Nationalize the Ivy League—What Could Go Wrong? (Hint: Lots)

In response to William Deresiewicz’s recent
article in The New Republic about the deficiencies of
a modern Ivy League education, Chris Lehmann of In These
Times goes full Soviet: Nationalize the universities!
He
writes:

So rather than taking a sojourn among the working class to round
out a deficient elite life curriculum, why not reverse the tacit
social logic here? Finish the work begun by the GI Bill—which
wreaked a sea change in access to quality higher education via the
direct method of driving down its cost—and nationalize American
institutions of higher learning, abolishing anything more than a
nominal tuition fee. Yes, amid present conditions, this is utopian.
But it’s no less realistic—and infinitely more democratic—than the
expectation that better-trained meritocrats somehow will rescue the
rest of us.

This solution ostensibly addresses some of the faults
Deresiewicz finds with the operating procedures of Yale and
Harvard, which reinforce economic privilege,
according to the New Republic piece:

This system is exacerbating inequality, retarding social
mobility, perpetuating privilege, and creating an elite that is
isolated from the society that it’s supposed to lead. The numbers
are undeniable. In 1985, 46 percent of incoming freshmen at the 250
most selective colleges came from the top quarter of the income
distribution. By 2000, it was 55 percent. As of 2006, only about 15
percent of students at the most competitive schools came from the
bottom half. The more prestigious the school, the more unequal its
student body is apt to be. And public institutions are not much
better than private ones. As of 2004, 40 percent of first-year
students at the most selective state campuses came from families
with incomes of more than $100,000, up from 32 percent just five
years earlier.

The major reason for the trend is clear. Not increasing tuition,
though that is a factor, but the ever-growing cost of manufacturing
children who are fit to compete in the college admissions
game. 

As Deresiewicz notes, universities under the purview of the
state are not exactly bastions of equality and affordability. The
government’s efforts to
correct these problems have failed spectacularly.

In other words, let’s tread lightly here, comrades.

Reason‘s Jesse Walker responds to
Deresiewicz here.