September 2, 2009 1:21PM 

# Fretting about College Costs? Don’t Forget K‑12! 

By [Andrew J. Coulson](https://www.cato.org/people/andrew-coulson) 

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There’s been much interest in the blogosphere recently over spiraling college costs. [Niraj Chokshi ](http://business.theatlantic.com/2009/08/a_little_more_than_a.php)kicked things off at the Atlantic, and the discussion was picked up by [Andrew Sullivan ](http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/08/degree-inflation-of-another-sort.html)and [Ezra Klein](http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/08/the_high_cost_of_knowledge.html), among others.

We’ll be [hosting a debate](https://www.cato.org/event.php?eventid=6423) on the causes of and solutions to this problem at Cato on the 6th of October, but in the meantime, it’s worth noting what the blogosphere has thus far overlooked: the epic productivity collapse in *k‑12 schooling* over the past 40 years.

As I noted in [Investors’ Business Daily ](http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=482311)last month, k‑12 spending has risen by a factor of 2.3 since 1969, while achievement at the end of high-school is flat. The scary details [can be found here](https://www.cato.org/pubs/handbook/hb111/hb111-20.pdf).

If public school productivity had merely stayed where it was in 1970, instead of collapsing as it did, Americans would enjoy a permanent [$300+ billion annual tax cut](https://www.cato.org/2009/04/28/how-serious-is-us-ed-productivity-collapse/).

State-run schooling has become so profligate and inefficient, in fact, that one recent study finds [higher public school spending is associated with LOWER subsequent economic growth](http://www.springerlink.com/content/26p7q52122326523/).

Oh, and regarding the education vs. health care debate that started all this: [k‑12 productivity trends seem worse than those in health care](https://www.cato.org/2009/07/23/the-productivity-challenge-is-health-care-as-bad-as-education/).

##### Related Tags 

[Education](https://www.cato.org/education), [General](https://www.cato.org/general), [Center for Educational Freedom](https://www.cato.org/center-educational-freedom) 

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