Is More College Intelligent?

At both the federal and state level, Democrats have made universal access to college education a major priority. As Michigan Governor Granholm puts it: "You need a quality education for your children — and today, that means an affordable education."

Ms. Granholm's first step: a proposed $4,000 "merit" grant to every kid who continues his or her education beyond the high school level. Democrats in Congress likewise are clamoring for more grants and subsidized loans. If some college is good, after all, more must be better, right?

But "more" is exactly what we have been getting for years. The federal government already spends about $71 billion a year on higher education, up from about zero 50 years ago. Larry Arnn, president of Hillsdale College, points out that since September 11, 2001, defense spending has risen 47%, while higher education spending has risen 133%. And most kids already are going to college: According to a study issued recently by the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy in Raleigh, N.C., 70% of high school graduates already receive some form of higher education, up from one in 10 after World War II.

We won't be able to raise national income "by dipping further into the noncollege population and enticing more of that group to spend time and money in pursuit of a degree," concludes the author of the study, George Leef, formerly a business law and economics professor at Northwood University in Midland, Mich.

The remaining non-college population for the most part has made the entirely rational decision to go directly into the workforce. Mr. Leef cites a 2000 study by Jeff Madrick, an economist and former staffer for Senator Kennedy, no conservative, which estimated that about 1.3 million high school graduates were "college ready." Yet colleges, hungry for ever-more revenue, admitted nearly 1.4 million applicants.

Yes, the average male college graduate was earning $52,500 in the year 2000, compared to about $31,000 for high school graduates. But more college won't change the fact that some jobs will always pay less. Nor, by itself, will it create new, higher-paying jobs. The majority of Michigan college graduates go elsewhere to work, for example, in part because of the state's heavy taxes, regulations, and union-friendly policies.

Higher education supporters across the country cite a privately, and anonymously, funded experiment in the Michigan city of Kalamazoo promising to pay for a college education for the 350 or so kids who successfully complete 12 years of education in Kalamazoo's high school with a 2.0 grade average. The two-year-old experiment already has led to an in-migration of eager parents, supposedly proving that college education is a "growth" policy.

But the real test of the Kalamazoo experiment will come when those students decide whether to stay home after college. So far Kalamazoo is only stealing parents from other school districts, not adding to the state's wealth.

Mr. Leef also raises the delicate question of what society is getting for its education dollar. A National Assessment of Adult Literacy study found that only 31% of college graduates are "prose literate" — that is, able to comprehend what they read.

Yet because of grade inflation, a form of academic fraud that is rife on the nation's campuses, parents are fooled into thinking their kids are ready to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

Employers seem to be content to go along with the fraud. Afraid to get into the business of testing prospective workers, which could open them to charges of discrimination, they instead use college as a handy screening device that indicates whether the prospective employee is at least trainable. Little attention is paid to the actual learning. The credential is what counts.

Unthinkingly throwing more money at higher education is thus a mug's game — a way to extend to 16 or more years an education that used to take 12 years. Better that our politicians stay focused on improving education at the K-12 level.

Mr. Bray is a columnist based in the Detroit area.