“Alexander Hamilton started the U.S. Treasury with nothing, and that was the closest our country has ever been to being even.” — Will Rogers
It seems that nowadays everyone gets a bailout or a stimulus of some kind. We covered Wall Street so that they didn't have to suffer for their mistakes. Same with banks, after all, unlike individual taxpayers, they're too big to fail. Auto makers make cars no one wants? No problem, taxpayers will pick up the tab. But even after all that, if a 150-year-old organization with three billion-with-a-B dollars in the bank that owned over ten square miles of valuable real estate suggested that they too might need a hand out, wouldn't that finally be something that fails the straight face test?
Evidently not, because that organization is the University of California at Berkeley. Yesterday in the Washington Post there was an op-ed from Robert J. Birgeneau and Frank D. Yeary calling for the federal government to start funding the operating costs of a few prominent state universities with a strong history of academic research. Given that the two are, respectively, UC Berkeley's chancellor and vice chancellor, it has to be one of the more transparently self-serving suggestions even in this shameless era.
Let's put their suggestion within the context of two questions. First, should federal taxpayers be taking on another funding responsibility right now? Well, in a recent column by Richard Rahn, the economist presents a laundry list of federal spending items that are spiralling out of control, but summarizes our current situation by saying, "In just the last eight months, the Congressional Budget Office estimates of the amount of additional federal debt to be held by the public grew by an astounding $4 trillion for the 2010-19 period; and that the amount of federal debt held by the public grew from $5.9 trillion to $7.5 trillion in just the last 12 months."
The problem with debt is that either someone eventually has to pay it off, or else we must pay interest in it, month after month, year after year, until the end of time or the U.S. dollar, whichever comes first. (I know which way I'm betting.) But let's say for argument's sake that we accept Birgeneau and Yeary's call for an infusion of taxpayer cash into higher education. Are universities like Berkeley really the place to spend it?
I would argue that community colleges are a better investment. We're in a so-called economic recovery that doesn't actually involve people being able to find jobs, making it a recovery that only an economist could love. In that tough environment it's community colleges that are picking up slack, becoming the place that workers go to retool their skills in a changing world. Like public universities, community colleges have also been hit hard by state budget cuts. The difference is that since they make differences in the lives of ordinary people rather than the elites like Berkeley does, community colleges don't end up with an endowment larger than the annual budget of a small country. In other words, unlike schools for the privileged, community colleges actually have to pay as they go.
Put simply, Berkeley, you don't deserve a bailout, you wouldn't really need it even if you did deserve it, and we couldn't afford it even if you did need it. The rest of us are making do with less. Surely if we can do that you folks can put all those researchers to work to figure out some way to use your three billion dollars to keep the lights on.
Image courtesy of Anders Sandberg