by James A. Bacon

Identify the person who said this quote: “In Virginia, one of the key goals of Governor Bob McDonnell’s Top Jobs higher education legislation is to increase the number of degrees earned by Virginians by 100,000 over the next 15 years. Why? Because more education equals greater economic output and better quality of life for all citizens.”

That statement could have come from any of hundreds of members of Virginia’s political class, for it reflects a near-universal consensus. The blind faith in “more education” regardless of circumstances is common to Democrats, Republicans, Greens and just about everyone other than a few hard-nosed cynics of a libertarian bent… like myself. This particular quote came from Teresa A. Sullivan, president of the University of Virginia, writing in the current edition of the Virginia News Letter (which just happens to be a UVa publication).

In “Higher Education as an Engine of the American Economy,” Sullivan makes a number of points that are worth keeping top of mind as Virginians think about how to prosper in a globally competitive knowledge economy. Universities educate the next generation of citizens. They are centers of R&D. They are magnets for the creative class. They are important players in the ecosystem of business and technological innovation. In sum, it’s difficult to imagine any state or metropolitan region prosper in the absence of strong, vibrant universities. Writes Sullivan:

“Perhaps more than ever, we need our universities to function well and to receive adequate support because universities are uniquely well suited to tackle the big, complex problems we are facing as a society such as climate change, disease control, economic turmoil, and other multi-faceted problems. University researchers and scholars are able to work across disciplines and to draw connections between their areas of expertise to arrive at solutions for these complex problems. Universities are built around a spirit of collaboration that today’s problems demand.”

All very true. But as the national economy hurtles toward Boomergeddon, threatening to drag Virginia with it, we no longer have the luxury of writing anyone a blank check based on bromides and generalities. Yes, we need to support our colleges and universities. But, no, we don’t  blindly accept the proposition that “more education equals greater economic output and better quality of life for all citizens.”

In a utopian world, everyone who wants to go to college could do so. But we live in the real world, a world in which millions of Americans are raised in a culture of poverty that does not venerate learning. We live in a world in which children are subjected to an educational system so dysfunctional that they longer they are exposed to it, the worse they perform in international tests. We live in a world in which a significant percentage of college students are intellectually too ill equipped to gain any benefit from their courses. Given the ubiquity of remedial classes and a disgracefully high college drop-out rate, it appears that we have already shot way past the optimal enrollment in our universities already.

Should we really be enrolling 100,000 more students in Virginia universities? I suspect not. Instead of pouring more money into universities on the vacuous  grounds that “more education equals more economic output,” we should be investing resources — or, better yet, restructuring our K-12 educational institutions — so they properly prepare more young people for the rigors of college before they go to college. It’s hard for university presidents to turn down more money from state government. But citizen-taxpayers should demand a higher order of critical analysis.