What’s the Difference Between K–12 and College Again?

Joy Pullmann, School Choice Weekly

The Obama administration has announced a new program that will allow poor high-school students to apply for federal college grants to take classes that will give them both college and high-school credit (“dual credit” classes). This is a bad idea overall, but it raises interesting questions about the Left’s self-contradictions.

Briefly, it’s a bad idea to give Pell grants to more people because the Pell program is bloated, fraudulent, and ineffective, as economist Richard Vedder has shown for many decades now. Expanding a distorting subsidy program ultimately expands its harmful effects. Free federal money incentivizes colleges to raise prices and lower quality, and it gives students more reasons to take college less seriously because they’re not paying for it. The expansion amounts to the Obama administration using taxpayer money to prop up a Democratic Party constituency.

Larry Sand at Union Watch points out the parallels yet contradictions between most of the Left’s opposition to K–12 vouchers and support for college vouchers (a.k.a. government subsidies). ........ Actually, the line between K–12 and college is not arbitrary, and Milton Friedman explained why in his seminal essay on the role of government in education. Friedman essentially revitalized the American Founders’ understanding of public education, which was to develop America’s young people into good citizens capable of governing themselves, as our unique system of government requires. Therefore, he argued, government subsidies for education are justified only for a general education that befits people to act as free citizens – not to provide personal economic benefits. K–12 education should be that broad, citizenry-oriented education, while higher education and apprenticeships were the narrow, personal kind of education. ....To Read More.....