Federal Funding and Regulations on Campus?

Yesterday the Democratic Leadership Council unveiled a plan for higher education that will cost taxpayers $150billion and will hold schools and students accountable to Washington. As Neil McCluskey of explains in an article posted at Cato, politicians want votes, professors and administrators want more money and prestige, and students want to pay less tuition, leading to an easy “solution” to problems in higher education that sends a lot of money through broad spending programs to a lot of people. Yet, as an editorial in the Washington Times point out, voters believe that more than half of every dollar the government collects is wasted and they want something in return for their taxes. This opens the door to new regulations imposed by the government in the name of accountability, threatening the independence that has made American higher education the envy of the world. Just imagine a bureaucrat from the education department trying to tell a Ph.D. what to study, and telling college presidents what buildings to build.