When Colleges Compete – Everybody Wins

It’s too bad high school diplomas have lost so much of their value. It appears that some Idaho public high schools have been printing diplomas like North Korea has been printing $20 dollar bills. The current craze to fix problem high schools is to create community colleges. These “colleges” are designed to re-educate high school graduates that didn’t seem to learn much in high school. Maybe the State should require that high schools provide money-back guarantees on their diplomas. Given the fact that the cost to taxpayers to produce a high school graduate is $120,000, some kind of warranty should be expected.

BSU was all in favor of the idea of a new community college. More students equal more money. Fortunately for students and taxpayers, several other colleges want to get into this game as well. We strongly suspect that what BSU really wants is an exclusive monopoly. Now it has become a turf war. Both the College of Southern Idaho (CSI) and Treasure Valley Community College (TVCC) want to expand into the lucrative Boise market. In the case of TVCC, Oregon taxpayers want to subsidize the education of Idaho students. What could be better?

There are lots of choices when it comes to higher education in Boise. BSU, U of I, ISU, NNU, and Albertson College have been offering courses and degrees here for a long time. George Fox and University of Phoenix recently entered the market. There are also a number of on-line and executive education programs provide courses tailored to student needs and time schedules. Did you know that University of Phoenix was founded in 1976 and is the largest private university in the world with over 170 campuses in 33 states? How can a college grow that large and that fast if it wasn’t providing good value? The bottom line is that competition is making all of these colleges better.

The reason our public K-12 public education system is so lethargic and costly is there is no competition. Imagine what our public education system could be like if there was robust competition? The greatest obstacle to improving public education is monopoly, not competition. By granting territorial monopolies to school district bureaucracies, we have insured mediocrity and higher and higher costs.

The last thing the legislature should do is grant an exclusive monopoly to any organization to create a community college. If our legislature really wants to improve public education and lower costs, the first thing it should do is open K-12 to free markets and parental choice. A little bit of choice and competition can go along way. In the mean time, take the diploma printing press away from high schools by making them guarantee their product.