The list of things that have been cut from the economic stimulus bill were made public today.  Some of it has to do with higher and distance education.  Those include:

$3.5 billion for higher education construction
$100 million for distance learning

You can see the list here: http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/07/stimulus.cuts/index.html

I am not sure what to think about these cuts.  On one hand, I am glad they were cut because they will have no direct impact on the economy.  In a sense, this is just more pork that we don’t need to deal with.  Furthermore, allocating any amount of money for a purpose without revealing the details seems suspect to me.

If they were allocating $100M for “distance learning”, I would want to know where they money was going.  It seems to me that distance learning is a great opportunity for institutions to increase revenue with minimal expenditure.  The demand is very high and with the economy in the condition it is currently in, I don’t see the demand decreasing.  So why spend so much money on it?

Spending $3.5B on higher education construction could be used to modernize some of the facilities, but again, the demand for distance education would help to alleviate the need for so much construction.  Schools are like any other business.  If they manage their money, they won’t need to take a hand-out from the government.  Furthermore, this kind of spending won’t impact the economy in the short-term anyway.

I feel like a sheep right now.  The government has just tried to take more money than we can possibly imagine and throw it at projects that have no direct impact on what is ailing the country at this moment in time.  Politicians are complaining that this bill needed to “be passed yesterday” and are hurrying to get it done.  I can’t help but to feel that they are hoping we don’t get an idea of what we’re buying.  
There is NOTHING on this list that makes the bill urgent.

I think that if we did nothing, or limited government intervention, the economy would rebound over time as a result of people working and thinking leaner and smarter.  As a result, the economy will get better for those same reasons and we’ll be stuck with a bill anyway.