At the opening talk, the speaker flew through a series of PowerPoint slides, sometimes three or four of them in a matter of a second or two. But I did learn that nationwide, more money is being spent on wealthier students, and less on low-income students in the form of grants, federal aid, and institutional aid. So, the speaker concluded, more money is going to students who don’t need it. In the past year, there’s been about 17% more money for low-income and about 35% more for high-income students. 60% in aid dollars go to students with no financial need …

At that point someone in the back, who I believe was with the speaker, shouted that it was “entirely possible…

The evidence on college dropout rates is exhaustively examined in a recent American Enterprise Institute study Diplomas and Dropouts, done by some first-rate researchers (Rick Hess and Kevin Carey, among others). The study shows what veteran college professors like myself have long known, namely that students who come to college well qualified have a very high probability of graduating –the graduation rate at top Ivy League schools is well over 90 percent, while at schools with open admissions that take any high school graduate who can write a check, it is not uncommon for graduation rates to be well below 25 percent.

Two pillars of the Higher Education Establishment, William Bowen and Michael McPherson (former presidents of Princeton University and…