Misguided Spending

An article from the Chronicle of Higher Education laments a rule that "lacks teeth":

Under the rule, states must spend at least the same amount of money for colleges each year as they spent on average in each of the previous five years.

Forget whether or not it lacks teeth. (The issue there is that the feds haven't established a federal monitoring process. Not my point.) Look at why they created the mandate:

Advocates of the spending mandate, enacted in part to encourage states to provide consistent levels of aid to colleges to help them rein in costs, worry...

So if I am to understand this correctly, forcing the states to pump more money into education is supposed to decrease costs. Which is funny, because on my planet, people cut costs when there's less money to spend.

Maybe the mandate's advocates should retake Econ 101.

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