The Higher Ed = Economic Growth Myth

Today's Wall Street Journal has a letter from Rep. John Garamendi (D - CA) who says that he's siding with the protesting students because raising tuition is "bad economics." Why is it bad to insist that heavily subsidized students bear somewhat more of the cost of their college education (or perhaps it's more accurate to say "college experience" for many)? Because higher education is great for the economy. "It is no accident that the Golden State's golden age of economic innovation coincided with the establishment of and continued investment in the best public university system in the world," Garamendi writes. Actually, it is mostly an accident. There is a correlation between higher ed spending and economic growth, but it's not the case that economic growth would not have happened if it hadn't been for graduates of state universities. Few of the people responsible for the growth of industry in California in the 19th century were college-educated. More to the point, conditions today hardly indicate that higher education drives the economy forward. Many young Californians (and indeed young Americans across the nation) go to college, learn little of lasting benefit, then enter the labor force and wind up with jobs that most high school students could easily learn. Garamendi points to "studies" purporting to show that there is a large "multiplier" for higher education spending, but given what we know about the low productivity of colleges and universities and the dismal learning of many graduates, those numbers are laughable.