More on Higher Ed and the Role of Government

This just in from NPR's Marketplace: Pennsylvania is the new Germany. Seems up there in the Keystone State they think some students don't care so much about food courts and fitness centers when it comes to choosing a college, and the powers-that-be in PA state government want to establish a new no-frills, low-cost college to meet that need. Just give me a solid education, man. Kind of like they do in Europe, where most of the colleges and universities are A) almost exclusively state funded and B) no frills.

In Germany, for instance, tuition can't be more than $1,300 a year -- and even then students are complaining that they're paying too much for college. They used to pay nothing. Of course, there are those in Germany -- particularly professors -- who want the higher education system there to be more like it is in -- you guessed it -- the U.S. No-frills higher ed is great, they say, as long as you don't want to have any MITs or Yales or Harvards.