Should Governments Support Higher Education?

by Richard Vedder   As a professor who has spent over 90 percent of my half-century career in higher education at public universities, it was for decades a matter of faith with me that governments need to subsidize higher education. The two major reasons: higher education allegedly has positive “externalities” or “spillover effects” so that even non-college graduates benefit from college educations. Second, like most Americans I support the American Dream, the idea that anyone living in the U.S. can move from the humblest of circumstances to wealth and fame –in part by using education as a means to that […]