Robert Robb works for the Goldwater Instutute

The Arizona Republic really needs to make sure Robert Robb gets out more. So many of his columns refer to reports from the Goldwater Institute you’d think he works for them in marketing.

As usual he and Goldwater are going off the deep end in suggesting the state should invest in post-secondary education much like someone invests in a stock. This is interesting in light of Goldwater’s persistent claims that government doesn’t invest in anything, but that’s another red herring. I’m questioning Goldwater’s investment strategy because wise investors look at other firms and compare what they do, how they attract customers, examine return on investment, etc. If you do that comparison, you’ll be very hard-pressed to find a single, highly respected institution or other state that has made these draconian changes and made it work much less identifying one that has even attempted it.

The Goldwater report makes interesting projections by comparing public to private (including for-profit and non-profit, which is an important distinction) institutions, assumes 2% inflation, ignores new construction and expansion costs due to growth needs, excludes grants and aid to private school students, and winds up proclaiming private school and state-university costs "are comparable." They also pull out research by their favorite "professor-for-hire" Richard Vedder who "finds a primary reason for the rising cost of financing universities is the growth of non-instructional activities such as research."

Aren't colleges and universities supposed to do research? Conducting research doesn't teach anything? Wow. So, where do our new products come from? Where do our new drugs come from? Apparently not from colleges and universities. So Goldwater thinks colleges and universities in Arizona should not conduct research and only teach about research done at other universities because research is "non-instructional."

Based on this, they come away with this idea that if you just give students boatloads of money for astronomical tuition fees it will all net out with $768M is "savings" and provide all of the funding the universities need. Maybe that's true if you don't have those pesky research facilities to develop and maintain. That may be true if you can control where students go to college. That may be true in teenagers comply with certain economic assumptions of economists. And it may be true if you only want to train ideologues (remember Goldwater argued that politicians should be allowed to chose the books and curriculum taught at state colleges and universities), that will reduce educational expenses.

Sure, Arizona can get weird and base university funding on the theories of economists who clearly have too much time on their hands. But while there may be some inefficiency in post-secondary funding, tossing out the baby with the bathwater on an untried theory hardly seems responsible from a market or educational needs perspective.

Goldwater used to be useful in the past. But now they are so theoretically ideological, they do nothing but cloud the debate and create solutions in search of a problem.