Subject: The Weekly Newsletter: Obama's Choice and 'Crazy U'
From: The Weekly Standard <editor@updates.weeklystandard.com>
Date: 3/2/11, 16:32
To: "Barrett Brown" <barriticus@gmail.com>
Reply-To:
The Weekly Standard <r-alddplnmpynswyrkplvkhrcypvgrkhplzddvrrddddc@updates.weeklystandard.com>

Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser. Follow us on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook
the weekly Standard
MARCH 2, 2011 By Matthew Continetti
newsletter
COLD OPEN
These days I open the business section of the paper with trepidation. The news isn't good: There's the oil spike, ongoing problems in the housing market, long-term unemployment, commodity-price inflation, and the decline of the dollar to worry about. The rising price of oil is driving equities down. Corporate earnings are doing well and so is manufacturing, but that hasn't translated into the torrid job creation we need. Nor is economic growth anywhere near the level it has to be to shrink the deficit and pay off America's bills. Speaking of bills, they are all coming due for municipalities, states, and the federal government. I could go on, but pretty soon I'd start sounding like the guy in the Goldline commercial.

Remember Ben Bernanke's "green shoots" in 2009 or Timothy Geithner's "Recovery Summer" in 2010? Neither turned out as planned. We've been stuck in the economic muck for years, but our leaders seize on every piece of good news without looking at the big picture. The Democrats, in particular, seem tied to the old way of doing things, resisting reductions in spending or alternative monetary policies or changes in labor law even though the status quo is not worth preserving. The budget showdown may be delayed for another two weeks, but eventually President Obama will have to make a choice: accept cuts in spending or try to pin any fallout from a government shutdown on the Republicans. What gives us confidence that he'll make the correct choice? And did anyone imagine, two years ago, that the symbol of hope and change would so quickly become the emblem of cynicism and the status quo?
LOOKING BACK
"I was myself the recipient of a partial great-books education at the University of Chicago, which Hutchins was able to install after the smog of controversy had cleared. Mine was assuredly better than a bad-books education, such as is nowadays offered at almost every school in the land, but education, I have come to conclude, is mostly luck in finding good teachers. I myself never found any at Chicago. (They were there in the persons of Frank Knight, Edward Shils, Joseph Schwab, and a few others, but I didn't search them out.) What I did discover at Chicago was an atmosphere where erudition was taken seriously. Because all the books taught were first class—no textbooks were allowed, no concessions were made to the second-rate for political reasons, and one was graded not by one's teachers but by a college examiner—I gradually learned on my own the important writers and eternal issues, and where to go if one wished to stay with the unending work in progress called one's education."

—Joseph Epstein, "The Great Bookie: Mortimer Adler, 1902-2001," from our July 23, 2001, issue.

Remember you get full access to THE WEEKLY STANDARD archive when you subscribe.
 
Doing the Right Thing
McCain supports Middle East Protesters
Read More
 
Republicans in 2012
Who has what it takes to unite the GOP?
Read More
 
FROM THE DESKTOP
Niall Ferguson unplugged
Christopher Hitchens: Is Obama Swiss?
The fate of Thomas Jefferson's second library
Kay S. Hymowitz on "pre-adulthood"
The last doughboy
QUOTE OF THE WEEK (SO FAR!)
"In America students went off to college with multiple and often contradictory expectations. But one expectation was shared above all others: higher ed should be useful. It should prove its value in dollars and cents. In American higher education democratic idealism met economic pragmatism. In the last 50 years a college degree became what it had never been before: the necessary credential for the most desirable jobs in the market, especially in professions that had once been taught in less-formal apprenticeships, such as law and medicine. Social ambition entered in as well; never underestimate the pull of snobbery."

—Andrew Ferguson, Crazy U: One Dad's Crash Course in Getting His Kid Into College, p. 36.
LOOKING AHEAD
Here's what we've got cooking at THE WEEKLY STANDARD: Christopher Caldwell recently returned from France, where he interviewed Marine Le Pen, daughter of the infamous Jean-Marie Le Pen and president of the National Front. Charlotte Allen has written a fascinating essay on her travels in the Levant. And William Kristol, Peter Wehner, and I all plan to opine on the nationwide budget battles.
PARTING SHOT
Andrew Ferguson's new book, Crazy U, asks an important question: Why do so many people spend so much money to go to college? One answer is that a college degree is a signaling mechanism: holding a bachelor's tells prospective employers that you are at least responsible enough to complete four years at an institution of higher learning. The employer therefore infers that you possess a bare minimum of knowledge and will show up to work (maybe).

Ferguson interviews economist Richard Vedder, who has compared college tuition to a bubble, like in tech stocks or housing. Vedder notes that the cost of a bachelor's degree has increased well above inflation for years and shows no signs of abating. When I went to school at a private university at the beginning of the last decade, tuition was in the range of $35,000 per year. Now it routinely tops $50,000 per year. Is it possible that one day families will pay $100,000 a year or more for college?

The economist Herb Stein said that if something cannot go on forever, it won't. Someday soon, the cost of college will plateau or even fall. I doubt that will be the result of the federal government stepping in and paying for everyone—after all, the federal government's broke. More likely it will be the result of individuals choosing alternative forms of certification and credentialing or opting not to go to college altogether. When that day will come is anyone's guess. I just hope it arrives before I have to fork over $130,000 a year for my kid to attend a parent-free bacchanalia.

See you next week. And don't forget you can write me at editor@weeklystandard.com.

--Matthew Continetti

 Share

P.S. To unsubscribe, click here. I promise not to take it personally.
MORE FROM THE WEEKLY STANDARD
Obama Squeaks Up
Bill Kristol on the administration's reaction to the turmoil in the Middle East Read more…
 
The American Woman
What Henry James Knew, from the November 13, 2000 issue Read more…
 
History of Quorum Busting
What would the Founders think of Wisconsin's fleeing legislators Read more…
 
 
Online Store
Squeeze the head to the left to relieve stress. Yes you can! Only at our store.
Visit Store
 
 
Subscribe Today
Get the magazine that The Economist has called "a wry observer of the American scene."
Subscribe
 
Read probing editorials and unconventional analysis from political writers with a
dose of political humor at weeklystandard.com.
the weekly 

Standard
Become a Fan on Facebook Follow us on Twitter  Share
To unsubscribe, click here.
the weekly Standard