Stop Arguing over Elite Schools. Just Make Public Colleges Free • Hacker News Board

Re: Stop Arguing over Elite Schools. Just Make Public Colleges Free

#51

Post by chalsprhebaodu » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 4:32 PM UTC

flashgordon wrote: post #30

itg wrote: post #7

I don't follow the logic the author is using. Let's say we make all public colleges free for students. "Elite" schools will still exist, and top students will still target schools such as Ivy/MIT/Stanford/etc. One look at the people in executive offices or top political offices and you'll find a substantial portion are graduates from elite schools.

As an Australian who benefited from a great public college (or as we call it uni) if public schools were free and high quality what would motivate the demand for elite schools? Yes elite schools are still networking grounds. But wouldnt the hope be that if people who already came out of public schools weren't saddled with crippling debt, enough of them could pay it forward to the broader group than their own elite sc…

In this hypothetical, elite schools would be incentivized to provide something the public schools either do not or cannot provide.

Quality of education alone is hard enough to control for. What’s stopping the for-profit elite schools from just raising the bar until public schools simply can’t keep up?

Re: Stop Arguing over Elite Schools. Just Make Public Colleges Free

#52

Post by toast0 » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 4:33 PM UTC

latchkey wrote: post #34

jandrewrogers wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US spends more on education than the military, it is difficult to defend the idea that spending on education has not been prioritized. Per the OECD, US spending per student is among the highest in the world by a large margin, which raises the question of value for the money already being spent -- any deficiencies compared to other countries aren't for lack of money. The US also spends a lot of money on the milita…

> The US spends more on education than the military "The US spent $877 billion on military in 2022, a new report says — more than 10 times federal education spending" https://www.businessinsider.com/us-defense-military-budget-c...

You'd need to consider the state military and education budgets as well.

Re: Stop Arguing over Elite Schools. Just Make Public Colleges Free

#53

Post by suggestion » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 4:33 PM UTC

ulrashida wrote: post #38

jandrewrogers wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US spends more on education than the military, it is difficult to defend the idea that spending on education has not been prioritized. Per the OECD, US spending per student is among the highest in the world by a large margin, which raises the question of value for the money already being spent -- any deficiencies compared to other countries aren't for lack of money. The US also spends a lot of money on the milita…

Could you please support this statement: "The US spends more on education than the military"? This view ( https://www.usaspending.gov/explorer/agency ) suggests Defense spending is $1.1 trillion in 2023 while Department of Education funding is $208 billion.

The overwhelming majority of education funding is at the state or lower level, not federal.

Re: Stop Arguing over Elite Schools. Just Make Public Colleges Free

#54

Post by vkou » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 4:33 PM UTC

monero-xmr wrote: post #49

RajT88 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I always find hilarious that it is the most free market advocates who tend to ignore that. A lot of free market advocates don't seem to understand how markets work. One of the main ways you grow an economy is to add people to it. You are adding jobs, by both creating labor supply and demand for goods and services. It's really very simple. The economy is made of people, stupid!

Require immigrants to be self-sustaining at some minimum amount. Have a job ready or otherwise prove the ability to pay for your housing (someone willing to board you). Otherwise, instantly applying government handouts to someone without any skills - language or otherwise - and often with kids and disabled relatives - makes the idea of unlimited open immigration a daunting cost.

Open immigration is obviously incompatible with a society that has open social benefits, but the United States currently has neither.

Re: Stop Arguing over Elite Schools. Just Make Public Colleges Free

#55

Post by Hermitian909 » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 4:34 PM UTC

jandrewrogers wrote: post #28

latchkey wrote: post #5

We've been prioritizing military spending over education for decades. I'd love to see even a bit of that swing the other way. I don't think taking a small amount from the military, by requiring them to optimize a few budgets, would be impactful on our nations security.

The US spends more on education than the military, it is difficult to defend the idea that spending on education has not been prioritized. Per the OECD, US spending per student is among the highest in the world by a large margin, which raises the question of value for the money already being spent -- any deficiencies compared to other countries aren't for lack of money. The US also spends a lot of money on the milita…

> US spending per student is among the highest in the world by a large margin

It is high, but not exceptionally high[0]. It is then worth remembering that the US overcounts spending on primary and secondary education relative to peer countries because we lack most of the social welfare programs that exist in peer countries and effectively funnel welfare services through the education budget.

As an example, if you have a severely emotionally disturbed child the school district might spend ~$100,000 a year to house the student elsewhere[1]. In Norway, this problem would be budgeted under social services, rather than education.

Numbers are further inflated by increased cost of living relative to most peer countries[2]. This is effectively a dead-weight cost for which we receive no additional benefit. Since Labor is the biggest cost for schools it greatly impacts cost of education.

[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/238733/expenditure-on-ed...

[1] https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4110#:~:text=Special%....

[2] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/most-expe...

Re: Stop Arguing over Elite Schools. Just Make Public Colleges Free

#56

Post by almatabata » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 4:34 PM UTC

itg wrote: post #7

I don't follow the logic the author is using. Let's say we make all public colleges free for students. "Elite" schools will still exist, and top students will still target schools such as Ivy/MIT/Stanford/etc. One look at the people in executive offices or top political offices and you'll find a substantial portion are graduates from elite schools.

Just look at France and L'ENA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89cole_nationale_d%27admin...

A lot of presidents have come from this public school. It shows that just making it public does not really fix the problem of lack of social ascension. With the fierce competition children that get access to private tutors and financial support have the edge.

Re: Stop Arguing over Elite Schools. Just Make Public Colleges Free

#57

Post by Sohcahtoa82 » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 4:34 PM UTC

piotrkaminski wrote: post #37

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, and if anything what the author proposes would intensify the competition to get into those elite schools, for it would simultaneously increase the worth of a diploma from an elite school and devalue the diploma from the public college.

> devalue the diploma from the public college Huh? How so? If the only change is that you no longer need to pay for college, but otherwise admission standards and education quality remain the same, then why would the value of a diploma change? Unless the diploma was implicitly a signal for wealth, of course...

Wages are based on how easy you are to replace.

If a job has a high wage because they require a specific college degree, then making the degree easier to get since you don't have to pay for it, then there will be more people with that degree, so the supply of workers is higher, making them easier to replace, so the wages of those workers goes down.

Re: Stop Arguing over Elite Schools. Just Make Public Colleges Free

#58

Post by pknomad » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 4:35 PM UTC

itg wrote: post #7

I don't follow the logic the author is using. Let's say we make all public colleges free for students. "Elite" schools will still exist, and top students will still target schools such as Ivy/MIT/Stanford/etc. One look at the people in executive offices or top political offices and you'll find a substantial portion are graduates from elite schools.

I don't either.

Part of what makes a school "elite" is admissions selectivity, research output, and academic reputation. Making undergraduate tuition free for public colleges will still make private target schools still elite and put additional admissions constraints on top public colleges (UMich, UVA, UC Berkeley, UCLA, UT Austin, and the likes), and ironically make them more "elite".

Also the problem isn't just the affordability of schools - it's affordability of schools for certain classes and enrollment limits for desirable universities.

Rich students will be able to pay for elite universities out of pocket. Poor students will be able to afford through financial aid/scholarships at elite universities. I don't have the numbers with me top of my head but most elite universities often have financial policies that cap loans at reasonable amount and give grants to cover the rest. It's the middle class that gets squeezed because they don't make enough money/get enough assistance.

Re: Stop Arguing over Elite Schools. Just Make Public Colleges Free

#59

Post by Jtsummers » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 4:36 PM UTC

RajT88 wrote: post #35

Ajay-p wrote: post #24

Even if college were free, I think limits on funding availability will actually make it harder for someone to get in because now they have to be selective. It might lead to less people going to college.

That's how it went in Germany. Lots of people are redirected to trade programs. I'm definitely of the opinion that for a lot of folks, college doesn't really make sense. I would hazard a guess that also in Germany, lots of kids who might not be able to attend college are able to, because it is free.

In the US, many trade schools are either private for-profit programs, or part of what we call "community college". Free community college has been pushed for a long time (some states already had it).

Re: Stop Arguing over Elite Schools. Just Make Public Colleges Free

#60

Post by starkparker » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 4:36 PM UTC

I was in the second high school class to get Louisiana's TOPS program, which at the time gave four years' full-ride tuition plus fees to any public state university with a nominal ACT score and generous GPA requirements (18 ACT and 2.5 GPA IIRC).

Wouldn't be here today without it. My parents couldn't afford anything but the closest and shittiest university, with no compsci program (they only had a business computing program, which taught only COBOL, in 1999). Instead I went to UL Lafayette, which had an actual program, got a room/board merit scholarship, worked through the summers, and graduated debt-free with two degrees.

It still didn't accomplish the state's objective of keeping college grads in state — the in-state company I lined up my senior year moved after the governor line-item vetoed a tax incentive, and I wound up in the northeast. But if not for that my career would've probably started working on legacy systems in Arkansas instead of startups in New England.