INSUFFICIENT ALTERNATIVES. The dean at Anonymous Community's reaction to David Frum, noted here, poses this.

In a way, it encapsulates a basic philosophical quandary for higher ed. Should our focus be on sorting the strong from the weak, or on making everybody strong?

A commenter suggests the choice offers insufficient alternatives. But first, let's clarify what strong refers to. A higher education in which everyone graduates proficient in calculus and a second language, fine, bring it. That's not where the dean is going, nor is it where Mr Frum is going.

Frum implies, correctly, that at least some of the wage premium attaching to college degrees comes from their relative scarcity. To the extent that seeing a degree program through to completion bespeaks, say, above-average tenacity and/or intelligence, it serves as a signal to prospective employers.

That's one possible interpretation of the degree. The literature review is here. The short form, for the conversation the dean and the speechwriter are having, is that the degree has to be difficult enough to achieve that only people capable of doing the work earn it: a separating equilibrium in which the advanced degree is a truthful signal of high productivity. I'm more favorably disposed to a competing hypothesis, in which the degree is an investment in human capital. It's here that the dean's analysis begins to break down.

From that perspective, improving pass rates in developmental classes is actually counterproductive. Frum's position assumes that scarcity is the primary market value of a degree, so it follows logically that making degrees more common makes them less valuable. Anybody who pays attention to the rise of the professional adjunct has to concede that there's at least some truth to this.

Does it follow that making computers or fax machines more common makes them less valuable? We may have to work fewer hours to buy a computer or a fax machine than a D-Day veteran did, but our lives -- including our working lives -- are in many ways easier than those of the veteran back to civilian life in 1946. Think carefully about that "less valuable." Interpret that as "lower percentile" it means one thing: as "closer to a higher average" quite another. The issue, however, is not developmental classes. It is equipping students with the proper human capital. That might include developing a more skeptical posture toward being a professional skeptic, the transgressive myth that contributes to the pool of adjuncts.

The dean is part of the way there.

In the cc world, by contrast, the animating assumption is that the content of what we teach is both good in itself and likely to lead to economic growth. Even if degrees lose a certain exclusivity, the social and economic benefits of a more educated citizenry and workforce are likely to outweigh any losses from relative ubiquity. In other words, more educated workers are more productive workers over time. If the first two years of college become more common, this position implies, then we should expect to see more economic growth over time, since people will be more capable of doing more productive things. Content matters. Education, rather than exclusion, is the point. There may be some dislocations on the micro level -- what conservatives in other contexts like to call 'creative destruction' -- but there will be prosperity on the macro level. Put enough skilled and educated people together long enough, and sooner or later, you'll get sparks.

Where he and I continue to spar is over where that content should be delivered. He says "first two years of college." I ask "why pay for high school twice?"

And of course, there are enough triumphs of underdogs to keep us going. Just because your parents aren't loaded doesn't mean you're stupid or without potential. Community colleges are the only realistic starting point for many people, some of whom parlay their hard work here into impressive careers. I'm at a loss to explain why that's a bad thing.

Much follows from which side you're on. If you believe that exclusivity is the point, then colleges built on second chances are debasing the currency. They're cheating. If you believe that education is the point, then giving people second (and third...) chances to bring up their games is an obvious public good, worthy of substantial public support.

The underdogs argument is a reason for the community colleges and mid-majors and land-grants to offer precisely the same intellectual challenges to their students that the fifty claimants to the top ten claim to do. The second chances argument is more complicated. On one hand, some people take the right lessons from a mugging by reality. On the other, some drop-outs and stop-outs are made of different stuff. Thus the benefit-cost ratio of the supposed public good might be small, or negative. Room for conversation.

Room for conversation here, too, but first a chill pill?

The indifference to the content of education, I think, is behind both the research university model and tenure. Both of those are built on an implied hostility to actual teaching, which makes sense if you assume that actual teaching is beside the point. Teach well or badly, whatever -- the kids will sort themselves out, and the cream will rise to the top.

The waiting lists are still at the R1s, suggesting a continued avoidance, if possible, of the rest of the food chain. Without the research, what would the community colleges be teaching? It's not false consciousness that put Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan between Lyndon Johnson and Barack Obama. There were real flaws in the Welfare Economics Paradigm model that the Great Society and the Bailout of the Month Club both use -- and there are real flaws with the Efficient Markets Hypothesis that midwived the deregulation. The good teacher has to get that material from somewhere. The great professor might even understand where it came from. (At the same time, I get the idea that a lot of the learning at the R1s comes from students interacting with each other. There's an encyclopedia behind the bar at one Hyde Park tavern. There is no such bar in DeKalb.)

At a really fundamental level, either you believe that content matters, or you don't. Either you believe that everybody deserves a real shot, or you don't. Either you believe that education is a common good, or you believe that it's a private good. The rest follows.

Either you're with us, or you're with the terrorists?