Links for 9/28/10

Matthew Ladner

there is a pattern here: in the limited number of instances when jurisdictions take control of policy away from the reactionaries, keep it away from them for a sustained period, and implement reforms that they hate, NAEP scores make substantial improvement…

the only reasonable conclusion to reach is that unions hate policies that succeed in substantially improving the education of children…

Bill Gleason

Land-grant universities should get back to the business of doing what they do best­—in particular, teaching at a level sufficient to prepare people in their states to be competitive in the job market—and worry less about becoming world-class public research institutions…

Megan McArdle

In the past, college degrees conferred higher incomes on those who earned them. But almost all of that surplus went to the student rather than the college, because aside from a small number of extremely affluent families, the students were young and did not have that much cash. If colleges wanted to expand their market, college tuition was constrained to what an average student, or their family, could pay.

Introducing subsidized loans into the picture allowed students to monetize that future income now. It's hardly surprising that colleges began to claim more and more of the surplus created by their college degree…

Not, mind you, that I think that colleges think of this in quite such mercenary terms. Rather, they keep pushing the boundaries (and keep telling themselves how valuable a college degree is), and students keep telling themselves how valuable a college degree is, and paying up. But I think this is the underlying dynamic.

So why not just switch to subsidies…

we'd simply relieve the burden on students by shifting it to taxpayers. Meanwhile, we'd free students of the need to think about the cost, and value of their education--which sounds nice if you think about future nuclear physicists skipping gaily towards the registrar, and less nice if you think about Perpetual Students who never quite finish that degree in Old Church Slavonic.

Charlotte Allen

Here is a new trend: college for people who can't read or write…