Should Taxpayers Fund College? The Case For and Against

The Question of Public Funding for Higher Education

Is state-sponsored secondary education justified? Should taxpayers subsidize higher-level schooling? There are those who believe this is an investment in overproduction and waste. Educator and writer Caroline Bird, for example, questions the entire value of college — let alone the notion that it should be supported financially. "We've been told," she states in her essay "The Case Against College," "that young people have to go to college because our economy cannot absorb an army of untrained eighteen-year-olds. But disillusioned graduates are learning that it can no longer absorb an army of trained twenty-two-year-olds either."

Caroline Bird on the Value of College

Bird also stresses that true learning does not have to take place in the classroom: "Of all the forms in which ideas are disseminated, the college professor lecturing a class is the slowest and most expensive. You don't have to go to college to read the great books or learn about the great ideas of Western Man." One can simply go to a library, listen to recordings, or read books on a topic and teach oneself. In fact, when students talk about their on-campus learning experience, they tend to describe "personal" rather than "intellectual" knowledge gathering.

There is also the question of equity. Why should hard-working citizens pay for an education that reaches only some of their youth? As Bird puts it:

"Taxpayers now provide more than half of the astronomical sums that are spent on higher education. But less than half of today's high school graduates go on, raising a new question of equity: Is it fair to make all the taxpayers pay for the minority who actually go to college? We decided long ago that it is fair for childless adults to pay school taxes because everyone, parents and nonparents alike, profits by a literate population. Does the same reasoning hold true for state-supported higher education? There is no conclusive evidence on either side."

Ultimately, Bird argues, it is only a minority of students who attend college for genuine intellectual growth. The rest of high school graduates should think more carefully about their reasons for heading to college — perhaps postponing that decision until they have a clearer sense of future direction. "The rest of our high school graduates need to look at college more closely and critically, to examine it as a consumer product, and decide if the cost in dollars, in time, in continued dependency, and in future returns, is worth the very large investment each student and his family must make."

Student Pressure and Misdirection: Zinsser's View

In "College Pressures," William Zinsser writes about the burdens college students carry while they are in school. Students are torn: part of them wants to enjoy the college experience and take courses they find genuinely interesting — even if those courses do not promise a lucrative future — while the other part feels guilty for failing to meet parental expectations. Most students also feel intense pressure to fill every moment with studying, terrified of failure.

Zinsser agrees with Carlos Horta, who stated: "Violence is being done to the undergraduate experience." He adds: "College should be open-ended; at the end it should open many, many roads. Instead, students are choosing their goal in advance, and their choices narrow as they go along."

Zinsser's observations are thus similar to Bird's in an important respect: many teenagers — for that is what they still are — are often too young to know their ultimate direction. They need time to take detours and explore before they can know where they are truly headed.