No.

Lots of people who should know better claim that our higher education system is “the envy of the world,” but it isn’t the best by a long shot. A new study by AEI scholars Jason Delisle and Preston Cooper looks at 35 nations’ higher ed systems and concludes that no nation is “the best.”


In today’s Martin Center article, I comment on that study. Its conclusion is correct in that no governmental higher ed system can be optimal, but my argument is that if we (or any other country) would take government out of higher education and allow the spontaneous order of a free society to work, we would get the optimal system.

Actually, it wouldn’t be a “system” at all, just millions of voluntary, unsubsidized, and uncoerced decisions by people and institutions. That leaves the decisions and inevitable trade-offs where they belong (with people who are spending their own money based on their own knowledge and expectations) and not with government officials who are so prone to decide based on special interest group pressures, short-sightedness, and other “public choice” problems.

Long ago, we took a laissez-faire approach to higher education and we should go back to it.