Bacon's Rebellion

Who is Dennis L. Martire? For all the controversy over cost overruns in the Metrorail-to-Dulles project, his name has barely figured in media accounts. But he is the central figure in the decision by the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) board to require a Project Labor Agreement (PLA) for Phase 2 of the multibillion-dollar construction project — a decision, critics say, that could add $300 million or more to the construction tab for the rail line.

Martire, appointed to the MWAA board by Gov. Tim Kaine, is vice president and Mid-Atlantic Regional Manager of the Laborers’ International Union of North America (LiUNA). Working out of an office in Reston, he runs a division that represents construction workers from Virginia to Pennsylvania. In line with official LiUNA policy, he also has been an active advocate of Project Labor Agreements (PLAs) for major construction projects.

Under a PLA, the owner of a major capital project typically requires contractors to hire their workers from union hiring halls, contribute to union pensions, hire apprentices from union apprenticeship programs and abide by other measures that give union contractors an enormous advantage in the bidding process.

Here’s the timeline: In 2006, then-Gov. Tim Kaine transferred authority for managing the Metrorail-to-Dulles project, along with the Dulles Toll Road, to MWAA. Three years later, in 2009, he announced the appointment of Martire to the MWAA board for a six-year term. At that time, Martire was a public advocate for PLAs, as evidenced in this document published in 2008. After joining the board, Martire became chairman of the Planning and Construction Committee.

On April 6, 2011, the full MWAA board passed a resolution 11 to 2 requiring an estimated $2.5 billion to $3.5 billion worth of construction work on Phase 2 of Metrorail-to-Dulles to be subject to a PLA. One of the primary beneficiaries of the PLA likely will be LiUNA, Martire’s labor union, which represents lower-skilled laborers in big commercial construction jobs. LiUNA likely will collect hundreds of thousands or more in union dues as a direct result of the decision, and contractors and subs likely will pay millions of dollars into LiUNA’s union benefit plans.

Final details of the PLA have not been published yet, however, and may not be until the RFP is released for bids, so it is impossible to know for sure what the document will require, says Ben Brubeck, director of labor and federal affairs for Associated Builders & Contractors, which has protested the PLA. Phase 1 of the Metrorail-to-Dulles project, which is currently under construction, is operating under a PLA agreement, which prime contractor Bechtel voluntarily entered into. But that agreement exempts “merit shop” (non-union) sub-contractors from its provisions. A draft of the Phase 2 PLA would would make the agreement mandatory, and it would provide no exemption for sub-contractors, Brubeck says. With those two provisions, the second PLA will be more pro-labor than the first — a remarkable union accomplishment in a Right to Work state.

So, how did Matire come to Gov. Kaine’s attention? Why would the governor appoint someone with such an obvious vested interest to the MWAA board? Only Kaine can answer that last question with any certainty, but LiUNA’s track record as one of the biggest contributors to the Virginia Democratic Party surely entered into the calculus.

According to the Virginia Public Access Project, the Laborers Mid-Atlantic Regional Organizing Coalition has donated $419,050 to candidates and political action committees since 2007 — overwhelmingly to Democratic candidates. Creigh Deeds, unsuccessful candidate for governor, scooped up $250,000. Moving Virginia Forward, Tim Kaine’s PAC, garnered $55,000. The Laborers International Union of North America kicked in another $200,000 to the Democratic Party of Virginia in 2008,

Gov. Kaine, some may remember, wanted to appoint Danny LeBlanc, former chief of the Virginia AFL-CIO, to a cabinet-level position in his administration but was stymied by General Assembly Republicans who feared that the labor leader might undermine the state’s Right to Work law. Little did anyone imagine that Kaine would appoint Martire to MWAA or what the consequences would be. When Kaine announced the appointment, it seemed so routine that no one made note of it at the time. Only now, long after Kaine departed office, is the bill coming due. If critics are right in supposing that the PLA will add $300 million or more in project costs — not including the interest on long-term bonds — the citizens of Northern Virginia will be paying the price for a long time to come.

Correction: I have amended this post to correct the statement that Martire’s appointment to chairman of MWAA’s Planning and Construction Committee “put him in a position to shepherd the PLA through the approval process.” In point of fact, the PLA worked its way through the Dulles Corridor Committee.

How to Get Effective Teachers in All Schools
Center for American Progress
The best teachers are distributed unevenly around the nation’s school systems. To reduce educational inequities, pay teachers more… and more equitably.

Evaluating Patient-Centered Medical Homes
The Urban Institute
Patient Centered Medical Homes (PCMHs) are an emerging model for medical care. Lots of pilot projects are underway around the country. How do you assess different PCMHs to see how well they’re working?

A “spatial mismatch” has emerged between the location of jobs and people in metropolitan America, argues a new Brookings Institution study, “Missed Opportunity: Transit and Jobs in Metropolitan America.”

In a study of 371 mass transit providers in the nation’s 100 largest metropolitan areas, the authors find that nearly 70% of the residents of large metro areas live in neighborhoods with access to transit service of some kind. However, the typical metropolitan resident can reach only 30% of the jobs in their market via transit within 90 minutes. Access is particularly limited in Richmond, somewhat less so in Hampton Roads and superior in metropolitan Washington, according to data in the study.

Transportation decision makers should make access to jobs an “explicit priority” in their spending and service decisions, the authors contend. “Metro leaders should coordinate strategies regarding land use, economic development and housing with transit decisions in order to ensure that transit reaches more people and more jobs efficiently.”

Conceptually, Virginia regions have two broad options for reducing the jobs-people mismatch: extend existing transit service to areas now lacking it, with the likely consequence that they will run up larger operating deficits… Or change comprehensive plans and zoning policies to encourage a better balance of jobs, housing and amenities within areas already served by mass transit, thus generating more ridership and reducing the need for operating subsidies.

Readers paying attention to Ed Risse’s call for “balanced” regions, communities and neighborhoods will immediately find this idea familiar. Ed’s critics deem the idea of achieving balance in more compact, walkable communities to be uncomfortably akin to social engineering. They forget, of course, that existing land use patterns are the result of social engineering as well, the difference being that social engineering since World War II has designed American communities around the goals of single-family home ownership and personal mobility by means of the automobile.

I am agnostic as to whether automobiles are preferable to mass transit. Public preferences will change depending upon (a) the cost of gasoline, (b) the cost of automobile ownership, (c) the cost and convenience of mass transit, and (d) the general level of prosperity, among other factors. In other words, preferences will change according to circumstance. There is no single solution for all places and all times.

How, then, do policy makers decide which is the best modal mix? They don’t. They let consumers make that decision — with one caveat, that they pay full locational costs associated with where they live and work. Roads and mass transit alike must pay their way through fares, tolls, user fees, and the capture of capture of increased property values created by the building of new transportation infrastructure. Create a level playing field and let the market decide. That’s not social engineering.

According to the Brookings ranking of access to transit and employment, the Washington metro area scores in the Top 20 of the nation’s 100 largest regions, Richmond in the bottom 20, and Hampton Roads in the second-to-bottom 20. (Click on map for more legible image.)

It might seem like a simple question: Is it hard to quit smoking tobacco?

For Philip Morris, past and present, it depends on what kind of barriers your corporate lawyers have erected.

To Louis C. Camilleri, CEO of Philip Morris International, now conveniently based in Switzerland, the answer is no. While smoking is addictive, he admitted, “it is not that hard to quit.” Camilleri made the statement at PMI’s annual meeting in New York.

Meanwhile, down in Richmond, at its annual meeting, Michael E. Szymancyk, CEO of Philip Morris USA, said that yes to both questions. “Because tobacco use is addictive and can be very difficult to quit, our tobacco companies help connect adult tobacco consumers who have decided to quit with cesssation information from public health authorities,” he told shareholders at Richmond’s convention center.

Confused by this Alice in Wonderland doubletalk from what was once the world’s greatest cigarette maker? It’s just one of many contradictions.

The two Philip Morris were split apart by corporate fiat and an army of corporate lawyers a few years back. The reason? The U.S. branch, now headquartered in Richmond, still makes cigarettes but tells you not to smoke them, yet it still makes a tidy profit by doing so. Last year, sales were $16.8 billion with net income of $3.8 billion.

Philip Morris International, which sells tobacco products everywhere but the U.S, rakes in even more dough: $27 billion in sales and $7 billion in profit last year.

The company split up was arranged to help block the U.S. version of Philip Morris from health-related lawsuits and for the American version to promote tobacco regulation by the Food and Drug Administration on terms favorable PM USA, in other words, in ways that lock in the dominant market share of its best-selling product, Marlboro brand cigarettes.

While PM USA, now wonderfully separate, fights a holding action on U.S. soil, its one-time sister can hop sctoch the rest of the world selling even deadlier products. PMI has been testing a series of new — some more potent — tobacco products around the world.

One is Marlboro Intense that was test-marketed in Turkey. A shorter version of the flagship smoke, Marlboro Intense has tobacco packed more densely so a smoker can get a quicker nicotine kick when time is of the essence — say, eating out at a smoking-restricted restaurant or working in a smoke-free building. Another product, fatter cigarettes called Marlboro Wides, was test-marketed in Portugal in 2006. The following year, the company introduced Marlboro Mix 9, a high tar and nicotine cigarette, in Indonesia, where more than half of all males smoke daily.

So, the, is it any surprise that Louis Camilleri, head of PMI, is going to say that it isn’t that hard to quit smoking while Szymanczyk says (oh, moan) that it is?

The two companies are rich, well-run and deep-pocketed. Altria, owner of PM USA, buys favor by making major contributions to education, the arts, sports and culture. In Richmond, for instance, the decline or departure of a number of important companies has meant that just about two, electric utility Dominion and Altria, bankroll just about every community activity. And when the Virginia BioTechnology Research Park was floundering a few years back because it had little to show among its very large field of competing parks, newly-arrived Altria plopped down $350 million for a new research lab. Of course, they’re not about to tell you what goes on inside those lab walls.

What’s still overdue, however, is a reckoning. The handwriting is on the wall for tobacco products, unless you are dealing with Third World types who live in smoking cultures and haven’t been elevated to the level of caring or understanding about health warnings. In this country, cigarette smoking is on the decline. U.S. tobacco farmers started going to through a major downsizing two decades ago. The days of making deadly products and then telling customers not to use them can’t last forever. Even smokeless tobacco has been shown to be dangerous as use disappoints its makers.

It is “Oh So Richmond”, that the city (and the state) still bets on a losing horse. Not the first time, though. Look at 1861.

Peter Galuszka

Virginia saw a 20%+ increase in Temporary Assistance for Need Families (TANF) between 2007 and 2009. Some states are severely cutting back on their TANF programs, according to a report by the Center of Budget and Policy Priorities. Virginia is not mentioned as one of them.

The Redundancy in Federal Economic Development Programs
Government Accountability Office
Uncle Sam spends $6.5 billion a year on 80 economic development programs, most of which offer small business assistance. Bonus question: How much overlap is there between federal programs and Virginia’s Department of Business Assistance?

Unintended Pregnancies Cost Taxpayers $11.3 Billion Yearly
Brookings Institution
And that counts only public spending on abortions, fetal losses, births and infant medical care.

Comparing State Nutrient Trading Programs
World Resources Institute
Nutrient trading programs in the four Chesapeake Bay states should be harmonized to encourage more transactions between buyers and sellers in different states.

The tale of Dominique Strauss Kahn would seem too lusty for an international thriller: The managing director of the International Monetary Fund and a member of the pampered Parisian elite is plucked from the first class section of an Air France jetliner just as it is about the leave the U.S. by New York cops who charge him with sexually assaulting a West African maid at his $3,000-a-night Sofitel hotel suite in Midtown Manhattan.

Well, well, the Commonwealth through Transportation Board voted yesterday to designate a swath skirting the western fringe of the Washington metropolitan area as a “Corridor of Statewide Significance” in an action widely interpreted to presage the development of a Western Bypass for the metropolitan Washington region.

Pro-developer groups say improvements to the corridor could reduce congestion by improving north-south traffic flow, while environmental and smart-growth organizations contend that a new highway would open up more land for dysfunctional development and consume resources that could be better spent on other projects.

That all begs the question, what, exactly, is a Corridor of Statewide Significance, or CoSS?

The Commonwealth Transportation Board has posted a presentation that explains the concept. A CoSS is “an integrated, multimodal system of transportation facilities that connect activity centers within and without the Commonwealth and promote the easy movement of people, services and goods vital to the economic prosperity of the state.” The map above shows the other designated corridors in the state.

The state maintains a “Corridor Master Plan” to “preserve the capacity and ensure the safety of [the] Commonwealth’s major transportation corridors.” The plan addresses entrances, intersections, media openings, traffic signals and transit options “to preserve the facility for through travel and to serve future developments.”

“A primary function of the CoSS is to carry long-distance traffic,” states the presentation. It’s called a corridor of statewide significance because the corridors are designed to knit together the urban areas, large and small, of the state.

Why is the CoSS designation important? Because projects identified in the Corridor Master Plan “will be considered as priorities for funding by the CTB.” Ah, yes, follow the money.

I did not attend the CTB hearing, so it is possible that my basic question regarding the propriety of the new corridor was answered in testimony. If so, I apologize for bringing it up here: In what way is the new corridor one of statewide significance, as opposed to regional significance?

This is fundamental. As the shortest corridor in the master plan, this new corridor would carry little “long distance traffic.” If it serves only regional needs, it arguably does not deserve the designation. On the other hand, if the ultimate plan is to cross the Potomac and link with an outer beltway in Maryland, it would carry long-distance traffic. Is this the vision for the corridor? Inquiring minds want to know.

An interesting initiative will go into effect in the new fiscal year. Federal “Regional Surface Transportation Program” funds will be granted only to Metropolitan Planning Organizations in urbanized areas greater than 200,000 that have developed regional transportation and land use performance measures.

The metrics include traffic congestion, safety, HOV usage, transit usage, jobs-to-housing ratios, jobs and housing access to transit and pedestrian facilities, air quality, freight movement by rail and per capita Vehicle Miles Traveled.

For details on how that is progressing in Virginia, click here.

Public Sector Unions: A Driving Force of Big Government
Mercatus Center
Public service unions now constitute a majority of all union members. They accomplish their aims as much through the political process as through collective bargaining.

Constitutional challenge could stop the train

The Dulles Corridor Metrorail project has a way to go before it surpasses Boston’s Big Dig in the annals of the most ill-conceived, poorly managed public works projects of the modern era. But give it time. There is ample opportunity for things to go wrong.

Last month, the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA), the entity given responsibility for building the Metro’s silver line to Dulles International Airport and beyond, voted to approve construction of an underground station at Dulles at a cost of some $330 million more than the above-ground alternative and also to require contractors to use union labor – despite the $6.6 billion project’s massive cost overruns and Virginia’s status as a right-to-work state. News of the decisions ignited a prairie fire of protest across Fairfax and Loudoun counties.

Decrying the multijurisdictional MWAA’s action, Rep. Frank R. Wolf, Virginia Republican, has introduced legislation that would pack its board with a majority of Virginia appointees. Mr. Wolf’s response is understandable but he is missing the larger point. The core problem is not the quality of MWAA decisions nor that Virginia lacks sufficient representation on its board. It’s that neither the U.S. nor Virginia constitutions give MWAA the power to tax in the first place.

That, at least, is the argument of a class-action lawsuit filed in April by two Northern Virginia citizens on behalf of roughly 300,000 Dulles Toll Road commuters to roll back the toll increases MWAA enacted to help pay for the rail construction. John B. Corr and John W. Grigsby, frequent users, have been “victim of the illegal exactions … since they began in 2005,” the suit contends. Of course, MWAA and its Virginia supporters don’t call the tolls a “tax.” But that’s exactly what they are.

The federal government opened the Dulles Airport Access Road in 1962 to provide a speedy, toll-free link from Interstate 495 to the airport. As the Dulles Corridor developed, the commonwealth of Virginia constructed the Dulles Toll Road, flanking the access road on both sides, to serve growing local traffic. That 16-mile highway, which opened in 1984, was financed with Virginia bonds. Tolls were set by the Commonwealth Transportation Board.

In 2005, the Kaine administration sealed an agreement whereby MWAA would take over management of the Metrorail-to-Dulles project and assume control over the Dulles Toll Road with the plan of diverting toll revenues to help pay for the rail project. If MWAA had been content to set rates at a level sufficient to maintain the toll road and pay for prudent expansions of capacity, then the tolls could be fairly described as a “user fee,” the lawsuit argues. Once MWAA set rates higher than needed to fund the road and began funneling those excess revenues toward an entirely different use, the construction of Dulles Metrorail, the rates become a tax, the suit argues.

“Under the Virginia Constitution, the setting of rates or fees for a public service or facility is a legislative power that can be delegated to an officer or entity within state or local government only by the express authorization of the Virginia General Assembly,” the lawsuit contends. Gov. Tim Kaine never submitted his agreement with MWAA to the General Assembly for approval. Moreover, MWAA does not even qualify as an entity to which the General Assembly can bequeath taxing power. The private authority, says the suit, is “completely outside of the governments of the Commonwealth, or its counties, municipalities or other entities of local government.”

The Kaine administration argues that the General Assembly did, in fact, authorize the diversion of toll revenues in the 1989 Bond Act, which provided for improvements to the Dulles Access Road corridor such as mass transit and “other capacity enhancing treatments.” But that authority was granted to the Commonwealth Transportation Board, not the MWAA. In any case, the delegation of authority to the unelected board was likewise unconstitutional, the lawsuit charges.

The case will be heard in U.S. federal district court in Alexandria on May 26. A ruling for the plaintiffs, declaring the transfer to MWAA to be unconstitutional, would torpedo Metrorail-to-Dulles. Someone else would have to be found to manage the project but no one is standing in the wings. Presumably, the Dulles Toll Road would be transferred back to the state, which would be more reluctant than MWAA to jack up tolls to the $20 per trip in 2040 projected by MWAA’s consultants. With all the uncertainty, bond buyers would be reluctant to purchase MWAA-issued bonds to pay for the rail construction. Project financing would dry up, leading to more delays and, most likely, to more cost overruns.

No, Metrorail-to-Dulles hasn’t attained the legendary status of the Big Dig yet. But give it time. Two or three weeks should tell the tale.

This column was originally published in the Washington Times.

When Jerry Brown took office as governor of California promising to balance the state’s insanely unbalanced budget, one of his top targets was the state’s 400 urban redevelopment agencies. Using Tax Increment Financing (TIF), these quasi-independent entities siphoned roughly $5.7 billion yearly in tax revenue away from schools and other tax entities. Eliminating the agencies, Brown argued, would help the state close its $28 billion budget deficit.

While TIFs started first in California and proliferated fastest there, they are spreading across the country. And Randal O’Toole, a senior fellow with the Cato Institute, wants to stomp them out. With TIFs, local governments borrow money to finance development projects and repay the bonds with increased tax revenues generated by that project. It sounds like a win-win idea, but in “Crony Capitalism and Social Engineering: The Case against Tax-Increment Financing,” O’Toole argues that TIFs have been abused around the country and that state legislatures everywhere should repeal their TIF laws.

I happen to be a big fan of TIFs when properly administered. I co-wrote a column, “TIFs: a Template for Development in the 2010s,” with my friend Ken Powell, an investment banker with Stone & Youngberg, the nation’s largest underwriter of TIF bonds. I have to concede that O’Toole makes a number of useful points. But I think it would be foolish to jettison this valuable re-development tool at a time when state and local governments are, and will continue to be, financially strapped.

O’Toole levels several criticisms against TIFs. They:

• Subsidize businesses that likely would have located in a locality or nearby anyway without the subsidy;
• Capture funds that otherwise would have been allocated to schools, fire departments and other public purposes;
• Promote the building of stadiums, convention centers and New Urbanism projects that would never fly without government subsidies; and
• Give politicians a way to show favoritism to developers who repay the favor with big campaign donations.

I have no doubt that these charges are true at various times and places across the country. But O’Toole makes no effort to present a balanced case. He focuses exclusively on the negative. With the right protections in place, the problems he cites need not arise. How can we ensure that TIFs are not abused here in Virginia?

First, make Community Development Authorities (CDAs), the entities that create the special tax districts here in Virginia, totally transparent. Board meetings should be open to the public. CDAs should publish annual reports detailing their finances. The developer’s interests should be clearly spelled out. If we did that — gee, we already do — that would make TIF project financing more transparent than most government-funded projects!

Second, require that all tax revenues be used to pay for public infrastructure — no direct subsidies for developers. Ideally, there should be a requirement that “public” improvements must truly benefit the public. In other words, paying for streetscapes in a mixed-use neighborhood would be OK, but paying for an access road that serves only the developer’s property would not.

Third, put developers and bond holders on the hook for failed projects. If tax revenues fall short of what’s needed to support the debt service, bond holders can seize the developer’s property. If that’s not enough, bond holders are out of luck. As long as government doesn’t promise to make good on bad deals, bond holders will function as very good arbiters of risk. Simply put, they won’t invest in risky, speculative projects with weak economic underpinnings. If the bond holders balks, some deals won’t get done. Too bad. That’s the price of market discipline.

Fourth, put a cap on the tax increment –50%, say — that can be applied to pay off the bonds. This would raise the hurdle for economic performance, but it also would ensure that the local government would gain additional tax revenues to offset the increased demand for services by businesses and residents of the CDA project.

What O’Toole omits from his analysis is the fact that traditional methods for financing infrastructure all require taxes, too, and they often wind up subsidizing private developers. Sometimes the projects are big enough to warrant public scrutiny, but often the details — the dollars spent, what public money is spent on, government liability if projections aren’t met — are hidden from public view. If done right, TIFs can stimulate private investment, create more transparency and provide more accountability.

Gauging the Economic Impact of Federal Transportation Policy
Rand Corporation
The economic impact of federal investment in transportation infrastructure varies widely, depending upon context. Furthermore, most studies measure only benefits, neglecting to say if benefits exceed costs.

Health Research Board Dispensed $734,000 in 2009
Commonwealth Health Research Board, 2009 Annual Report
State board sponsored eight research projects in Virginia, ranging from research into the molecular mechanisms of the auditory system to the mechanisms by which estrogen enhances the health of blood vessels and heart muscles.

Examining the Health Impact of All Policies
Robert Woods Johnson Foundation
Because all is connected, all is one, the authors propose conducting Health Impact Assessments of major public policy decisions.

Apparently, Rail-to-Dulles is not enough to sate the Northern Virginia appetite for controversy. It looks like another battle royal over transportation and land use is brewing, this one centered on a proposal to declare a new Corridor of Statewide Significance (CoSS) that could pave the way for the controversial Outer Beltway.

The issue surfaced in March when Doug Koelemay, once a regular contributor to the Bacon’s Rebellion newsletter, and another board member submitted the proposal during a regular meeting of the Commonwealth Transportation Board (CBT). Consideration of the motion was deferred to a meeting scheduled for tomorrow. Now environmental groups are mobilizing to block a CoSS designation until it has gone through the same process of “expert analysis, inter-agency collaboration, local consultation, and public input” that other corridors of statewide significance have gone through.

I could find no explanation of the Corridor of State Significance on the CTB website. Environmentalist and smart-growth groups are portraying it as a bid to create the long-discussed Tri-County Parkway, which could be expanded into a longer Western Bypass. (See the press release issued by the Coalition for Smarter Growth.)

Circumstantial evidence supporting that view comes from the McDonnell administration’s vagueness about plans to allocate $3 billion raised through borrowing for transportation projects. As noted in a previous smart-growth press release, $1.5 billion would go toward unspecified Public Private Transportation Act projects, while a separate infrastructure bank could tap $150 million in General Funds and another $250 million could be taken from maintenance accounts to subsidize low-interest loans to PPTA projects. That’s a lot of loose change.

The smart growth groups contend that a north-south Outer Beltway (click on map for more legible image), long sought by Northern Virginia developers, would do little to relieve east-west travel congestion but would encourage development in areas lacking support infrastructure, making fiscal, environmental and congestion problems worse. The initiative also would divert funds from other projects that would address maintenance needs and bottlenecks in built-up areas of Northern Virginia.

I have long been skeptical of Gov. McDonnell’s use of borrowed money to jump-start highway construction in Virginia. He is advancing a set of priorities assembled during the massive real estate boom of the 2000s when easy money was pushing growth and development in the Washington region ever outward. But times have changed. There is no more easy real-estate money, local governments are more fiscally strapped than ever, gasoline prices are rising and demographics are shifting in favor of development closer to the urban core. Growth patterns in the 2010s will shift decisively. The Commonwealth Transportation Board needs to overhaul its spending plans in light of those new realities. Pushing an outer beltway, or even the first segment of one, seems imprudent at this time.

Of course, I have yet to hear the proposal, much less the justification for it, so I keep an open mind. But an Outer Beltway, if that in fact is what’s in store, has a very high hurdle to clear before I would be comfortable with it.

Back to one of my favorite themes: the higher education bubble. A majority of Americans (57%) say the higher education system in the United States fails to provide students with good value for the money, according to a new opinion survey by the Pew Research Center. An even larger majority (75%) says college is too expensive for most Americans to afford.

Not surprisingly, the public’s views diverge from that of university presidents, six out of 10 of whom say the system of higher education is headed in the right direction. (Actually, a remarkable 38% say it is heading in the wrong direction.)

If colleges deliver less value these days, it may be because, as 58% of college presidents believe, public high school students arrive at college less well prepared than their counterparts of a decade ago. Another 52% of presidents say college students today study less than their predecessors did a decade ago.

Sad to say, both the public and the college presidents are probably right. Students are less prepared when they get to college and don’t work as hard when they get there — and they’re getting less value for their money.

As if the survey couldn’t get any more depressing, the public is evenly divided between those who believe that students and their families should pay the largest share of the cost of a college education and those who think that the bulk of the cost should be borne by federal government, state government, private endowments or some combination of all three. I can’t help wondering if there’s an overlap between the students who study less and those who think someone else should pay for their education.