More on Education

Dr. X posts this from the School of Upward Mobility for Affluent Youth at You Can't Afford It University:

"The Sea Lord's note on tuition brought to mind some factoids that have been banging about the old cerebrum lately:

"1) According to a recent Economist book review, "when the University of California, Berkeley briefly considered introducing means-based affirmative action, it rejected the idea on the ground that 'using poverty yields a lot of poor white kids and poor Asian kids'". The SAT score advantage an Asian needs to compete on even terms with other applicants at elite universities stands at 50 points. Jocks and rich kids get about 1/2 the places now. (Don't worry about the 'New Jews' - they'll do the same things the 'Old Jews' did - find universities that will take them and excel in their studies, earn their place in the professions (note the Asian kid in the picture!), and build their own affluent neighborhoods and country clubs. They're well on their way in Milpitas and Cupertino.)

"2) That bastion of leftist thinking, Forbes, comments that "the main problem...is that college tuition has risen much faster than family income, and financial aid hasn’t gone up enough to fill that gap." Economists say this makes sense because the returns to education are higher than they used to be. This is bullshit. The returns to education are higher because the system artificially limits the number of qualified candidates for high-paying jobs by making appropriate training impossibly expensive for many otherwise qualified people."

"3) Are you mad yet? Don't worry, it's not really a problem for Harvard, Yale, or Stanford. They're loaded. The current value of those three endowments alone is $52.5 bn. I did a little spreadsheet work and found that this sum could support around 160,000 students paying $25,000 each in tuition for 20 years before it ran out (I assumed 4% tuition inflation and 8% investment returns - and it would never run out because I didn't count future contributions from alumnae). But that money's not going to be used to pay tuition for needy kids. There are stadiums to build to showcase their pathetically inept football teams, and malls to develop.

"4) Oh yes, the investment returns. The returns to these portfolios over the past ten years have been incredible, staggering, stupefying. They seem to have some intrinsic investment advantage no one can explain. The men who run them are now viewed as investment gurus.

"5) Here's my solution. On my math you could pay for a good private school education for every poor college student in the country (the bottom 1/3) for around $100 bn a year. You could finance it with a luxury tax. But that would be irresponsible government spending you say? Tell me about it."