Right Ways and Wrong Ways to Democratize Education

Commentary

One defining characteristic of Americans over the generations has been a deep-seated antipathy toward elitism. We rebel against any attitude, belief, or ideology that would relegate “the common man” to a secondary status.

Americans’ anti-elitist values were early apparent in the field of education. Understanding that well-developed intellects constitute a valuable asset for any society, enlightened and generous individuals and institutions created scholarships that enabled students who otherwise could not afford to attend college to do so. It is estimated that by the 1670s, approximately 30 percent of Harvard’s student body was comprised of working-class students receiving scholarship assistance.

As other colleges opened for business, many of them also funded scholarships. While we salute these worthy efforts to democratize education, the fact remained that throughout most of our country’s history, the average American could not afford to go to college. For every fortunate individual who received a scholarship, there might have been a dozen other worthy candidates whose potential was never developed because they simply couldn’t afford a college education. This was no conscious plot against the poor; it was simply economic reality.

The federal government intervened to boost college enrollments under President Franklin Roosevelt’s National Youth Administration, which spent approximately $600,000 over nine years. (Small potatoes. That represents about three seconds’ worth of federal spending today.) Uncle Sam became much more heavily involved in higher education with the passage of the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act (the “G.I. Bill”) in 1944. Perhaps more than expanding the democratization of higher education, one purpose of the G.I. Bill was to keep returning World War II veterans off the job market to avoid a possible return to the high unemployment rates of the 1930s.

From the 1970s on, the federal government spent more money to increase college enrollments in the name of democratizing higher education—that is, making it available to a much broader swath of Americans. While the stated intention was to ensure that pupils of modest economic means would have greater access to higher education, the results of the government providing loans to millions of relatively poor pupils were not uniformly benign.

There have been at least two major negative repercussions of government attempt to democratize higher education by significantly increasing college enrollments via federal grants, work-study programs, and loans to pupils.

One negative repercussion: American colleges and universities began to crank out far more individuals with degrees than the job market could absorb. For example, Bureau of Labor Standards data show that 62 percent of high school graduates enrolled in college in 2022 even though more than two-thirds of jobs are in occupations that don’t require a college degree.

In addition to being a massive misallocation of resources such as one routinely encounters in a socialist system, the imbalance between jobs and degrees represents a betrayal of the millions of students who borrowed money to attend college on the implicit (and sometimes explicit) promise that a college degree was a ticket to a job in one’s chosen field. That promise has turned out to be fraudulent. It has left millions bitter as they are now struggle with the burden of having to repay the loans that they took on in the mistaken belief that a college degree would open the desired doors for them.

A second negative repercussion of the government inflating the number of college students is this: Pupils are not of uniform aptitude and talent. When college enrollments are smaller, colleges generally admit the cream of the crop—the small slice of the population that is capable of doing top-level intellectual work. The competition for limited spots means that the best and the brightest tend to win admission. Significantly boosting the number of students enrolled necessarily results in less capable students being admitted. This puts colleges in an awkward position: Either they maintain rigorous academic standards and flunk out the weaker students or, in an effort to keep administrators happy by keeping enrollment numbers up, they lower academic standards. To the extent that democratization dilutes talent pools and lowers academic standards, society is poorly served.

Seen in this light, President Trump’s efforts to scale back federal loan programs that artificially boost college attendance are most welcome. It is good to democratize opportunity, and private scholarships and loans do that. It is impossible, though, for the government to democratize talent. Such endeavors have proven to be costly, wasteful, counterproductive, and at times cruel. It’s the wrong approach. Basta! (Enough!)

There is another area of education where public policy is moving in a positive direction—too slowly for my taste, but at least in the right direction. That is the school choice movement. School choice is true democratization.

“Wait!” you protest. American children have universal access to government-funded primary and secondary schools. Education at those levels already has been democratized.

Sorry, I disagree. What needs to be democratized is true educational opportunity—not just the guarantee of a school to attend, but the freedom and opportunity to actually obtain a solid education. There are way too many dysfunctional schools where pupils are trapped. I have seen some of these schools from the inside, having worked as a substitute teacher in schools where a good day is one in which nobody gets hurt, but where very little learning takes place. School choice would enable children to escape such barren environments and transfer to a school where they actually learn.

Instead of lowering academic standards or using a diversity, equity, and inclusion program to boost minority enrollment at the post-secondary level, the best way to provide equal opportunity for admission into college would be to ensure that all American children have equal opportunity to receive sound K–12 educational training. Universal school choice would enable bright youths currently trapped in non-performing schools to develop the intellectual foundation they need to compete on an equal footing with their peers. Trying to compensate for an inferior K–12 education by admitting pupils into college who are not properly prepared clearly has not worked, but instead has been counterproductive and wasteful.

It is time to end the unholy alliance between the teachers’ unions (full disclosure: I am a former member of the National Education Association) and politicians willing to deny opportunity to precious children (often minorities) in exchange for monetary and organizational support from the unions. The next time you hear some union accuse a corporation of monopolistic practices, ask them: Do you support the teachers’ unions’ monopolistic practices when they argue against kids having the freedom to choose what school to attend? Do you want children to go through life handicapped by an execrable excuse for education, dooming them to minimal opportunities for economic advancement during their lifetimes?

Those questions may be indelicate, but that is exactly what is at stake in the school choice debate. If we genuinely want to democratize economic opportunity by making it more available to all Americans, then we need to give parents and children the freedom to choose the school that best serves their needs. True democratization empowers individuals, and that is what school choice does. The sooner school choice is made available to all American children, the better.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.