On the “need” for a New Mexico Dental School

There has been so much going on that I have seen several interesting and important articles that I simply haven’t had the time or space to discuss in this space. One of those excellent articles comes from Greg Jorgensen a Rio Rancho-based dentist. Jorgensen poo-poos the notion that New Mexico needs to spend $30 million to start and $6 million annually to subsidize a dental school.

Jorgensen makes several salient points, but the basic idea is that the market should be allowed to work. Rather than simply supplying more dentists through a heavily-subsidized dental school, if there is a demand for dentists, prices will rise and more dentists will come to New Mexico to ply their trade. This makes complete sense to me. In fact, the same concept needs to be applied to our higher-education system as a whole. Despite a $400 million deficit, taxpayers continue to funnel money into higher ed with little or no discussion of what exactly the public at large is receiving for that massive investment.