WHAT'S MISSING FROM THIS PICTURE? USA Today columnist Julianne Malveaux laments the rising price of a college education.

Compounding the problem for students: The increases aren't limited to tuition. Books have become such an exorbitant expense — often approaching $1,000 a semester — that some students share books or do without them. As USA TODAY reported Thursday, 15 state legislatures are looking at ways of getting the costs under control. Lab fees are on the rise, too.

Students are lugging the financial burden well after graduation. Even worse, perhaps, is that they're being forced to make untenable choices about their future. A public service career, for example, may take a back seat to a higher-paying job because of this debt issue.

The "good people make bad career choices" argument is an old one, but perhaps public sector employers ought pay competitive salaries? But that's a minor quibble.

In Phi Beta Cons, George Leef takes issue with part of Ms Malveaux's argument.

Malveaux writes that "education is supposed to be an equalizer," but doesn't grasp that the attempt to make college education nearly universal will only exacerbate the problem of credential inflation. We can't educate ourselves to equality, but the attempt to do so will feed the expansion of the education establishment and depress academic standards.

We're already past the point of diminishing returns on higher education when many graduates end up taking "high school" jobs that don't call for any large degree of intellectual acumen. Instead of more "investment" in higher education, we need educational reforms that will enable students to master—and demonstrate their mastery—the basic language, math, and reasoning skills that are the building blocks to success.

Mr Leef's post addresses part, but not all, of the problem. To the extent that college becomes the new high school, but with student and parent choice, universal access (and the concomitant push to "retain" the recruits) stimulates positional arms races that drive up the prices at universities atop the league tables (no matter how those tables are structured.) Furthermore, the expansion of government aid to students is unlikely to ameliorate the textbook prices (which I have rebelled against whenever possible by using University-produced course packs, and which my students have rebelled against by shopping for used books online) because that adds to the third-party incentives already at work. Visit some of my sources of Company Mail, and visit some of their sources, and you'll very quickly discover weblogs maintained by faculty at expensive private colleges where students have access to Daddy's plastic, hence the price of a textbook (or a new set of Uggs?) is no big deal. Government grants and loans (what's the latest default history on those?) are the taxpayer deputising for Daddy.