What the Gulf Oil Spill Can Teach Us About School Spending
by Frederick M. Hess • May 25, 2010 at 9:29 am
Cross-posted from Education Week
 Print |  Send |  RSS |
We're watching a slow-motion disaster unfold in the Gulf, as BP and Transoceanic fumble around with booms, siphons, and talk of "junk shots" while hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil a day spew into the Gulf. Our attention is focused on public hearings and how to contain the damage. Fair enough.
But we might want to take a moment to think about how we got here. We're drilling in deep-water and, at least up until a few weeks ago, were aiming to do a lot more of it because of our enormous appetite for crude oil. Perhaps the most elegant solution to this dilemma was offered back in 1993 by the Clinton Administration, when it proposed to help balance the budget by taxing Americans for the energy they actually consumed (this was Gore's "BTU" tax). The proposal would have used simple price incentives, rather than heavy-handed rules or mandates, to curb our energy appetite and ensure that the cost of oil more accurately reflected its actual social cost.
Of course, the BTU proposal went down, just as most calls to raise gas taxes typically do. So, today, we've wound up with massive ethanol subsidies and with Congress debating a convoluted "cap-and-trade" scheme--all so our elected officials can do something about energy without it being so transparent as directly raising our
The For-Profit Question
by Frederick M. Hess • May 24, 2010 at 9:27 am
Cross-posted from Education Week
| Print | Send | RSS |
So long as we recognize that it is no wiser to romanticize them than to demonize them, we absolutely ought to welcome for-profits into the education sector. For that reason, recent administration moves to favor nonprofits and public operators and to marginalize for-profits, in areas such as i3 and higher education, are problematic.
For-profit providers rarely make an explicit case for their own existence, because they're so busy trying to curry favor with public officials and because parents are so worried about for-profits' public image. There's much discussion of choices and love of at-risk children, but little adult discussion of the benefits implicit in for-profit provision. While I've spent my entire working life in the employ of public entities and nonprofits (making me a peculiar defender of for-profits), I thought it's worth taking a moment to say a few things about for-profits that really should be said.
While they certainly boast their own set of potential weaknesses, for-profits also have unique strengths. Several of these are particularly relevant today. First, because for-profits seek to earn competitive returns for investors, promising entrepreneurs are positioned to tap vast sums through the private equity markets. Second, for-profits
