Should taxpayers fund any and every choice in school and/or major?

[freeloader]

The problem with citing Hillsdale and Grove City is that, BECAUSE they reject federal financial aid and because of their political positioning, they attract massive donations and corporate support. Hillsdale, for instance, has an endowment of $330,000/student. It’s not Princeton or Yale (both over $2 million/student), but it’s still a massive amount. It’s in the same company as Johns Hopkins and Wesleyan and ahead of institutions such as Cornell, Boston College, Wake Forest, Southern Cal and a whole host of other “rich” and “elite” colleges. The endowments and donation-driven budgets of these institutions allow the schools to do things like not receiving financial aid.

Hillsdale and Grove City are not market disrupters, they are hyper-niche marketers. They have found a niche that allows them to operate outside the norm for American colleges and universities. There are approx 3,400 non-profit colleges and universities in the United States. At least 3,300 are worse endowed than Hillsdale and Grove City. If federal student aid was eliminated, where would the trillions of dollars come from to allow all colleges and universities to operate like Hillsdale and Grove City? Even if half of those colleges and universities failed/were merged into others and the institutions became dramatically more efficient, it would still take hundreds of billions of dollars to allow all colleges to operate like Hillsdale and Grove City.  Conservative political organizations and mega donors (like the Koch brothers) will happily give to a few schools like Hillsdale and Grove City, but they give as much to prove a point about how “broken” the system is as to actually help higher education in this country.  Don’t take their bait, don’t fall into their trap. Be smart enough to look beyond the alternate reality they are trying to create to manipulate you.