January 16, 2005
Reply to Student-Loan Comments--Posner
There were as always interesting comments, butI will reply just to the one that was made most frequently. It is that there are external benefits from the study of certain subjects in college, such as English literature and other of the humanities (philosophy, classics, etc.), that would be lost without subsidized student loans. I disagree with this argument for subsidized loans, on several grounds. First, while there may be some external benefits to the study of the humanities, although I'd like to see the evidence or even the argument, I imagine that they are exhausted at a lower level than is generated by subsidization. Second, universities have flexibility with their endowments and they can allocate more endowment funds to the humanities if student tuition income drops because of withdrawal of loan subsidies. Third and most important, most of the ablest students go on to some form of graduate education, and for them the choice of an undergraduate major has few economic implications and so is unlikely to be affected by the existence of loan subsidies. One of the commenters pointed out that I myself majored in English in college. I think it was a valuable background to my subsequent legal studies and I would continue to recommend it as a college major.
Posted by posner at 6:00 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack (37)
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Comments
The economic value comes from creativity. I'm not saying, of course, that non-humanities majors are not creative. However, an undergraduate degree in the humanities reflects a broader-based education than any other field. Generally, one could likely also argue that someone with a humanities background places a high value on a broad-based education.
Creativity generates economic stimulus. Creativity requires ideas. An idea is the synthesis of disparite elements. An education in the humanities emphasizes the act of synthesizing disparite elements. Therefore, college graduates with a background in the humanities have economic value, especially for entrepreneurial ventures.
Posted by Joe at January 17, 2005 10:19 PM | direct link
One point that I have not seen raised here with regards to students in the humanities is that they pay the same tuition as students in technical fields, even though the costs of their education to the university are considerably lower. In other words, we have some sort of distortion going on here, some sort of cross subsidy, something that I think should be dealt with before discussing if such careers should be subsidized or not. Personally, I am currently teaching a economic sociology class here in the US, and my students pay the same tuition as students in biology or chemistry. Offering sociology classes (for example) is a lot cheaper than offering Chemistry classes, with all its labs and supplies. Perhaps, then, subsidies would not be necessary if there was a difference in tuitions in accordance to their actual course.
A potential negative outcome of this would be what has been going on in my native country, Brazil: we are experiencing a boom in the number of people with college degrees, but most of these degrees are from small private colleges that only offer the cheaper courses, such as Business Administration and accounting, and that do not offer classes in more technological fields, something sorely needed in a developing country.
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