Equity and the Finance of Higher Education: Comment.

The paper presents comments of the author on the article "Equity and the Finance of Higher Education," by Lee Hansen. Hansen has dome a through job of laying out a smorgasbord of schemes for finding college education and highlighting some of the main equity considerations. He observes that efficiency arguments based upon external benefits lack empirical footing and than proceeds to the analytically less ambiguous but equally unsustained equity issues. Here the very range of his discussion serves to emphasize the diversity of objectives and the lack of factual knowledge. Frankly, the author finds it hard to criticize the paper for sins of commission to given the state of data, for sins of omission. Alternatives are reported generally without taking sides and the author cannot fault the report. Instead of serving as critic in the traditional sense, let the author summarize a few points and then add to the speculation. Further, the distribution of attendance viewed as attendance probabilities by parental-income class is more equal than it would be in a system of full charge without accompanying loan programs.