Can you imagine how much more this is going to cost us?
Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,
Presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have both come out in favor in “free” public colleges and universities. The scheme could be funded, as CNN describes it, by “drastic increase in federal spending on higher education.”
Much of the rhetoric around swirling around this issue relies on the idea that government spending on higher education in the United States is significantly lower than most other wealthy countries.
The narrative goes like this:
“everyone knows that Americans are incredibly stingy when it comes to spending on government services. ‘Public spending’ on higher education is much lower here than in Europe and Japan, and because of this, people must spend much more on higher education.”
But here’s the rub: that statement isn’t true. Governments in the United States pay more (as a percentage of GDP) toward higher education than many other so-called “peer” countries.
According to the OECD’s 2018 “Education at a Glance” report, public spending on higher education in the United States is 1.3 percent of GDP. That’s equal to public spending in Switzerland and the United Kingdom. And it’s higher than spending rates found in Germany (1.2), France (1.2), Canada (1.2), Spain (1.0), Italy (0.8), and Japan (0.7).