Education for all holds a future for few

Insight on the News, Nov 25, 1996 by Richard Grenier

It's not that Bill Clinton makes promises he doesn't keep. Or that he swings around like a weather vane when the political winds shift. It's that for our president, the future is a hazy dreamland where no one's ever held accountable for anything and where even the present swiftly disappears into the mist. Among dozens of examples, I'll choose just one for the particularly shining promise it offers America. Remember when most Americans didn't graduate from high school? And that now most do? Well, prepare yourself for a voyage into the Clinton future when all Americans - most, but all - will graduate from at least "the typical community college." Our being in peaceful and prosperous times, the American people recently have shown a disinclination to hold politicians to their promises. But this is a promise that from the very start doesn't make sense.

Who'll wait on tables? Who'll sweep the floors? Will a masters degree in business administration be required of janitors? There's something incorrigibly stupid about our presidents day-dreaming about universal college education, seen from the viewpoint of either employer or employee.

Some years ago a woman with a college degree told me she'd applied for her first job at Saks Fifth Avenue department store in New York. As proposed, her job would be to clip Saks advertisements appearing in the printed press and paste them into a scrapbook. That was it. That was the job. She was to clip ads all day and paste them into a scrapbook. Tb her astonishment, however, the Saks management told her that, unfortunately, she wasn't qualified. Although she was an honors graduate in English literature, she only had a bachelors degree they'd raised their standards. The person awarded the position had a master's degree, you see, and Saks wanted the best-qualified people. Saks never explained why a person with a master's degree was better qualified to clip ads from a newspaper than one with only a bachelors degree. Nor, indeed, why a college education was required at all.

Although the number will be greater in the years to come, there still only will be a limited number of positions in America really requiring a university education. So if Clinton's dream comes true and the entire American population miraculously is lifted into the educated class (these students of ours who need to be bribed with candy and cookies to do their homework or even come to class), then we shall have to import promptly somewhere between 100 million and 200 million immigrants to do our unskilled or semiskilled jobs. Either that or, to provide our enormous educated class with employment, we'll need to have engineering PH.D.s cleaning toilets.

What lies behind Clinton's vaporous vision of an America with wall-to-wall university education is what has lain behind many of his more luminous aspirations for the American future: an ill-thought-out but radical egalitarianism. Somehow or other he'd like all citizens of his idealized American future to be equal (an outcome I suspect I'd tolerate rather better than he would). But the trouble with radical egalitarianism, as with other products of the utopian mind, is that it doesn't work. It never has worked.

Take "income redistribution," a combination of credits and deductions to bring the rich and poor closer together. This has been a goal of many administrations less given to ethical ecstasies than Clinton's. But this high endeavor has been particularly obvious since the Constitutional Income Tax Amendment was approved in 1913. Now what have been the results?

In 1910, the proportion of national income received by the richest 20 percent of Americans was 46.2 percent. And what was the proportion in 1993? After wobbling about up or down a point or so for 83 years, the proportion still is exactly the same: 46.2 percent.

Now don't misunderstand. Over those 83 years the material standard of living of everyone has improved hugely, rich and poor alike. After all, 1910 was the age of gas lighting, the kerosene lamp, outdoor privy, the horse car. There were no radios, no refrigerators, no tractors, no electric-power plants and precious few automobiles. But over the decades, the upper classes have proportionally held their own. The middle classes have gained substantial ground. And while the poor lost a bit in cash income, a humane government - at times desperate to eradicate poverty - has provided them with a vast assortment of noncash benefits under the welfare state.

Thus, despite titanic efforts for years to reduce inequality, the distribution by economic class of worldly goods hardly has budged. If Clinton were to leave his fantasy world he might notice this. Instead, he has gotten it into his head that education is the key. If all Americans only can go to college, then, at last, we'll make giant strides toward the pie in the sky of economic equality. Anyone but Clinton, particularly those acquainted with our educational system, should be able to see that this egalitarian daydream of his simply won't work. It would lead to further grade inflation and lowered standards. We'd be giving college degrees to young people whose only educational desire is to get their diploma. After which, with this piece of paper in their hand, the grateful graduates would turn once again to the government - the source of all good things - to do something nice for them.