Needling the Choir

Lest I go two days without linking to Inside Higher Ed, there's a "Devil's Workshop" column from Wick Sloan today, in the form of a fake letter to Congress calling for higher taxes on higher education:

Perhaps it's time for the nation to admit we are at war and to act accordingly. The immense Iraq war spending is the answer, not the obstacle, to helping millions of low-income students attend and finish college now. Via tax policy for donations and endowments alone, our nation allocates $18 billion in benefits to higher education. In a commendable bipartisan spirit, the Senate, this year and last, has moved to reallocate billions in federal funds for student-loan subsidies from banks to students. The Tax Code offers the same opportunity.

I have to say, I don't quite see the point of this column.

I mean, I understand the point of calling for more measures to increase the ability of low-income students to attend college, but this has what, exactly, to do with the war? Many of the aid measures he proposes to fund by taxing college and university spending are good ideas in their own right, and don't require a cheap invocation of the war. This smacks of "If we don't [do a thing that I wanted to do anyway], the terrorists win," which is a rhetorical tactic I'd really like to see squelched.

If the point is to make the billions spent on war in Iraq look more ridiculous, well, good luck with that. And in any case, isn't this directed at the wrong people? Academics as a group already think the war is stupid-- you don't need to threaten their income to get them to agree with you. This isn't just preaching to the choir, it's needlessly annoying the choir.

From an economic perspective, a bunch of the things he's complaining about don't make a whole lot of sense, either. The logic behind things like tax breaks for academic construction is that those projects provide work for the construction industry, which gets money to not only well-connected contractors, but also to the people who do the actual construction work. That's a Good Thing, and it's worth a little tax revenue to encourage.

On the whole, this column is one of those pieces that's more concerned with being provocative than thoughtful. Which is all well and good if you're a columnist in need of work, but I'm not sure why I should take it seriously.