The Liberaltarian Case Against Excess Higher Ed Regulation
Matt Yglesias has been blogging a lot about how progressives shouldn’t let the general deregulatory enthusiasm of pro-business conservatives dissuade them from opposing regulatory regimes that benefit rent-seeking incumbent firms to the detriment of everyone else. This reminds me of a state higher education regulatory issue that I imagine most people care little about: program approval.
States technically control access to the higher education market by building public colleges and universities and chartering private non-profit institutions, but that hardly ever happens anymore. Price controls are a mixed bag and hard to enforce–witness the proliferation of mandatory fees on many campuses that technically fall outside the umbrella of regulated tuition. In practice, state higher education regulatory bodies spend a lot of time approving and disapproving individual programs at existing public institutions.
Like many regulations, program approval and the broader coordination of institutional missions makes sense on
