When I was in college, the students could be divided into three broad categories:

1. Goal oriented: These were kids who had certain goals in life and knew college was a tool to accomplish these goals. They made short term sacrifices, as did their parents, to go to school, get decent grades, and look for jobs to become productive members of society afterwards. More often than not, such students would be found holding part time off campus jobs, living in very modest dwellings, and going about their temporary academic soujourn without the benefit of cable television, fancy cars, and spring break jaunts to Panama City.
2. College oriented: Amongst this group were students whose first and foremost reason for going to college was the freedom from the dictates of mom and dad…though such freedom was expected to be subsidized by mom, dad, and Uncle Sam. Decent guys and girls all, these were the folks who generally held cushy on-campus 10 hour a week jobs, had plenty of time to get involved in all sorts of campus activities, and enjoyed the luxuries of well appointed apartments, newer cars, and heady weekend parties. The lifestyle was so sweet and insulated from the realities of the actual world, many such students kept on changing majors and going for second and third degrees in dubious majors-again, thanks to the American taxpayer-so that they could postpone going to a productive life as long as possible.
3. Refuge oriented: Mostly in their thirties and forties, these were individuals who, suddenly tiring of their routine life or having made one too many absurd choices, decided that the ivy tower was proper refuge to hide while they decided what to do next. So they hopped from course to course, never an actual goal in mind other than ‘learning different stuff’, and joined much younger classmates in rabble rousing parties just to feel young again. Sometimes this sage lasted an year or so, sometimes significantly longer until the individual in question ‘found’ himself or herself. Of course, much of this searching and finding one’s soul is subsidized by your tax dollars.

 Going to college or graduate school requires sacrifice on part of the student and the student’s family. It is supposed to. “That which we achieve easily, we esteem lightly”, said Thomas Paine hundreds of years ago. You have to wonder why the college degree, once a marquee of basic accomplishment, is now considered as useless as a high school diploma. Standards for both benchmarks, for one, have been lowered to the point of non-existence. But I digress.

There is intrinsic value in higher education….for the individual. There is substantive benefit to society for certain kinds of higher education like those concentrated on the hard sciences, social services, engineering, information technology, and business management. Taxpayers being asked to partially support those serious students of engineering or criminal justice who sacrifice (along with their families) many of the comforts of a middle class life is reasonable. The same taxpayers being asked to subsidize perennial ‘enrollees’ who skip from major to major, discipline to discipline, college to college, just to enjoy a sheltered life with all the conveniences of suburban living, is unfair and unproductive. Rather, I suspect, those taxpayers would prefer spending that money on their own offspring or kin who want to learn a trade at a technical school or start a small business. Everyone doesn’t need a college degree, let alone a graduate school education, to be a productive and respectable member of society.  In fact, some of the more non-contributing members of society are folks with too many degrees in too many eclectic fields of knowhow that masquerade as academic disciplines. In a free society, they are certainly at liberty to pursue whatever learning they wish to so pursue; they just don’t have a right to be subsidized by the rest of us. More important, there is no inherent right for the higher education bureaucracy to be subsidized by taxpayers who have to work 12 months a year, five days a week while the ivy towers are content to put in 9 months a year at three to four days a week.  Formal learning is important and nurturing a learning environment is vital to the intellectual health of a free society, but not in absolute terms and not at any cost. 

Yes, I can hear the snickers of elitist readers who will immediately consider this to be the instinctive outpouring of some red state hick. Au contraire….this is the libertarian perspective of someone who has two graduate degrees, including an M.B.A. None of my degrees was earned with a dime of taxpayer money, but rather the sacrifice and toil of myself and my very middle class parents. Yes, that meant eating Ramen noodles at times and forgoing spring break jaunts to Palm Beach.