Written By Emmanuel Yaafi

The Obama administration’s commitment to see a USA with more college graduates than any other country in the world caused uproar in some quarters. In fact, from President Obama’s point of view, by the year 2020, America should have more college graduates than any other country on the surface of the earth. As indicated, the uproar caused by producing more graduates prompted the Miller Center of Public Affairs to organise a debate on the subject: Education and the Economy.  The analysis here focuses on the supply-and-demand relationship and its implications for the expansion of graduate production. The analysis is the perspective of a viewer of the debate. An attempt will be made to re –examine some of the concerns raised in ‘The Supply-Demand Bargain of Graduates’.

Let me throw more light on the subject and probably narrow it down as well. The core of the debate was that producing more graduates requires more public (state) spending. Those who argued practically from an economic perspective thought that such a venture was a waste of public (state) resources. In a capitalist economy like the US, job creation is, to a greater extent, the business of the private sector. Listen to the debate about whether to tax the rich or not, and you will fairly get more information about whose duty it is to create jobs. George Leef, who argued against producing more graduates, said employers will not create jobs because there are more graduates. Stressing this point, he said, “supply does not create its own demand’. That is, producing more graduates is not a guarantee that the graduates will be demanded. He further argued that more graduates will lead to “rigid credential inflation”. He pointed out that getting degrees will no longer be ones ability to learn since expansion of education to produce more graduates will also extend to more ‘unprepared, students. The result of all these, in Leef’s own words, is to ‘trash’ the qualification.

Let us look at some of the concerns George Leef raised. Some of the concerns raised appear to fit well with those in ‘The Supply-Demand Bargain of Graduates’, but from a different angle. The issue of ‘supply does not create its own demand’ in education warrants further discussion. Let us look at the entry and exit points of university education. There is an apparent insatiable demand for higher education at the entry point. A wide range of university education is being provided to meet growing demand. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said at the exit point. At the exit point, once a student does not drop out of university, they are bound to be supplied into the system, whether there is demand or not. It appears that at the exit point, supply far exceeds demand, and it is unlikely to change anytime soon. Therefore, we have more graduates in the system than are demanded. The result of this is the credentialisation. What it means is that, increasingly, jobs that do not require a graduate degree are being done by graduates. In the process, the graduates scare the non-graduates who are ‘better equipped’ with the necessary competences to do ‘some menial’ jobs. Again, it calls into question the competencies or the quality of the graduates produced. The resultant effect is that degrees become worthless. A typical example is the case of South Korea. Dr. Terri Kim, a specialist in Comparative Higher Education at Brunel University, presented a paper at the Danish School of Education in the last quarter of 2011. She elaborated on the credentialisation of the South Korean society – degree, everybody has one.

The continuous process of credentialisation and the resultant worthless degrees creates a new function of supply and demand in the system. That is, graduates become part of the system, thereby forming new supply-and-demand relationships. The numerous graduates, now the labour (to be employees), far exceed the number of jobs and the creators (employers), so the normative narrative changes. Instead of employers demanding the labour, the opposite happens. The labour is oversupplied and therefore abundant, seeking fewer jobs, making jobs scarce. Hence, labour becomes cheap and easily replaceable or discarded. From Professor Richard Vedder’s point of view, speaking equally against the expansion of graduate production, the public spending that will be made in the process will be a waste. This is because, in the face of huge social security and health care problems, the public resources should not be used to produce graduates who will end up cutting trees.

The complexion of the argument changes here because efficiency is introduced. Klees (2008) defines efficiency as the application of resources in areas that yield better returns. The prudence of state spending on producing graduates with next-to-nothing degrees is questioned. To be succinct, it is a colossal blunder to spend public resources to produce useless graduates. This line of argument moves from ridiculous to unacceptable if an individual takes out a loan to earn a worthless degree, since loans are to be repaid. So, a worthless degree means the investment made as a result of the loan obtained to pay for the degree becomes a bad investment. But one may argue that obtaining a loan to earn a worthless degree is an entirely individual decision and, therefore, the individual is responsible for it. It appears easy to blame the individual who chose to take a loan to obtain a worthless degree. But let us extend the blame a bit further to the managers of the economy, namely, governments, whose duty in this regard is to create a conducive economic environment for graduates to flourish. The economic quagmire we have had since 2008 can inhibit the likes of Albert Einstein. But the economic quagmire is a result of the actions and inactions of the same institution that Professor Vedder wants it to spend its resources to fix social security liabilities.

So far, the others who spoke in favour of the expansion have not been discussed. Mr. Lomas, speaking in favour of the expansion, raised some important issues. Among them are two issues deemed appropriate for discussion. The first issue was about ambition. He argued that not everyone who starts a university education will complete it, and therefore, most of the challenges his opponents raised are almost right. But he queried that because of these challenges, we should not be ambitious as people?  He is of the view that mediocrity should be discarded and that we, as people, should continue to push the limits. Dr. Patrick Awuah, the founder and president of Ashesi, a private and non-profit university, said the goal should be perfection. So in the process of pursuing perfection, we can at least achieve excellence. Lomas again said that setting the goal so low is what we do for others, other than our own children. He said we tell our children the sky is the beginning, while we tell others to aim just below the ceiling of their rooms. Again, he queried that, because of social security liabilities, should we ration education like the slave trade era, when educating a particular race was a crime. He is of the view that funding is used as a tool to ration education. In reference to ambition, Margaret Spellings said that this was what President Bush meant when he said “the soft bigotry of lower expectations” when he was signing the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) bill.  But this bill is indeed a different game-changer from its name, which space and time do not permit us to examine. But to be brief here, NCLB, by any stretch of the imagination, does not mitigate the problems. I think Miss Spelling’s reference to NCLB was merely to say that we should not allow financial constraints to limit our ambitions as people. In conclusion, what we want as individuals, as people, as a country, will largely determine what we do with our resources. A country that has prioritized education will find the resources to fund it. A country that has not prioritized education will find an excuse.