Educating Davey

As usual, Brooksie misses the point. He doesn't believe the federal government should give tax credits for college tuition or grants to those who need them because, according to him, such actions in the past have not increased the number of students attending college. He then lists the reasons many don't attend or finish college--issues which are not presently addressed by Congress that he feels should be considered.

Great solution. Penalize those who are unable to attend college without student aid by taking away Federal grants and other student aid programs -- surely that will increase college attendance!

I'm beginning to think Davey shed more than a few brain cells smoking a bit too much of that funny stuff during his formative years.

Brooks writes:

"You have to promote two-parent stable homes so children can develop the self-control they need for school success. You have to fundamentally reform schools. You have to expand church- and university-sponsored mentoring programs and support groups. As Caroline Hoxby of Harvard notes, you have to surround students with people who will help them make informed decisions so they can attend a college they find useful."

Assuming one could do all of this, and assuming it did indeed motivate and enable kids to succeed in College, there would still be one glaring problem: now that they are ready, they may not be able to afford to go -- and you just took away their meal ticket!

Despite the fact that "perhaps 8 percent [of students] are driven away purely for financial reasons" (a statistic without a source in Brooksie's op ed, but if accurate, 8% translates into a significant number of students) -- he wants to cut off funds to that 8 per cent -- effectively assuring that college attendance will drop.

How about this, Brooksie? Keep the grants and credits, and begin to address other barriers to education at the same time -- that is, if you think Congress is capable of talking and chewing gum simultaneously. Despite your logic, it isn't an either/or proposition.

The Relationship Blend
By David Brooks
The New York Times

In the world of public policy, there are ecologists and engineers. The ecologists believe human beings are formed amid a web of relationships. Behavior is shaped by the weave of expectations and motivations that we pick up from the people around us every day.

The engineers believe all this relationship talk is so much mush. They believe behavior is shaped by incentives. You give people the resources they need and socially productive, rational behavior will usually follow.

Most politicians are ecologists who turn into engineers once in office. They know how much relationships mattered to their own success. But in government, the major tool they have is a budget appropriation. So suddenly every problem turns into a question of resources.

This transition, unfortunately, leads to a misleading view of human nature and often, policy failure.

A case in point: Over the past three decades there has been a gigantic effort to increase the share of Americans who graduate from college. The federal government has spent roughly $750 billion on financial aid. Yet the percentage of Americans who graduate has barely budged. The number of Americans who drop out of college leaps from year to year.

The reasons for dropping out are as numerous as the people who do it. Many students are academically unprepared for college work. Many suffer personal or family crises. Many are bored in the classroom and disengaged on campus. Many suffer from a strange cognitive dissonance. They have high aspirations. They know what they have to do to succeed. Yet when it comes time to, say, show up for a math test, they blow it off. And yet they still seem confident they will achieve their goals.

Some students, a relatively small slice, drop out because they can’t afford college. Perhaps 8 percent are driven away purely for financial reasons, according to a growing pile of research. William G. Bowen, Martin Kurzweil and Eugene Tobin summarized what we know in their book “Equity and Excellence”: “It seems that family finances have a fairly minor direct impact on a student’s ability to attend a college,” though family background has a large impact on whether students are academically and socially prepared.

Yet when politicians address this problem, they inevitably ignore the core issues — lack of preparedness, personal crises, disengagement, cognitive dissonance. They flee to the issue of tuition costs. They think like engineers.

Recent administrations have increased tax credits and grants to help make college affordable. This week, Hillary Clinton and the folks at the Democratic Leadership Council unveiled the centerpiece of a plan to restore the American Dream. They called for creating performance-based higher-education block grants worth $150 billion over 10 years and $3,000 tuition tax credits. They believe the programs will lead to one million more college graduates by 2015.

These are some of the smartest and best people in politics today. And yet their proposals won’t work. Tuition tax credits and grants have not produced more graduates in the past and they will not do so in the future. Bridget Terry Long of Harvard meticulously studied the Clinton administration’s education tax credits and concluded that they did not increase enrollment. Sarah E. Turner of the University of Virginia concludes, “Very broad-based programs such as tuition subsidies or across-the-board grants to low-income students are likely to have minimal effects on college completion while imposing large costs.”

It’s easy to see why politicians would want to propose tax credits as a way to bribe middle-class parents into voting for them. But if you actually want to increase the share of college graduates, you have to get into the ecology of relationships.

You have to promote two-parent stable homes so children can develop the self-control they need for school success. You have to fundamentally reform schools. You have to expand church- and university-sponsored mentoring programs and support groups. As Caroline Hoxby of Harvard notes, you have to surround students with people who will help them make informed decisions so they can attend a college they find useful.

None of these programs pack the policy wallop of a great big appropriation. But the fact is, when it comes to helping people flourish, the ecologists are usually right.

Hillary Clinton has forgotten more about early childhood development than most of us will ever know. Why she needs to be reminded about the importance of relationships is beyond me.

Photo credit: David Brooks (The New York Times)

Technorati tags: David Brooks, The New York Times, Colleges, College Costs, College Grants, College Tuition, Universities, Education and Schools, Politics, Congress, Government, news, commentary, op ed