Subsidizing Media Studies Degrees Will Not Help the Economy

Ted Bromund / February 26, 2009

Amidst the flurry of programs and initiatives that President Obama announced last night, one particularly unwise one has escaped substantial notice: his call for “America [to] once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world” by 2020. The experience of Britain since 1999 with a very similar goal reveals the fallacies behind this arbitrary and top-down vision.

One minor fact evidently escaped Obama’s attention: according to the OECD, the U.S. already has the highest proportion of college graduates in the world. Where it does less well is the percentage of first-time degree seekers who graduate. There, indeed, the U.S. is well behind the world leaders.

But in any event, it is absolutely praiseworthy for Americans, at any age, to improve their education, whether they are motivated by a love of learning or a desire to improve their career prospects. And there is no reason why the President should not applaud their initiative, and lend the moral support of his office to all those possessed of it.

But it is one thing to applaud higher education while relying on individual Americans to decide whether or not they should go to college. It is quite another to set an arbitrary target for the percentage of Americans who should graduate from college. That is exactly the approach that Britain has pursued since 1999, when Tony Blair set “a target of 50 per cent of young adults going into higher education in the next century.” That target was a response to fears that Britain had fallen behind the U.S. in its emphasis on higher education: now, the U.S. is trying, at least in the President’s mind, to leapfrog back. (more…)