RALEIGH – There is a new study out on the issue of how state subsidies for higher education affect the college-going rate (read a story about it here: http://www.christiansciencemonitor.com/2002/0827/p21s01-lehl.html). Its findings won’t be welcome in the halls of many legislatures or university administrations.

Published by Harvard University’s Civil Rights Project, of all places, the report looked at “merit-based” scholarships funded by taxpayers in four states, including Georgia’s much-ballyhooed HOPE scholarship program, which is funded by a state lottery. While massive public subsidy is often sold as a way of increasing opportunities for the disadvantaged and improving the economic competitiveness of the state – both arguments you’ve heard a lot in the past couple of years from lobbyists defending the UNC system from budget cuts – the Harvard study offers little promising evidence for either proposition in the states studied.

First off, the beneficiaries of merit-based aid are not disadvantaged, and indeed most come from households with incomes well above the median. Moreover, virtually all of the recipients would have gone to college without the aid, suggesting little impact on the level of education in the state. In Georgia, where $300 million in lottery revenue funded HOPE scholarships last year, an astounding 96 percent would have attended college if the program didn’t exist. What Georgia is really doing is tricking relatively poor people to gamble their pocket change away so that relatively rich people can buy boats and take trips rather than pay for their children’s education.

Yep, we need to bring that enlightened policy here.

It would be far better to reduce significantly the amount of taxpayer subsidy going to non-poor families, increase support for the truly poor students on the margin, and then use the bulk of the savings to cut marginal tax rates and create jobs. But under such a policy the public universities, champions of the academic freedom to compel others to pay their bills, would have to earn their place in the market for post-secondary education and training. It’s a scary prospect, one they will fight tooth and nail to avoid.