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relative to state institutions. It might also have the ancillary advantage of causing scrutiny of the purposes for which subsidies are granted. The subsidization of institutions rather than of people has led to an indiscriminate subsidization of all activities appropriate for such institutions, rather than of the activities appropriate for the state to subsidize. Even cursory examination suggests that while the two classes of activities overlap, they are far from identical.
The equity argument for the alternative arrangement is particularly clear at college and university levels because of the existence of a large number and variety of private schools. The state of Ohio, for example, says to its citizens: "If you have a youngster who wants to go to college, we shall automatically grant him or her a sizable four-year scholarship, provided that he or she can satisfy rather minimal education requirements, and provided further that he or she is smart enough to choose to go to the University of Ohio. If your youngster wants to go, or you want him or her to go, to Oberlin College, or Western Reserve University, let alone to Yale, Harvard, Northwestern, Beloit, or the University of Chicago, not a penny for him." How can such a program be justified? Would it not be far more equitable, and promote a higher standard of scholarship, to devote such money as the state of Ohio wished to spend on higher education to scholarships tenable at any college or university and to require the University of Ohio to compete on equal terms with other colleges and universities?5
Vocational and Professional Schooling
Vocational and professional schooling has no neighborhood effects of the kind attributed above to general education. It is a form of investment in human capital precisely analogous to investment in machinery, buildings, or other forms of non-human capital. Its function is to raise the economic productiv-
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5 I have used Ohio rather than Illinois, because since the article of which this chapter is a revision was written (1953), Illinois has adopted a program going part-way along this line by providing scholarships tenable at private colleges and universities in Illinois. California has done the same. Virginia has adopted a similar program at lower levels for a very different reason, to avoid racial integration. The Virginia case is discussed in chapter vii.

 
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