Florida Tries Higher Ed Experiment

[Valin]

Via Meadia:

10/26/12

 

 

Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution points us to an interesting development in higher-education taking place in Florida. Concerned by the growing student-debt bubble and the number of liberal-arts graduates who can’t find jobs, Governor Rick Scott is considering a plan to guide more students into the more technical STEM fields, where job opportunities are relatively abundant. As the Huffington Post reports, a new task force has recommended lowering tuition for STEM students in an effort to draw more students into the field:

 

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This is indeed an interesting development, although it has a number of serious potential drawbacks and is not yet clear whether it will even work. It is certainly true that students making their decision about what to study in college should take their financial futures into account, and STEM degrees do on average offer a better return on investment than many other degrees. If you are going into serious debt to finance a college education, it would be good to know that you’ll be able to find a well-paying job somewhere down the road of your career.

 

Yet this plan doesn’t solve the larger problem: tuition in most fields is simply too high, and colleges need to find ways to cut costs. Via Meadia would prefer to see a plan that addresses the skyrocketing costs of college and the burden of college debt, rather than plans that shift that burden around.

 

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It appears to me what we have here is the government of FLA picking winners and losers in education.