to cut down on the incentives for marginal students to attend college and instead encourage them to pursue something more suited to their aptitude and interest. 

Once again economics is just extreme common sense.