Policy Alternative - Education Financing

This posting relates to financial assistance, primarily government assistance, for higher education.

In part due to the recession, we hear that universities are being forced to cut costs and reduce financial assistance to students. The federal and state governments are also being forced to cut education budgets and raise tuition and other fees for students at state universities.

We frequently hear that we don't have enough medical doctors, not enough software engineers so more foreign software engineers are being admitted with H1B visas or that various jobs are being sent overseas because we don't have enough qualified people here. It strikes me as odd, given that we have a shortage of engineers and doctors, that financial assistance is generally available equally to all university students regardless of their area of study. When money is short, should we really be assisting aspiring interior decorators when we need more doctors and engineers?

Certainly until the recession is over but I would also argue that it makes sense in the long term, the majority of financial assistance for at least 3rd and 4th year university under graduate students and for graduate students should be targeted to students in selected degree programs such as engineering and medicine. If a music history student decides to pursue engineering as a 2nd major in order to be eligible for financial assistance I expect that we would all be better off. Perhaps with more engineers and scientists, there would be more vaccines developed and more jobs created here in which case we would all be better off.

Administering a program to support the above would not be that difficult or that expensive.