Harvard Ought to Pay Its Honest Share

What can we do in regards to the corruption of American increased training? Milton Friedman had an thought 20 years in the past: Tax the colleges fairly than subsidize them. That mirrored a change of coronary heart. In “Capitalism and Freedom” (1960), he argued that faculty training had sufficient “constructive externalities” to justify subsidies. However after I was researching a e book in 2003, I emailed him (then 91) and requested if he nonetheless believed that.

He replied: “I’ve not modified my view that increased training has some constructive externality, however I’ve develop into far more conscious that it additionally has unfavourable externalities. I’m far more doubtful than I used to be . . . that there’s any justification in any respect for presidency subsidy of upper training. The unfold of PC”—political correctness—“would appear to be a really sturdy unfavourable externality, and positively the Nineteen Sixties scholar demonstrations had been unfavourable externalities. . . . A full evaluation alongside these traces would possibly lead you to conclude that increased training must be taxed to offset its unfavourable externalities.”