CapCon's professional intern hasn't read the state constitution

by: Eric B.

Wed Feb 13, 2013 at 14:00:00 PM EST

I've been to one world's fair, and rodeo and a picnic and this is the stupidest thing I've ever read that's come across a social media feed.

When the government is in the business of handing out money, interest groups lobby to get it — or advocate to receive more than they are already getting.

So it is with spending on higher education.

As the Michigan Legislature debates the state budget for the upcoming fiscal year, more money for preschool, college and everything in between is being proposed. Over the long-term, the funding for those areas has increased dramatically. Taxpayers should be skeptical of the current reasons for subsidizing universities further.

Well, first off, it's not a subsidy. It's a direct appropriation, laid out in the state's constitution. The mechanism for this and the boards that oversee them on behalf of the public are pretty clearly laid out in them. The mistake CapCon's professional intern has made here, possibly because he attended a private school, is that he apparently believes that public institutions of higher learning are supposed to support themselves entirely on student tuition and fees and the constitutionally mandated appropriations represent some kind of leg-up in a competition.

Why would the authors of the state constitution do such a thing? Because they recognized the value in making advanced education accessible for everyone, not just in economic terms but in the ability to cope with the world as we know it. As we've said here time and time again, education isn't supposed to be a money-making racket. It only is because we've mostly given ourselves over to being a nation of Babbitts.

Meanwhile, it appears that CapCon's professional intern not only hasn't read the constitution, but he hasn't spent much time in the job market.

But this assumes that the degree caused the higher earnings, rather than the fact that those who complete college are already more likely to be financially successful whether they attend university or not.

 

Have you ever in your life read something that screams louder, "The author of this sentence has never spent much time looking for a job!"? I mean, why is it that people who continually attack the value of a college degree are people who hold them? Does he think the Mackinac Center would have hired him had he not gone to college?

It's sad to say, but the process isn't driven by universities. College presidents aren't known to walk into human resources offices and hold guns to the heads of hiring committees and demand that they hire only people with degrees. If you've spent any time whatsoever looking for a job in the last two decades, you've probably seen job postings that require a college degree of some kind, even if it's an off degree, for consideration for employment. Perhaps the people who this needs to be directed at are private sector employers, whose practices mostly set the bars for hiring trends.