<p>Hi, everyone, </p>
<p>A Cato Institute article published in Black Enterprise magazine </p>
<p>has an interesting take on the economics of higher education. Why pay more than you have to?</p>
<p>That is an excellent and thought provoking article.</p>
<p>I'm left wondering whether the whole point of this lengthy article was to promote school vouchers in the elementary and secondary public school system. I was unimpressed with the statistical analyses. Correlations between what a state pays for higher education costs and the number of its residents attending college has so many potential covariates as to make the coefficient rather meaningless, much less his conclusion that states who support higher education are wasting money. As an economist I thought he should have defined more completely what he thought the "product" of higher education should be. If he is content to view it as obtaining the diploma, then he can argue from his data that efficiency should prevail. If he broadens his "product" to include the personal and intellectual development of young people, then the monies spent on theaters, music rooms, libraries, and sports teams are well spent. As an aside, I don't see too much talk on this site about the university of phoenix.</p>