Should the Federal Government Subsidize Community Colleges?

At RealClearPolicy the organization No Labels presents “five facts” on community college. They are:

1. Trade school attendees often earn more than those who graduated from community college.
2. Three out of five students who start community college do not complete a degree program within six years.
3. Twenty states already offer some sort of free community college.
4. Community college applicants are already eligible for the same federal financial available to applicants to four-year programs.
5. One-third of community college students have incomes or access to parental incomes of $50,000 per year or more.

It’s not just that trade school attendees often earn more than those who graduated from community college it’s that on average trade school attendees do better. Add that the great demand for employees is for people with skills rather than degrees and the Biden Administration’s insistence on subsidizing community colleges looks even more puzzling. Under the circumstances it’s hard to justify. I can only see three explanations.

It may just be inertia on their part. For thirty years there has been a political consensus in favor of getting a college degree and that’s been the policy. Maybe the Biden Administration is just coasting on the failed policies of the past.

Maybe it’s just cargo cult thinking. Because people with degrees have higher lifetime incomes having a degree produces higher incomes. That’s not a particularly good reason, either.

Maybe the purpose of advocating “free community college” is not to help the students but to help the colleges, their administrators, and the people with advanced degrees who teach in them. Higher education has become a self-licking lollipop. It produces people with advanced degrees to produce more people with advanced degrees. That should end in favor of a policy that actually helps young people. Maybe advocating trade school attendance is a better strategy for doing that.