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In most respects, it's wonderful to have an honor student in the house. So I'm not complaining, but life would be easier if we didn't receive a barrage of college propaganda with every trip to the post office.
A few demographic details explain why colleges recruit with such fervor. Thanks to my huge generation of baby boomers, colleges added capacity in the 1960s and early 70s.
The capacity remains, even though the supply has dwindled. In 1975, American high schools produced 3,186,000 graduates, and there were 1,615,000 students in colleges and universities. In 1994, there were only 2,517,000 high-school graduates while college enrollment was 1,559,000.
So student capacity has remained about the same, while the supply has dropped by 21 percent. Little wonder that colleges compete so vigorously.
However, this competition does not come in prices. In the 1987-88 academic year, the average resident student paid at a state four-year college paid $4,052 for tuition, fees, room and board. In the current academic year, the cost is $6,585 -- a 63 percent increase.
But in the past eight years, the Consumer Price Index has risen by only 39 percent.
Here we have a diminished demand -- not as many high-school graduates desiring to purchase bachelor's degrees. But the supply of slots in degree-granting facilities has remained fairly constant.
When this happened to molybdenum 15 years ago -- supply exceeding demand -- prices dropped by 75 percent. But when this happens to higher education, prices don't drop -- instead they rise, and rise faster than incomes in general.
Clearly some other force is at work. We've set up a system that allows certain sectors of society to make work for themselves -- and we're required to pay for it.
This dawned on me after a talk with my attorney. After the bar exam, he wanted to practice in a small town in Colorado, and found openings in Walden and Salida.
He chose Salida because In Walden, I'd have been the
only attorney in Jackson County.
A monopoly sounded profitable to me, but he didn't see
it that way. The saying is that if there's only one
lawyer in town, he'll starve, but when there are two, they
can generate enough business for each other so that they
can both live pretty well.
Lawyers thus possess the capacity, under our system, to make work for themselves. Even if we have record numbers of lawyers, the glut does not reduce their incomes.
They have thwarted the normal forces of the market by devising a system, enforced by people with badges and guns, wherein any fool can engage an attorney, who files a suit, which produces subpoenas, depositions, discovery, preliminary hearings -- even if the case is dismissed as frivolous by the first judge to hear it.
Physicians also create work for themselves. They're in surplus, too, but their incomes don't drop. Instead, they set up elaborate systems of referral so that, instead of seeing one doctor for an ailment, you'll see four or five.
Suppose that our state legislature decided to enforce Official English, and decreed that all written communications in Colorado had to be perfectly grammatical, with fines and jail time for offenders.
You would be required to have your text approved by a state-certified rhetorist. The rhetorist might fix your prose for a fee, or she might explain that her specialty was exposition, while you needed an discourser. These experts might dispute about subordinate clauses for hours, even days -- on your time.
That sounds preposterous, but that's pretty much how the medical and legal professions operate in this country.
Back to colleges. Although there is no evidence that a college degree makes any difference (Abraham Lincoln, Clarence Darrow, Thomas Edison and Harry Truman all managed, somehow, without degrees), we allow employers to require degrees, thus insuring work for colleges.
For instance, a friend retired several years ago as
comptroller of the local hospital. The books were in fine
order at every audit, and she'd never gone past high
school. She observed that even though I did that job for
30 years, I couldn't even apply for it now, since it
requires a college degree in accounting.
So, I offer a market-oriented deregulatory solution to rising college prices. Make it illegal for any employer, private or public (including educational institutions) to discriminate on the basis of transcripts or degrees.
The employer would be free to test applicants for their relevant knowledge and skills, of course, but credential discrimination would be as illegal as racial or sexual discrimination.
Then if people wanted to go to college to gain skills or broaden their horizons, they could do so at a reasonable price. The colleges would have to compete honestly for the consumer dollar, rather than as conduits to employment.
It's either that, or continue the current system, wherein a college degree will someday be required of street sweepers, crossing guards and newspaper columnists, and even Steve Forbes will complain about the cost.
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