Finneran: Free Lunch, Free College, and Other Fairy Tales
Friday, October 23, 2015
America needs a bookkeeper, a boring green-eyeshade bookkeeper, a person who knows how to say “no”. It does not need “vision” or “legacy” or any other vanity projects. We are a dead-broke nation, eating our children’s futures.
The big idea now is for “free college”, which of course is not now nor ever will be free. If students and their families are relieved of the costs of college, those costs must be paid by someone else. You can guess whom that might be. Professors, libraries, computers, labs, and dormitories cost money, lots and lots of money. Those costs don’t magically disappear when the feds come on the scene.
The conversation must begin with an increasingly controversial notion---that one should earn their way forward in this world, rather than be carried along by everyone else. The magic word, and the compelling principle is “earn”. It carries with it certain old-fashioned and critically important concepts such as hard work, self-discipline, self-sacrifice, and delayed gratification. It’s a truism that we more deeply appreciate that which we’ve earned, much more so than that which is simply given.
No lecture is needed about the staggering costs of college. I’m painfully familiar with those costs and I tremble at the thought of yearly tuition costs when my young grandchildren reach college age. I continue to hope, without much confidence, that college presidents and administrators will embrace serious cost reductions, closing down frivolous departments, eliminating nonsense courses, and focusing on essential value. The blithe assumptions of college presidents that America’s families will continue to pay ever-increasing sums of money to indulge their little Tommy and their little Becky might not hold. Private college costs now exceed $60,000 a year and those costs are projected to exceed $ 90,000 a year within a decade or so. Even so-called “rich” families blanch at the thought of having two or more children in college at the same time.
Back to the political season promise of “free college”………..has the federal government ever provided taxpayer monies without attaching strings as strong as steel and as suffocating as smog? For any purpose at any time? The answer of course is no. In fact, it’s a perfectly understandable concept that those who provide the funds also set the rules. And so it would be with “free college” where Tommy and Becky would have their curriculum and course loads set by federal bureaucrats and political appointees. The Pelosi-Boehner and McConnell-Reid wars would then be fought day by day and every day in the nation’s colleges. Perish the thought.
As recklessly spendthrift as many private colleges are, I suspect that parents and students strongly prefer the thought of exercising their own judgement rather than submitting to the demands and dictates of a federal bureaucracy. As costs climb ever higher both the parents and the students will undoubtedly shop the market much more intensely, looking for enduring value. No rational person wants to start their professional and personal life owing six figures of debt.
So before we kneecap the nation’s taxpayers for the many billions of dollars required for “free college”, let’s consider a few things:
1) Many of those taxpayers have already paid for a) their own college education and b) their children’s college education. They have matched their desires with personal responsibility. Are present and future generations incapable of making the same effort?
2) Students might be more likely to forego the current trend of a 5,6, or even 7 year casual drift through college if they are paying the freight; can you imagine how leisurely their stroll would become if the taxpayers are on the hook? Graduation in three years is hard but doable and graduation in four years is a layup. College is supposed to be a serious endeavor, not a multi-year odyssey of naps and beer.
3) Hard work, disciplined savings, and prudent debt serve two purposes. First, in combination, they allow young Americans to pay for their college costs, conferring the dignity of self-reliance and independence. Second, they inculcate certain principles which will serve those young Americans well for the rest of their lives.
Somewhere along the road of life we’ve learned that there is no free lunch. Might that lesson be remembered as we hear the seductive songs of campaign season. Drain the punchbowl.
Related Articles
- Finneran: The Billion Dollar Blowhard
- Finneran: Lee Siegel, Groper
- Tom Finneran : A White Guy’s Thoughts
- Tom Finneran: A Service to be Praised
- Finneran: Summer’s Jewels
- Finneran: When “Less Asian” Is Less American
- Finneran: Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread
- Finneran: The Death of Freddie Gray
- Finneran: The Stone Still Weeps
- Finneran: Bulger to Meehan—-When Past is Prologue
- Finneran: Would you Fight - and Die - For America?
- Tom Finneran: Fear Came Quickly On a Summer’s Day
- Finneran: America at the Morgue
- Finneran: Fighting the Kardashian Kulture - Part 1
- Finneran: The Lion Once Roared, the Child Once Lived
- Finneran: WRONG AGAIN
- Finneran: In Defense of John Boehner
- Finneran: It’s a Black Thing, You Wouldn’t Understand
- Finneran: Dumb and Dumber
- Finneran: Other People’s Money
- Finneran: To Kill An American
- Finneran: August’s Soft Summer Nights
- Finneran: Putting the “Awe” Back in Awesome
- Finneran: Heartache and Nonsense in Auburn
- Finneran: A Disservice to Those Who Served
Follow us on Pinterest Google + Facebook Twitter See It Read It