Government-Subsidized Education

W. Randall Kangus, director of the Office of Planning and Budget, U. of Illinois, recently dispelled the myth that government-subsidized education programs don't pay for themselves many times over by increased tax revenues over the life of the beneficiary. For example, Kangus found that for every $1 that Illinois invests in undergraduates at its university, the state gets back $4.31 in taxes over that student's lifetime. Put differently, the cost of this student's education yields a 6% real (inflation-adjusted) return. This not only equals the yield on a 30-year Treasury bond, it surpasses it. Kangus' cost-benefit study showed that the state's cost per student in 1994 was $5,096. To figure the "benefit," he extrapolated 1994 census data on the earnings gap between college and high school graduates, and projected that male college students would earn $1,028,463 more than a high-school graduate by the time they turned 74 years old. The conclusion? Students get a reasonably priced college education, and the state gets more in taxes on the higher income, for an investment return of 6%.

This raises the question of how much bigger the savings would be-aside from the tax gains-of educating convicts. Although most citizens decry spending money on convicts, as an economic and practical matter, the savings in police, lawyers, court costs, and penal warehousing would be tremendous if only a marginal number of one-time-criminals got out and stayed out and became tax assets rather than tax liabilities Not only would they be a tax savings of many thousands per year by reductions in police, judicial, and penal expenditures, but they would actually increase tax revenues.

Not only would taxes go down, but insurance premiums of all stripes as well. This would be real savings for every tax payer in America (as well as producing tax revenues for the government by increased income). Spend one dollar now, or spend a hundred later on.

But I'm not necessarily in favor of handing out free college educations to just any ol' convict who asks for it. I'd make them available only to people who are actually going to be released back into society, and I would erect some iron-clad provisos to screen out any bullshitters. I'd demand that they maintain a certain grade-point average, that they attend classes, that they stay out of the hole. In less time than you might imagine-through attrition-there would be damn few people enrolled. Then I'd move them to their own cell-block to be separated from all the mischief and knuckleheads in regular blocks, to give them a real chance to succeed. I wouldn't be surprised if these guys were in the 75-80% range (in terms of staying out). This would be subsidizing across-the-board free college educations to society's refuse-but only those who demonstrate they're sincere about wanting to turn their lives around. Those are the prisoners that society should welcome. As for the rest? They've got nothing coming (and I mean that literally).

-Randy Gometz, 35556-118, P.O. Box 8500, Florence, CO, 81226-850.

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