The elevation of Betsy Devos has made it plain to the rest of the nation that the agenda of corporations driving the Republican party is to privatize K-12 schools. $14 billion in Michigan alone is pretty tempting.

The Devos funded Mackinac Center has always made it plain that universities should meet the same fate. One of its very first positions was to privatize the University of Michigan. But it’s only now that we learn of their intention to push the monitizing of community colleges.

Using the pejorative “subsidies” in the place of appropriations, the Center employs the twisted logic that if community colleges had seen the low state funding that universities received, the state could afford a tax cut, ignoring the skyrocketing tuition costs at these schools.

But what about the certain increase in community college tuition that would result? No problem:

To the extent that it makes sense at all, it makes sense for the people who seek the training to pay for it themselves, and if not them, their employers.

And there you have it: the beginning of the argument that these schools should be private. You have to wonder how disconnected a person would have to be to not know the difficulty families have in paying college tuition. To argue it should be higher, you’d have to be, what, a billionaire?