Harvard Doesn’t Require Fixing. Neither Do Stanford and Princeton

Harvard is thriving. So are Stanford and Princeton. See the tuition charged by all three: at Harvard it’s $59,000, at Princeton it’s $65,000, and it’s $67,000 at Stanford.

Here’s the question, or questions: what if all three schools quadrupled tuition? Does anyone seriously think a quadrupling would limit the ability of all three to fill out their classes. Better yet, does anyone think it would result in compromised student quality?  

In contemplating the questions, cast ideology aside. It’s not the point. If we ignore the happy truth that the conservative-leaning overwhelmingly favor work outside of academia compared to the left leaning, we can’t ignore that on the matter of a market product, Harvard, Stanford, Princeton and those like them are thriving.

Furthermore, conservative parents and students routinely cast ideology aside when it comes to purchasing the college education product. While it’s popular on the right to say that elite schools indoctrinate socialists, the fears associated with indoctrination tend to vanish once a fat envelope arrives at conservative households from Harvard, Stanford and Princeton.

To which more than a few conservative, market-friendly types might say with good reason that college isn’t worth it at $60,000, certainly not at $250,000+, and that would-be collegians could attain much better knowledge at no cost simply by going to work. There’s no disagreement with them. At the same time, they’re missing the point.

Education, particularly on the collegiate level, was never about learning. Trade school this wasn’t, nor is it. All of this is particularly true in the United States. The economy is happily far too dynamic for education to factor in how men and women prosper (or not) once done with school.

Just the same, the businesses thriving in commercial areas new and old outside of academia plainly like to hire kids who attended Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, and those like them. Which calls into question the socialist indoctrination narrative embraced by conservatives, but that too misses the point.

That’s because businesses aren’t hiring the curricula offered by those schools, rather they’re hiring the difficulty of acceptance, while parents are paying enormous sums for the hiring practices, networking, and the long-term social benefits associated with the schools mentioned.

Is this fair? Yes and no. Particularly assuming a quadrupling of tuition that’s obviously not going to happen, the children of the well-to-do would be at an advantage. Though even there, it’s no reach to say that as evidenced by the value parents put on the networks developed at elite schools K-12 and university, the offspring of the well-to-do are frequently themselves smart and ambitious such that parents not well-to-do will pay up, go into debt, or both so that their kids can go to school with the children of the elite.

Still, markets work. How we know this can be found in those rolling their eyes at parents paying so much to have their kids sitting next to the offspring of prominent people. Which is the point. While Harvard is arguably an unrivaled door opener, the bet here is that the kid who worked his way through Wayne State has a pretty compelling story to tell recruiters too.

So let markets work by ceasing trying to fix what plainly isn’t broken. Instead of bashing Harvard, Stanford and Princeton, conservatives might look in awe at a product offered by all three that the whole world wants. Just the same, recognize that there are ways around not paying for an elite product, and that’s because no school can teach success.

Originally published on Real Clear Markets.