Federal education money wasted on diploma mills Re: “Will the college bubble burst from public subsidies?” July 20
Michael Barone is right to decry the existence of a college bubble that’s worse in some ways than the recent housing bubble. States spend hundreds of millions of dollars operating colleges that are useless diploma mills that manage to graduate almost no one — like Chicago State, which had a 13 percent six-year graduation rate.
Seventeen million people who went to college because of rising college-attendance rates in recent years wound up in unskilled jobs, including 5,057 janitors who have advanced degrees. Tuition has risen faster than home prices did during the real estate bubble, and spending on administrators has risen as much as 600 percent at some colleges.
Federal education spending is grossly wasteful; $130,000 in federal stimulus money was recently spent on a book for teachers and school officials that bashed colorblindness and demonized white people.
Hans Bader
Washington
Increased college attendance is still a good thing
Re: “The problem with too much of a ‘Good Thing’,” July 20
I fully agree with Thomas Sowell that “too much of a good thing can indeed be bad,” but Mr. Sowell’s use of fatally flawed logic utterly failed to illustrate this point in his column.
For instance, Sowell’s example of too much of a good thing is that more students are going to college because lowering standards to get them admitted results in lower educational quality for others is bad. He ignores the fact that there are other means by which one can reach the same ends that are not detrimental.
There is no virtue in dumbing down education to place more students in college, but much in otherwise endeavoring to have more students attend college.
Like the little old lady in the children’s story who put salt in her coffee, it is just prudent to start again with a fresh batch and do it right the first time.
Laszlo Pentek
Arlington
Schools should let parents do the parenting
Re: “Getting smart, not giving up, is how to deal with illicit drugs,” July 19
Peter Bensinger ignores years of failed policy, including Prohibition, and continues to advocate for mandatory drug testing before a student receives the “privilege” of an education. I thought we Americans considered education a right, which is why schools are publicly supported.
I suppose this is no surprise since he formerly worked with the Drug Enforcement Administration and now runs a company whose success depends on police-state tactics that treat every young person as a likely drug user.
What Bensinger ignores, however, is the fact that it is the parents’ job to raise children and steer them clear of illicit substances, not the state’s. Not only should schools not be charged with the task of monitoring students for drug use, they have neither the time nor the resources to do so. A school’s job is to educate, not police what students do when they are not at school. That’s a parent’s job.
Bensinger’s support of this policy is clearly an attempt to steer public funds into his bank account. As a social libertarian and fiscal conservative, I resent his desire for increased government intrusion into people’s private lives at public expense.
Jason G. Ramage
Woodbridge
