Stop the Dems before they help more students afford college

November 30, 2006

Speechwriter-turned-pundit David Frum delivered a commentary on NPR yesterday that you’d swear was a parody if he weren’t so serious about it. (via Tapped)

Imagine if the Republicans had retained their Congressional majority and the first thing they did was suggest big new subsidies for, say, the oil industry. Would there no public outrage?

But that’s exactly what the Democrats are now offering their staunch supporters in academia. The Democrats are proposing big new subsidies for college tuition: new loans, new grants, new tax deductions.

If we’re really lucky, this is a sign of how the upcoming congressional debates are going to go.

As Ezra put it, “[Frum] argued — without shame or self consciousness — that just as Republicans entered office and passed massive subsidies for the oil industry, Democrats are about to pass massive subsidies for some of their big supporters. And which sinister sector will the Democrats be lavishing funds on? Public universities.”

Let’s take that debate to the country, shall we? According to the right, the GOP is the party of ExxonMobil and Dems are the party of students and universities. That’s not our argument; that’s their argument.

It’s worth noting, by the way, that when it comes to helping students afford higher education, we’ve already tried things Frum’s way.

Student Loans: On Dec. 21, 2005, the Senate passed $12.7 billion in cuts to education programs — “the largest cut in student college loan programs in history.” Vice President Cheney cast the deciding vote in favor of the cuts. The bill also fixed the interest rate on student loans at 6.8 percent, “even if commercial rates are lower.” Despite Bush’s claims, students will be left off the program.

Pell Grants: Pell Grants have been frozen or cut since 2002; they are now stuck at a maximum of $4,050. In his 2000 election campaign, President Bush promised to increase the maximum Pell Grant amount to $5,100. “From 2004 to 2005, 24,000 students lost their Pell grants, according to a report pre-pared by the Congressional Research Service. This was the first drop in the number of students receiving the grants in several years; the number had been growing steadily since 1999.”

On NPR, Frum argued that college costs are increasing because of subsidies such as loans, grants, and tax deductions. Except, if he were right, the cuts passed by Bush and the GOP Congress would have lowered tuition rates. They didn’t.

And now Frum wants us to believe student aid is the “problem” with college funding. I can only hope Republicans everywhere adopt the exact same line.

College students versus the oil industry. Oh my, the similarities are astounding.

Hmm, how can Frum convince NPR listeners with children in college that academia is an evil industry that deserves their contempt? Simple answer: he can’t.

  • Hey, CB. You may want to check your title. I think you left out a “y”. Thus “Stop the Dems before the help more students afford college” becomes “Stop the Dems before they help more students afford college”.

    Otherwise, great post. I went to college on an approx. $3K Pell grant back in the early 80s, and am amazed that with inflation and rising costs of tuition/books/etc. new student are only getting $1K more twenty years later.

    It’s a disgrace that this nation places so little value on education.

  • David Frum made the same pointless arguments here in Canada and we ignored him (he also didn’t like the 60s either because of free love and peace.)

    The Frumlet is just another upperclass wanker (daddy was a real esate mogul and mommy was a famous journalist for the government run CBC) who thinks that only people of means should get an education and the rest of us should just beg for the scraps.

    You might try to send him back to the Great White North, but I, for one, wouldn’t want to take him back.

    Better to invest in higher education than tax cuts for Paris Hilton.

  • Ditto #2.

    The issue that should be discussed however is whether the Dem’s laundry list of proposals surrounding higher education — including cutting the student loan interest rates in half and promoting federal direct lending vs. the more favored FFEL programs at colleges — are they right proposals and/or are there better alternatives to making college more affordable for those who really need the help?

    And by the way, how are we going to pay for a program like this (which could run upwards to $40-60 billion) if we’re now in “pay-as-you-go” mode?

    I

  • Utterly bizarre. Frum is trying to pretend that the only people benefitting from this are Big University, instead of students and their families. I suppose he believes that people go into academia to make the Big Bucks. (Right, because that is the stereotype, the poli-sci professor driving a Lexus.)

    Whatev. People aren’t going to buy this new meme that he’s selling because it is absoultely and completely baseless.

  • I have read elsewhere on conservative blogs that if students get more aid, then tuition is increased accordingly. Find out for yourselves the average percentage tuition has increased in the past ten years.

  • “Frum is an idiot if he actually said that.” – Meh

    Oh, he said it!

    But let’s take his argument further. If subsidies raise the price of a product because the market becomes disfunctional when the buyer does not have to shoulder the whole load, why don’t we end subsidies for tobacco and sugar and all those other agricultural products 😉

    I’m serious about the tobacco and sugar by the way.

    The rising cost of college education is basically proof that everyone will chase a profitable investment and try to get their cut. It benefits a person enormously to get a college education so naturally the college feels it can charge what it likes for the priviledge of walking around their campus from class to class, sitting in stiffling class and lecture rooms listening to some professor or TA drone on, and after four years get a diploma that the business world values far beyond it’s worth.

    Or does that sound cynical?

  • My son had to join the Navy because they promised to pay him 50,000 dollars for education after 4 years. If it is easier to get a good education, it will be even harder to make military personel goals. And then where will the overlords get their storm troopers?

  • “On NPR of all places? It strikes me as incredibly odd. Are you sure this wasn’t a satire piece?” Rian Mueller

    Nope, it was entirely serious. The point which Frum is trying to claim is that the subsidies are the explanation for the rising cost of education. Of course there are a lot of subsidized industries in this country which would not like to have that theory applied to them.

    Frum of course is wrong. The rising cost of education is explained thus:

    The difference between what you will earn in your lifetime if you go to college versus what you would earn with a high school diploma,
    Universities abusing the student visa process by allowing foreigners to buy their way into this country by paying tuiton and not attending college (including some of the 9/11/01 highjackers),
    and University administrators who seeing the rising demand for their product, seek to capture a ever greater proportion of their students future earnings.

    In other words, greed.

  • According to Frum, we have met the special interests and they are us. The American public is just another special interest group feeding at the tax dollar trough that should be cut off so we can spend more money on defence and corporate subsidies and less on those losers, since we all know that defence and corporations create jobs and colleges don’t.

    Why is NPR allowing a forum for such cut our nose to spite our face logic? Is this policy a hangover from the Tomlinson era?

  • Investing in a postsecondary education pays off. Over a lifetime, college graduates average $1 million more in earnings than individuals with a high school degree.

    I guess all those seeking college educations are greedy as well, Lance?

  • Our daughter just sent off the last of her college apps, so college financing is of particular interest to our family right now. This also happens to be an area I’ve worked in (in a peripheral role) for years and about which I know enough to be dangerous, but here goes…

    There is evidence that financial aid can in fact lead to increases in college tuition. Anyone who’s looked into a college education recently knows that published costs bears little resemblence to actual costs (even before need-based aid is factored in). But that’s just from the consumer’s perspective; it gets even more convoluted when one examines how an institution actually meets its costs — so convoluted that it is difficult to establish causual relationships. Suffice it to say that normal economic models of supply and demand are at work, but in a very perverted manner and only to a limted degree.

    As far as common complaints that tuition outpaces general rates of inflation, those are true. But it is also true that education is by nature more labor intensive than many other sectors of the economy, therefore, increases in productivity (such as from automation, imports, etc.) have a lesser effect on educational costs than in on consumer goods. So, the argument goes, costs within education will always increase faster than in the general economy.

    That said, colleges and universities have gone on such an absurd building spree in recent years that the number of unit cranes on campus has become something of a competition. Most facilities are built using donor funds, but often, the added maintenence falls to the general operating buget. Sure, it’s easier to raise money for a building, but other things, such as endowed chairs and named scholarships, can also be attractive — and they relieve the general budget.

    All that notwithstanding, far too many college kids are working entirely too many hours just to stay in school. There’s nothing wrong with working, but there comes a point where it interferes with your primary job, which is to keep up with your studies. Too many kids are graduating with massive debt, too many are chosing where to go based on cost rather than other factors, and too many believe they are shut out entirely.

    Personally, I have no idea what the right thing to do is with federal assistance other than roll back some of the draconian Bush measures. Beyond that, making tuition tax-deductible might be the fairest way to help families. No additional funds would go to the institutions, but the effect would be to reduce consumer costs.

    Don’t even get me started on athletic or “academic” scholarships.

  • Here is the deal…Public universities are not simply tasked with educating 18-22 year old high school graduates. They are research centers, they provide scientific data for governernment agencies, they have hospitals, they have museums….etc.

    The cost of undergraduate education is only a small piece of a budget for a large university. As beep52 notes “don’t even get me started on athletic scholarships.” The University system is very complex and cannot be simply evaluated by undergrad tuition costs.

    Because the administrations can increase tuition to offset losses in other areas we have seen tuition skyrocket. Here in MN the U of M has received small percentaged of their requested budget from the state in the last several budgets. To survive they hiked tuition.

    If the U got it’s state funding tuition would have remained low.

  • But if more people are educated, who will vote for people like Bush?

    There’s a more than a bit of hypocrisy in What Planet are you Frum’s comparison of Democrats subsidizing Big Education in the same way Republicans subsidize Big Energy: http://tinyurl.com/ymf6n5

    From the article:

    • In the 2006 election cycle, the largest single corporate source of donations to the National Republican Congressional Committee was a student-loan company, Nelnet, whose employees and political action committee gave $153,000.

    [Emphasis mine]

    The corporations that give student loans (and benefit from the higher interest rates) are already in bed with, guess who? Republicans! So really it isn’t a case of Democrats acting like Republicans, it is a case of Democrats stopping Republicans from being such greedy bastards. But I guess that would have undermined whatever point he was trying to make.

  • Tuition increases are due, in part, to declining state support.

    Public universities – such as the one where I teach – used to get the majority of their funding from the state, a big chunk from tuition, then grants, etc.. But state funding has been declining (at least here in Missouri) and the deficit has to be made up somewhere. We’ve cancelled some programs, tightened the belt on expenses – and could do a bit more – but to maintain the academic programs we need to raise tuition or get more grants. We’re doing both and I expect that is what many institutions are doing.

  • David Frum is living proof that my theory that Canada constitutes the Civilized Zone of North America is not entirely true in the details.

    Let him go back up north and bootlick their Bush-lite fatass.

  • I went to college in the mid-1980s, and after two years of killing myself attempting to work full-time and make grades, I was ready to bag the whole thing and just work to save money and finish school…someday. I then discovered that, thanks to rules changes made by Ronald Reagan, I was actually eligible at that point for, essentially, a full-ride financial aid package. I quit working, and completed a computer science degree, and have enjoyed a successful career as a software developer for 15 years, thanks to the simplified availability of grants/loans. So, would Frum now oppose Reagan’s college aid policies? That’d be a difficult position to justify from either a conservative *or* liberal perspective.

  • Tom,

    From my earlier post:

    “You might try to send him back to the Great White North, but I, for one, wouldn’t want to take him back.”

    How about a compromise? We put him and his ilk on an ice flow somewhere on the border between Alaska and the Yukon.

  • And by the way, how are we going to pay for a program like this (which could run upwards to $40-60 billion) if we’re now in “pay-as-you-go” mode?
    Comment by JRS Jr —

    I think your point overlooks the other side of the question which is: How will we pay for an uneducated population? We aren’t paying for this; we are investing in our future. How will we compete globally if we don’t have a literate workforce? Have we, the people, become some special interest group because we want affordable higher education and equal access and protection under the law?

    I have another question for you. How are we going to pay our bill to Halliburton? What’s that costing? The stupid argument that we can’t afford to educate our people is just that: stupid. We can’t afford not to educate all of our people. If we don’t want to slip into third world status, we better stop cheaping it out on education. From an economic standpoint higher education makes so much sense, and not just for the graduate. Education stimulates new ideas and inventions, creates new industries and makes new entrepreneurs. Look at the Silicon Valley in California if you want an example of the progress and wealth a literate population brings to society.

  • frum(py) was exactly right. the gop passed huge subsidies for their constituents: large, infinitely wealthy corporations, and the democrats will pass big subsidies for their constituents: the american public. is he joking? LOL. how dare the democrat(ic) party defy the constitutions form of government: of the corporations, for the corporations by the corporations!

  • For many years I have been surprised that no one has done and widely publicized a statistical analysis of the contribution to the Treasury generated by folks like JRS Jr (above, $1,000,000 over a lifetime average increase for college grads) and blake (above, the computer science grad) and myself – an attorney whose seven years of higher education meant entering the military as an officer instead of the E-1 offered when I went to the recruiting station in ’63, and 26 years higher earnings as an attorney after leaving the service. I paid more in taxes last year than my education cost in 64-71. The people like my Congressman, Jimmy Duncan in Tennessee, who supported the new bankruptcy laws for the benefit of the credit card industry, are the same ones who oppose government backed low-interest loans that would help keep kids out of credit card debt while they are in school or as they are trying to begin new careers. Ironic, isn’t it?

  • GRACIOUS raises an excellent point: “How will we pay for an uneducated population? We aren’t paying for this; we are investing in our future.” (#21)

    I have often wondered whether education might be better funded if it was cast as a national security issue. To the extent that national security is tied to our economic security, and an educated population contributes to a stronger economy, it’s not such a stretch.

  • I have often wondered whether education might be better funded if it was cast as a national security issue. –beep52

    We must convince people to fund education for its intrinsic value. If education funding is increased because of one or more by-product of the process, such as economic development, soon institutions come under external pressures to redefine their missions in terms of the by-products for which the funding was granted. For example, if an institution promises to deliver an economic impact then the research mission will soon morph from pushing back the frontiers of knowledge to helping corporate America’s bottom line.

    This is exactly what has happened at Penn State. Several years ago promotion and tenure guidelines at the university level were altered to allow for unpublished applied research which helped a business to be taken into account in the P&T process. Here is how it was put in the UniSCOPE report the document which recommended the changes which were eventually adopted.

    A key premise of the UniSCOPE model is that all forms of scholarship should be recognized equitably. A corollary is that each form of scholarship – teaching, research, and
    service – should be recognized for its primary product. That is, if resident education is recognized as a valued product, then extension and continuing education should receive
    equivalent recognition. If basic research is recognized for contributions to knowledge through
    refereed publications, whether or not its insights are applied in the field, then applied research should be recognized for applications in the field, whether or not insights from the experience are extended to the literature. This is not to suggest that lessons from applications should not be communicated in the literature and theoretical insights ought not to be tested in the field. The issue is that while the logical extensions of scholarship should be encouraged, each type
    of scholarship should be recognized mainly for its own inherent contribution.

    What Penn State has done is undermine the integrity of the academic process in the name of economic development. This is explicitly stated in the report.

    This model centers on the integration of our missions, the rapid deployment of our resources, collaboration across disciplines and delivery units and partnerships with
    a wide variety of public and private organizations. Fused with a number of program priorities in areas that impact greatly on the quality of life–areas such as information science and technology; children, youth, and families; the life
    sciences; materials science; and environmental concerns–our model will make a significant contribution to the Commonwealth’s economic and community development and make life better for Pennsylvanians.

    This abasement of academic ideals was done at the behest of the president of the university Graham Spanier. Again quoting from the report,”President Graham Spanier has stated that Penn State is inventing a new model of what and-grant universities must be and must do in the 21st century, and that ‘Penn State’s goal is to be the national leader in the integration of teaching, research, and service.’ ”

    We must better make the case that education is an end unto itself least we destroy the goose that laid the golden egg.

  • JRS writes: And by the way, how are we going to pay for a program like this (which could run upwards to $40-60 billion) if we’re now in “pay-as-you-go” mode?

    Well, I don’t know where you got those numbers, but if we knock off paying $100 B+ for the Iraq war those numbers look positively tame.

    Remember when Bush took over in 2001 how the debate raged for months about how to spend the “surplus”? Of course it ended up going to tax cuts for the wealthy. But what floored me at that time was that nobody in Congress (or elsewhere, to my knowledge) even brought up the fact that the amount we were getting ready to give the wealthiest in our country would have paid for a full college or voc/tech school education—plus expenses!—for every high school graduate. Germany and some other countries pay all the way through college for everybody, but here we won’t even bring up the subject when we figure we’ve got the money in hand. Pathetic!

    • Comments are closed.