In a recent American Thinker article, Thomas Lifson made the astute observation that the American higher education system has “got[ten] fat, lazy, inward-focused, and expensive during its decades of monopoly on certification of higher end new labor force entrants.” No truer words have been spoken on the state of the post-secondary establishment in the USA and other western democracies.
The liberal dominated higher education system will, of course, attempt to deny these charges. But the data is against them.
The OECD released a 2012 report looking at the educational systems of its member states. The results are not promising for tertiary education in the USA.
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American system is the most expensive in the world ($29,201 per student), outspending its nearest rival (Switzerland at $21,577) by more than 35%. It also does a poor job of converting the public investment in tertiary education into national wealth. The following figure (also from this OECD report) shows per student expenditures in tertiary education against per capita GDP for OECD members, along with a best-fit regression line.
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As Lifson accurately notes, there is a “crisis” in American higher education, and it’s likely to get much worse. The system is in many ways incompetent, and also corrupt, politically biased, and economically inefficient. Hopefully conservatives will finally begin to tackle this high-priority agenda item with vigor, as it has been left festering through many administrations (both liberal and conservative) for too long.