The 2016 Republican platform suggests paying for public education should be a burden carried by the degree earner, equating the value of higher education to an element of preparing for a career. To decrease tuition costs, “private sector participation in student financing should be restored.” Essentially, the platform demands that private businesses should be able to help students pay for college. This “market-based” solution, Republicans purport, would lower tuition. Aside from being unrealistic in achieving its goal of lowering tuition, the Republican proposal’s portrayal of public education does not accurately reflect its value to society.
Dr. Susan Dynarski argues, “the ‘free market’ in student loans to which some hope to return is one in which government bore the risk while banks enjoyed a healthy, risk-free return.” In 1965, when the Guaranteed Student Loan Act was introduced, private lenders (usually banks) provided the starting capital. The federal government “set interest rates, chose who would get loans, and capped loan amounts.” If a student did not pay off her loan, the government paid the bank in her stead.
Private sector participation in student loans has historically only tied the government to financial risk, whilst benefiting banks. Talk of decreasing tuition is irrelevant, as there would be no incentive in this scheme for colleges to lower their costs. If anything, as young university students generally do not have credit histories when they begin school, it is the banks that have an incentive to raise interest rates on student loans. Hence, this allegedly “market-based” solution would not lower tuition.
Closer to home, state appropriations given to the University have fallen by approximately 8.1 percent since 2001 ($166.2 million to $152.7 million). Of note, while three of our last four governors have been Democrats, the House of Delegates has had a Republican majority since 2000, and the Virginia Senate, with the exception of the 2008-12 term, has had a Republican majority since 1996. State appropriations, or the money the state of Virginia gives to the University, come with strings attached — legislators from the House of Representatives want more of their constituency in the University, so they could demand a cap on out-of-state students. Aside from stipulations, the money a state invests in its universities returns its value through positive externalities. The positive externalities arising from a more educated populace benefit all of society — degree holders enjoy longer, healthier lives than others, thus cutting down on medical costs on the state’s part, and are more productive, creating more job opportunities and value for society. The value of public education lies not just in its benefit to the individual student, but to society as well.
Perhaps more interestingly, the Republican proposal raises the question of the value of an education. Should American colleges educate primarily to prepare citizens for a lifetime of civic engagement? Or is their purpose to prepare students for a career?
These different views need not be mutually exclusive. Perhaps a successful career is the definition of civic engagement. Educating students for the purpose of entering society with the ability to question information and a passion for knowledge broadens the horizons of our society and structures our national morals and causes. Certainly, for careers that require these qualities, it would be in the interest of a career-oriented education system to also offer those tools. However, it would be superfluous for a physics research laboratory to request its interviewees to analyze Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” as a prerequisite for applying. For the same reason, an education designed solely to prepare students for careers to which the humanities are irrelevant would not include extraneous classes.
An education in the humanities probably will not help a physicist invent quantum computing, but it also would not hinder her from her job. Beyond her job, learning about civic engagement and the moral and philosophical foundations of our society would help her to think critically about her role in society. Critically thinking citizens with an eye for the truth benefit society, and they are the product of a university education. That is the true value of higher education: a more thoughtful, engaged populace, beneficial to society.
Tsering Say is a Viewpoint writer.
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