Don't Blame the School

Rebecca Strauss of the Council on Foreign Relations Renewing America initiative tells us how lavishly the federal and local governments fund education for the rich, and how little for the poor.

On the plus side, the Obama administration has pushed for more cost and quality accountability for education providers. ...

At the postsecondary level, for the first time vocational college programs could soon be held directly accountable for a “gainful employment rule,” where they will lose federal accreditation if the programs’ costs outweigh labor market benefits for their graduates. In other words, programs would shut down if their graduates don’t land good jobs.

Couple this with (1) manufacturers’ efforts to get community colleges to “teach to the job,” so that each graduating class will supply more skilled workers than there are jobs available—so the manufacturer can pick the best, pay bottom wages, and leave many without work; (2) enrollment rises when jobs are scarce. Now we’re going to shut down the school because it didn’t give the graduates a leg up. So they can go directly into the unskilled workforce, with no postsecondary education. Not a good plan.

And of course, no school for the rich will be shut down. Those grads get jobs because Daddy has pull. "Accountability" is just another word for taking from the poor.