221–230 of 531 posts
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Ok. Do that first and I might support it. But the guaranteed loans for everyone system of today has not only inflated costs, it supports a bunch of worthless crappy schools. Go look at the list of universities in the US, and find the bottom 100. They are as offensive and wasteful as a $10,000 toilet seat.
I agree. But that's not a product of free education.
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I agree. Yes, it will cost a lot and yes we need to find a way to fund it, but giving all communities fair access to education is in everyone's best interest. Increasing the base level of education makes everyone a more intelligent, informed citizen and voter, and will have a positive impact on the progression of our country. I think it's a bad idea to be penny pinching in this regard. I also think everyone being edu…
I agree with a lot of your points, but the way to increasing the base level of education isn’t through making all colleges free — it’s through investing in and making community colleges free. Why? If we’re trying educate the entire populace instead of a few high achieving high schoolers, we should recognize that a majority of people can’t afford to up-end their lives, move far away, and spend 4 years getting a degree…
On the other hand, consider a state like Maine, which has under 1.5 million people and a bunch of good state universities for a variety of disciplines that a community college isn't equipped to teach. You don't have to move that far away (I moved two and a half hours away from where I grew up, and tbh I wish it had been further) and when you're leaving high school it's probably more common than not that your life isn't really settled enough to upend.
(I think making community colleges free, too, is a very good idea.)
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All that for a worthless degree in antaractic penguin studies from Shady St Univ. You still graduate unemployed, unskilled, but instead of you paying the debt, someone else does. Also, with no skin in the game, I’m sure college will get even less serious.
You prefer an under-educated population? The most valuable asset we have in the technology and service based economies is human capital. We need a creative and educated population to continue to compete. I think we should eliminate all for-profit education and preferably make all universities public.
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IDK. The same thought process led me to not being able to complete college due to financial reasons. Despite being emancipated, FAFSA still considers you a dependent until you're 24. I was told that only with documentation of leaving an abusive household would a dependency exception grant be applied. So according to FAFSA I was supposed to use all this money that I didn't have to pay for college. By 24 I had dropped…
> Just make college free. Sure, have some funding ideas?
Germany even made University free for foreigners.
I'll probably be downvoted on a forum like this, but I worry about the most successful universities using their funds to subsidize those who would be fine without it. I was actually made aware of this by a wealthy Stanford alumni which has a fairly broad program for undergraduate tuition assistance. Graduates of mid/low tier universities seem more and more likely to have to compete with better credentialed people wit…
This is the definition of "means-testing" and it is bad. Testing and "checking" that the recipients of social welfare is complicated and doomed to create a group of excluded people who believe they should have merited it. Means-testing introduces fiscal cliffs, creates a separate of haves and have-nots, and lots of other unnecessary anxieties between classes of peoples. The savings means-testing produces is tiny in aggregate and the harm to culture is large.
Moreover, means-testing becomes the fulcrum that anti-social welfare reformists use to destroy programs. Means-testing introduces an additional point of failure, brittleness that can be exploited. It's hard to rip away a program that is granted to all comers, but if there is a clear line between haves and have-nots, they you can just move the line. This has happened multiple times to the Affordable Care Act, and states regularly do this to medicaid and food stamp programs, to their detriment.
The most successful social programs have no means testing: social security, medicare. If you value social welfare programs, you will not inflict means-testing on them.
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Under educated population is a disaster, but that problem starts about 12 years before college, in a different all public/free education system. Jamming more people through mediocre and worse college programs to get worthless degrees is a waste of time and money.
Why do you assume that degrees are "worthless?" How are you defining "worthless?" Based on the research, getting a degree significantly increases your earning potential. But I would argue that even if that wasn't the case and everyone got philosophy, literature, and history degrees, our country would be significantly better positioned globally. And I agree with your statement that the problem starts earlier. Although…
In the real world it is the opposite - you assume the degree is worthless until you demonstrate the otherwise
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IDK. The same thought process led me to not being able to complete college due to financial reasons. Despite being emancipated, FAFSA still considers you a dependent until you're 24. I was told that only with documentation of leaving an abusive household would a dependency exception grant be applied. So according to FAFSA I was supposed to use all this money that I didn't have to pay for college. By 24 I had dropped…
College is expensive because so much money is available in the forms of subsidies and loans. If the federal government stopped guaranteeing loans, and cut back on other subsidies, the cost of college would be much much lower.
I left my career path in local government partially due to financial concerns related to undergrad debt. This is not strictly a medical sector issue.
I have a hard time understanding if this is bad. Economics says that things are designed to work this way. You have felt the economic indicators and made changes accordingly. The economy(you, your friends, your community, the world) benefits when you make profit. If your prior path was burdened with massive debt with little way to repay it, it sounds like a bad decision. I cant imagine too many situations where doing…
Also, I think you’re missing some variables. Or, as they might be called in economics, externalities.
The less money we spend on prisons the better for state and federal coffers, in the short run. The less a company pays a prison guard for their services, the better for the share holders. But what about everything that happens on the day an inmate is released back into society? Are their neighbors happy they were incarcerated by near minimum wage persons with little guidance or oversight and perhaps a bit too much enthusiasm? Are their employers happy they were not given access to higher education or the ability to learn a trade?
Or let’s talk about educators. Or defense attorneys for the indigent. I’ll leave the remaining examples to be worked by the student.
Seriously though, as someone that graduated with dual degrees in political science and economics, worked for a couple years in local government, then went to Manhattan to work in the financial markets for 5 years, and is now working a “tech” job. Sorry I don’t have patience for this.
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Under educated population is a disaster, but that problem starts about 12 years before college, in a different all public/free education system. Jamming more people through mediocre and worse college programs to get worthless degrees is a waste of time and money.
Why do you assume that degrees are "worthless?" How are you defining "worthless?" Based on the research, getting a degree significantly increases your earning potential. But I would argue that even if that wasn't the case and everyone got philosophy, literature, and history degrees, our country would be significantly better positioned globally. And I agree with your statement that the problem starts earlier. Although…
This is also ignoring that we've greatly widened the demographic attending colleges. The reduced selectivity means that the average person is not going to be as top-notch as they were at one time, which means that the average expectation of an individual with a college degree will also go down. This will also have an aggregate depressing effect on our earning:education correlation. More important than ever will become median earnings for college graduates. The top graduates are earning vastly more than ever before which will mask the overall problem.
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Per your first argument, even granting that admissions is meritocratic / fair for the sake of argument, the education you receive, networks provided, and simple prestige of the school all provide advantages that you will not find to such a degree at a lower tier school. Tuition subsidies adds an additional major advantage of not having the drag of loans slowing your future economic growth. Again, I understand that so…
This argument is fascinating, because you are in effect arguing that people should be rewarded according to their lack of privilege: "we should give these subsidies to students from 'lower-tier schools' rather than students from 'top-tier schools' who are already well on their way to success". This is the "social justice" argument. Now let me ask you this: If you get sick and require surgery, would you rather be trea…