SOBERING OBSERVATIONS. Richard Vedder.

In order to appear sensitive to the provision of educational opportunities for all (positive interpretation) or in an effort to snare as much tuition and state appropriation money as possible (negative interpretation), schools take many students whose prospect for success can be reliably predicted to be extremely low before matriculation on the basis on test results and high school performance.

Nearly twenty years ago, I didn't make many friends suggesting that universities were failing at their mission, but some of the problems I highlighted in that essay (it's not available online) have not gone away.

And, increasingly, universities are not particularly good at even achieving their vocational mission. First, of course, remember the one-third to one-half of students who drop-out but who typically incur large debts. They end up only marginally more employable than before, but with battered personal finances. Second, a growing number of college graduates are taking relatively unskilled blue collar jobs, a point brought home to me recently when two workers were cutting down a diseased tree on my land, one with a eighth grade education and the second an honors graduate of Ohio University. There are over 15,000 hairdressers in the U.S. with advanced or professional degrees, and 12 percent of our mail carriers have college degrees (compared with three percent in 1970). Is it worthwhile to spend tens of thousands of dollars training students unnecessarily (from a vocational perspective)? For what purpose?

Particularly when what passes for the liberal arts core is less substantive than what used to be sophomore English in high school. There's nothing wrong with seeking knowledge for its own sake, but asking the taxpayers to pay for it twice? Save that for the car companies. Oh, that's a rant for another day. I'll stay on point for today.

University presidents constantly complain that legislators are short-sighted, restricting state appropriations or federal research monies . State higher education appropriations are a declining proportion of most state budgets. Is this an irrational response, insufficiently investing in our nation's future? Or, given the evidence that the "failure factories" are often very real, is it a highly rational response, reflecting a healthy skepticism on the true return in investment in higher education?

As the economic conditions get worse, perhaps the parents who are looking to their state universities to provide the intellectual challenge of the Ivies at a subsidized price (which isn't difficult at all) will ask their legislators to distinguish the substantial from the sub-prime in their offerings.