Maybe We Should Call Him Slickenlooper

Microbrewmeister John Hickenlooper is touted as the most business-savvy of the gubernatorial candidates. It's this quality, above all others, that earned him the endorsement of The Colorado Springs Gazette and the city's Chamber of Commerce. But you can have success as a businessman while also being an economic illiterate, as Hick seems to be proving with his half-baked proposal to boost state subsidies for higher-ed through a "voluntary" hike in the severance tax paid by energy companies. The idea is naive in several ways.

The Ritter administration has been on a 4-year crusade to make life miserable for energy companies operating in Colorado: I'm not sure, if they ever return in force, that they'll be in the position or the mood to engage in education philanthropy at the state's urging. That's not their job. And they would be completely justified -- to echo one Rhode Island politician -- in telling the new governor to take his severance tax hike and shove it. The energy sector has no more obligation to help fund higher education than any other industry. It just seems like the most convenient cow to be milked. Why doesn't Hickenlooper ask micro-brewers to volunteer to pay a special "higher education" tax on every pint sold, if he's taking us down the road to coerced corporate "philanthropy"? The nexus between beer drinking and college students seems much stronger to me.

But here's the truly troubling part. Hickenlooper must understand, even vaguely, that these additional severance taxes wouldn't come out of the company's till, but will be funded by energy consumers -- meaning us -- in the form of higher energy prices. Energy companies may somehow be gulled into going along with the scheme, given the relish with which big government and big business bed down together (see the Clean Air-Clean Jobs Act), but they will really be "volunteering" to help keep higher ed fat and happy on behalf of their customers, who won't be polled on the matter. We'll be paying for this whether we volunteer or not.

What Hick really wants is to "volunteer" Colorado energy users to bankroll a higher ed establishment that refuses to economize, refuses to cut costs, refuses to change the way it operates. But he's afraid to ask us point blank, or to say that he wants to raise energy taxes, so he opts for this subterfuge.

And we all know what happens in this country when you don't "volunteer" to cooperate with politicians and regulators: those friendly overtures have a nasty habit of becoming threats, and then mandates. If this is what we can expect from Hick The Business Wiz, we may come to look back fondly on the Bill Ritter years.

Selective Indignation and Student Debt

Momentum seems to be building for a crackdown on for-profit universities and trade schools that allegedly foist large debt loads off on students, for credentials that don't always translate into higher earning potential in the job market, leading to higher-than-average default rates. The Pueblo Chieftain has a story on the issue today. I've seen many just like it popping up of late. But there seems to be a double standard, and perhaps a bit of hypocrisy and opportunism, behind such criticism, given that non-profit schools are only a little less guilty of the same things.

I agree with those who see a "student loan bubble" building to the breaking point, driven by the upward spiraling cost of higher education, easy (government-backed) credit, and the continued willingness of young people to gamble that a college credential will make paying off that debt relatively painless. But singling out for-profit schools for vilification, when the entire system is guilty of the same thing, seems unfair.

It also conveniently sidesteps the real problem, which is the unrestrained increase in tuition, resulting from a stubborn refusal of most schools to control costs and deliver a better product for less money. Such reforms aren't necessary as long as government-backed credit is easily and widely available, and students are willing to keep shouldering more of it. Normal market forces, which push private sector players to deliver a better product for lower cost, simply don't apply in higher education, thanks largely to the student debt industry.

Politicians are afraid to bring the hammer down on these big, bloated, bureaucratic institutions, and they're reluctant to demand across-the board reform, for fear of appearing "anti-education." So they're content to use for-profit schools as a whipping boy, when "the system" itself is to blame.

P.S. The always-astute Vince Carroll has a column in today's Denver Post on a related matter, the largely-taboo topic of professorial productivity.

Not Necessarily News, but Still Interesting

Campaign donations by Brown University faculty are running 10 to 1 in favor of Barack Obama, according to this admirably professional piece of reporting by The Brown Daily Herald, and higher than that if you count the donations of the school's non-faculty employees.

That's slightly higher than the national average of 8 to 1, but both numbers confirm what most of us already understand about the troubling conformity of thought in American universities, despite the mocking hosannas their faculty members sing to "diversity," "academic freedom" and "free inquiry."

Explanations for the lopsided support are predictably self-congratulatory: Academics are drawn to Obama, according to the story, because he's perceived as an intellectual, meaning he'll "reason through" his decisions, rather than "shoot from the hip," as academics fear with McCain. Whether Obama's alleged propensity for socialism (or worse) adds to his appeal wasn't mentioned in the story, oddly. But does anyone doubt it?

Without any apparent awareness of the ironies, a Brown prof told the reporter that Obama was popular "because he broadens the 'kind of diversity and inclusiveness' encouraged in university settings to society at large."

Inclusiveness? Diversity? In university settings? Stories like this one prove otherwise.