One of the ironies of recent years has been the concurrent development of a growing public budget for higher education and a widening chorus of people who can't see any reason at all for subsidizing it. The purpose of this paper is to summarize briefly the issues in the debate and discuss in some detail the more neglected aspects of the case. The case against any form of public intervention can be made as follows: (1) The only benefit of higher education is the enhanced power of the person who is trained. (2) Those benefits accrue in the form of higher realized earnings after training, and students know this. (3) Since scarce resources are used up in the training process, and since the benefits are known and will accrue to students, there is no reason not to charge full costs for the education and allow competitive markets to settle on the proper scope, extent of education, and distribution of its benefits. Fortunately, concerning public support, there are good reasons for and no empirical evidence against at least the following policy thrusts toward: (1) targeting existing subsidies at both federal and state levels on low-income students, (2) encouraging research and innovation in higher education, (3) building a higher education industry by encouraging moves toward relative prices that reflect relative costs and by improving management. (Author/PG)