The cost of a university education in America has increased significantly in the past decade. As usual, our government’s plan is to subsidize college education. When you subsidize the purchase of a good or service, you don’t drive the price down, you drive it up, because people will consume more of the good or service being subsidized. Increasing college subsidies will only make the problem worse, because colleges will simply raise their tution rates even more.
I propose a simple solution to the problem of increased tuition: Any school that takes federal funding is required to let anyone who wants to sit in for whatever exams they would like, as long as they pay the university a nominal fee, perhaps $50 per exam. If a student can pass the final examination for a course, the school must give that student credit for the course; if the student has obtained enough credits to graduate, then the school must issue that student a diploma, just as if the student had paid whatever ridiculous amount the school would normally charge students for tuition, room and board, and a million little fees for this or that.
Intelligent, motivated students could learn what they needed to on their own time, by teaching themselves or paying private tutors who would work for a fraction of the cost of tenured professors with Ph. D’s. A degree from Harvard or Stanford would no longer be something only available to those privileged enough to afford it, and it would be possible for students to work to put themselves through college, rather than relying on financial aid from the government.
Who would gain from this new rule? Millions of people with the intellect and personal ambition but not the means to afford a college education would be able to better their lives and their futures by obtaining college degrees from reputable institutions. Businesses looking to hire top talent would have a much wider pool of empoyees to choose from. Increasing the number of people trained in practical fields would do wonders for the economy.
Who would be hurt by this new rule? Universities would lose some of the money they gain from tuition, but for institutions like Harvard, this wouldn’t matter, because they get most of their money from their endowments. Tenured professors might find themselves out of a job, as people who are capable of teaching themselves would simply pay the $50 fee and take the exams. The people who would lose the most from this system, though, would be those rich enough to afford a degree from Harvard who would now be forced to compete with people who are more intelligent and more ambitious than they are, but who couldn’t afford to go to Harvard because they weren’t lucky enough to be born into a family wealth enough to afford it.
Imagine a world where being born into a family with money no longer meant that you only required modest social abilities to succeed in life, and where the only thing required to attend a prestigious institution would be a sharp intellect, a strong work ethic, and a hunger for success, instead of the ability and willingness to pay $200,000 for a college degree.