Barack Obama says he wants to give every child in America an opportunity to get a college education. He appears to want the government to pay for it as a "right." This is troubling to me on several levels. First, not everyone is a candidate for a college education. It is hardly fair to pay for higher education for those who are qualified, since not all people are smart enough to benefit from a college education. It is clear that, on average, the smarter people do better in life economically. It seems unfair to me to have those people who less intelligent pay for those who are more intelligent. The more intelligent already have a huge advantage in our society. College has gotten more expensive, particularly at the prestigious schools. Obama and his wife seem concerned about the expense of their Ivy League educations and the large loans they apparently took out while in school. (In their case, the education appears to have paid off, given that Mrs. Obama was making over $300,000 per year, and last year their combined income was over $4 million.) It is possible to get a good education at community colleges without incurring such enormous expenses. I paid my own way to community college and had no debt after I got a Master's degree in Mechanical Engineering. I never found it difficult to get a job, and did not find myself at a disadvantage from the standpoint of skill compared to graduates from MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Rice, etc. Guys from those schools did have an advantage in going for managerial jobs, and they knew more famous people. But for technical work they had no advantage, and I think management is aware of that.

But considering the proposition that everyone should have a college education. According to information I have been able to find, it takes an IQ of about 106 to be successful in college in any field, and for law, medicine,engineering, math and science it takes an IQ of around 120. (Obviously these are averages, and some individuals may with lower IQ's may succeed by dint of hard work, unique skills, etc. At the same time some with sufficiently high IQ's may fail because they are lazy, have other interests, etc.) The average IQ in America is about 100, so less than half of the population is likely to succeed in college. Liberals like Obama do not like to consider than any human trait is genetic (except homosexuality) so they do not consider that IQ is important. But, whatever one thinks IQ is, it is a good indicator of academic success. If I take the IQ of different groups of Americans from the non-peecee book The Bell Curve by Herrstein and Murray and apply the Bell Curve to get the likelihood of success for the different groups of the population I get the following table (I used a standard deviation of 15 for all groups, but I'm not sure that is correct for groups other than white):

Group Avg IQ College, % Law, Medicine, Eng. etc.,%

African American 85 8 1.1
Hispanic 89 13 2.25
White 103 42 12.9
East Asians 106 50 17.6
Jewish American 113 68 31.9

I tried to find some data to check the plausibility of my analysis. The results were interesting. About 28% of the population over 25 have a bachelors degree. That seems reasonable, since not everyone wants to go to college (and many who go do not graduate for one reason or another). About 7-8% have advanced or professional degrees. Again, that seems reasonable. I did find one breakdown by group on bachelor's degrees that surprised me a little; African American, 17.6%, Hispanic, 12.1%, White, 30.6%, and Asian, 49.4%. I didn't find a number for Jewish Americans, but anecdotally, I would expect it to be higher than any other group. So, my analysis looks good, except for African Americans. Either there are a lot of over achievers in that group, or the average IQ or standard deviation (or both)for the group is wrong.

My point in all of this is that Obama seems to have his priorities wrong. It appears that, except for Hispanics, most people who are qualified for college are already graduating. To me the correct question is what do we do about those people who are not intellectually qualified for college? Sending them off to do something for which they are not suited seems cruel to me. It seems to me that the nation needs people in a lot of jobs that do not require a college education. Those are honorable jobs that pay well, and the nation needs to fill them. I think that providing training for those jobs would do more for the people who aren't qualified for college, or just are not interested in it, than wasting their time and money on college. The people who are smart enough to become Doctors or Lawyers can take care of themselves without government support.