There’s a group missing in the AP’s article this morning on higher-education funding and folks afflicted by tight budgets. See if you can guess who they are. From “Lawmakers consider college aid as state, family budgets dip”:
RALEIGH, N.C. — Families across North Carolina and state government felt the same financial pressures this year as they cobbled together paths for children to get a college degree.
More parents needed outside help to send their kids to school as the state’s unemployment rate hovered near 11 percent, tuition and fees rose, and family college investments tumbled in value. …
Here’s a hint. “Families across North Carolina [who are feeling] financial pressures this year” and needing help with the state’s unemployment rate in double digits include far more who aren’t struggling to send a child to college. Times are tough for everyone, not just for any discrete group that legislators want to help and certainly not for legislators who refuse to curtail their demands on struggling families’ budgets. Remember the lesson of Hazlitt: look not only at the beneficiaries of a government policy, but also those harmed by it.
Remember also the late UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Michael Hooker‘s observation
… I call it the “reverse Robin Hood scheme” but nobody seems to listen. Though exact data is difficult to obtain, we believe that the average family income at Chapel Hill is a little more than twice the average family income of the state. I find it ethically objectionable to have the working class of North Carolina subsidizing the education of the upper middle class.
