By CHRIS POWELL
Connecticut’s four regional state universities and its 12 community colleges are looking enviously at Massachusetts, which, after spending a lot more money, seems to be reversing the decline in enrollment at its own public institutions of higher education following nine down years. One technique used by Massachusetts has been to make attendance at community college free for people 25 and older.
Applauding Massachusetts, the chancellor of the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities system, Terrence Cheng, says, “With that type of investment, we would see similar impact here in Connecticut. There’s zero question in my mind.”
Yet enrollment at Connecticut’s regional universities and community colleges has continued to fall even as state government has increased their appropriations for the last two years. Since 2018 enrollment at the regional universities is down 12% and down 27% at the community colleges. In response the universities and colleges system has reduced programs and raised tuition, distressing faculty and students.
But the enrollment declines are emergencies only if the universities and colleges are to be sustained for their own sake — only if they are ends in themselves and not the means to an important end. That is, increasing the productive capacity and appreciation of life by Connecticut’s residents.
Meanwhile developments are screaming that higher education is grossly overvalued and overpriced if not often an outright racket run by higher educators.
That’s partly what the national college student loan scandal is about, with millions of former students throughout the country emerging from college carrying substantial debt only to discover themselves unqualified for or unable to find jobs enabling them to repay their loans and live comfortable lives.
The other part of the scandal is the Biden administration’s effort to forgive student loans, whereby the debt is transferred to taxpayers generally, including people who paid their own way through college or didn’t go to college at all — electricians, plumbers, nurses, mechanics, truck drivers, cashiers, and so forth — but who nevertheless are being taxed to pay for someone else’s degree in gender studies, art history, theater, and similar pretenses of education.
Where has all the wasted money gone? It went to higher educators, and less because of the supposed great value of higher education — a myth exploded by the student loan scandal — than because educators are a huge, politically active, and influential special interest before which most elected officials cower.
Of course not all higher education is worthless, but the student loan scandal shows that on average it deserves substantial reduction.
Public colleges and universities may not be as overpriced as private ones, but then nearly everything in government is overpriced simply because of government’s lack of accountability. Chancellor Cheng’s annual salary is a clue — $440,000, far more than the salaries of any of Connecticut’s statewide constitutional officers or members of Congress. (No, he doesn’t coach a varsity sport.)
Anyone making that kind of money should have the courage and honesty to acknowledge that Connecticut’s education problem is not higher but lower education, where most students never master their studies and so never gain an understanding of civics and their country’s history and where their proficiency declines even as more money is spent on teaching them.
As with everything else in government, the objective with higher education should be to get value from it, not just to sustain enrollments and keep it going to satisfy everyone on its payroll.
Making community college free to students in Massachusetts hasn’t made higher education there more valuable; it has just concealed the value question by transferring more of the expense to non-students. When higher education starts providing more value, enrollments will take care of themselves.
TWO BLACK COMMISSIONERS: Last week’s column about the firing of Chief Public Defender TaShun Bowden-Lewis, Connecticut’s first Black chief public defender, by the Public Defender Services Commission and her lawsuit accusing the commission of racism asserted that one of the commission’s six members is Black. Two are.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)
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Chris Powell column 