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Anonymous Donor Pays for College of Every Student in Kalamazoo

nytimes.com

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Re: Anonymous Donor Pays for College of Every Student in Kalamazoo

#81

Post by Vivtek »

alttag wrote: post #7

Wow. That's neat. I once had a conversation with a state legislator where he argued it wasn't the responsibility of government to provide grant and loan opportunities for higher education, and that by doing so, the federal government was disincentivizing saving and investing. Instead, he argued universities should be more market driven (which I will concede might introduce more price competition in the face of rapidl…

More market-driven? It's only since people started arguing that colleges should be run like businesses that tuition has exploded.

There are things that shouldn't be market-driven. Look at Germany for an example - no vouchers needed to go to college there because the government simply pays for everybody (even foreigners). And the economy is doing fine.

Re: Anonymous Donor Pays for College of Every Student in Kalamazoo

#82

Post by ktizo »

001sky wrote: post #68
ktizo wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I think about it is this: If there is a limited supply of a good that is highly desired by the richest in society, and if price is used as an indicator of quality for that good, then it is the connection between the cost and the consumer that drives prices upwards. For things like speedboats and handcrafted watches and personal spaceships, this is all cool, and I don't think that randomly insanely rich people…

The USA is 6x the size of the UK. Thats the trick. The issue we have: who wants to aggregate all of that power in the hands of [insert conspiraciy theory] actors of dubious propriety. With healthcare thats a problem @20pc GDP (70% increase of size of Gov't spend). With schools, it would need to be thought through, but is likely more manageble. The main conflict with schools is they fight for money, for the research (…

I read your first version and didn't think it was particularly off topic, but then again I can meander all over the place when it comes to discussions.

Re: Anonymous Donor Pays for College of Every Student in Kalamazoo

#83

Post by riffraff »

tokenadult wrote: post #47

"The Promise was created against a backdrop of recent economic thought that considers investment in education better than nearly every other kind of developmental effort when it comes to promoting economic growth." That's the kind of thinking that turned east Asia from a place of wretched poverty to a place of wealth in my lifetime.

I want to believe your statement, but could you share some references for it?

I mean, some clue that education has been the driving force in the growth of east asian countries, rather than internal/external factors of other kinds.

Re: Anonymous Donor Pays for College of Every Student in Kalamazoo

#84

Post by batgaijin »

riffraff wrote: post #83
tokenadult wrote: post #47

"The Promise was created against a backdrop of recent economic thought that considers investment in education better than nearly every other kind of developmental effort when it comes to promoting economic growth." That's the kind of thinking that turned east Asia from a place of wretched poverty to a place of wealth in my lifetime.

I want to believe your statement, but could you share some references for it? I mean, some clue that education has been the driving force in the growth of east asian countries, rather than internal/external factors of other kinds.

Singapore.

Re: Anonymous Donor Pays for College of Every Student in Kalamazoo

#85

Post by khuey »

luu wrote: post #52
chii wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think its a balancing act - but i guess grants is worse than loans. Granting "free" money will indeed cause problems, but a loan that is required to be repaid seems like the right way to go in the long term, provided that after the higher education is completed the individual in question is able to actually provide value.

This has it exactly backwards. Consider this simple (and very simplified) example. The NPV of college is $100k. The marginal student can scrape together $10k to go to college. The marginal cost of a student is less than $10k for the college. How much will the college charge? $10k. What's the benefit to the student? $90k. What if an $89.9k subsidized grant is available? Now the college can charge $99.9k. What's the be…

Indeed. Since the colleges control most of the cards here (via accreditation bodies and what not; students are replaceable, loan companies are replaceable, colleges are not) if left unchecked you would expect them to capture all of the value generated through college attendance.

Re: Anonymous Donor Pays for College of Every Student in Kalamazoo

#86

Post by sukuriant »

anigbrowl wrote: post #58
sukuriant wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't stop bureaucracy from changing that decision or for the people that are donating to be sent to jail/etc before they can finish their promises.

Put the bong down, and reread this tomorrow.It may not have occurred to you, but the norm in phalinthropy is to establish legal structures at the outset which prevent those sorts of outcomes. You appear to think the money has either been handed over as a lump sum or is being delivered on an ad-hoc basis. Neither is likely.

I don't smoke pot, thanks.

That said, I didn't know that detail how these things usually work, though that does make sense and pleases me to hear.

Re: Anonymous Donor Pays for College of Every Student in Kalamazoo

#87

Post by khuey »

AJ007 wrote: post #32
alttag wrote: post #7

Wow. That's neat. I once had a conversation with a state legislator where he argued it wasn't the responsibility of government to provide grant and loan opportunities for higher education, and that by doing so, the federal government was disincentivizing saving and investing. Instead, he argued universities should be more market driven (which I will concede might introduce more price competition in the face of rapidl…

http://www.finaid.org/savings/tuition-inflation.phtml (those graphs don't really do it justice, but if you know your math you know what a difference being several point ahead of inflation for decades does to the difference in price.) Its a shame that an entire generation of educated Americans are being enslaved by an unparallelled level of debt so early in their lives. The NYTimes has had many articles that give a go…

Education may be free, but why would that affect the price of credentials?

Re: Anonymous Donor Pays for College of Every Student in Kalamazoo

#88

Post by rayiner »

natrius wrote: post #80
rayiner wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm an optimist. The problem will fix itself thanks to technology. Education in the future is going to be nearly free. I think it is going to happen a lot sooner than people realize. Runaway education inflation will make even the "expensive" solutions look dirt cheap. You're presupposing that tuition has anything to do with the cost of providing education, and that tuition will go down if the costs go down. It does…

College in the US is about education and signaling. Capable people want to learn more after high school, so most of them go to college. It makes sense that the college one attends has become a signal since its so closely coupled with what capable people want to do anyway. In the future, this will not be the case. So many capable people will eschew a traditional college education that alternative signaling methods wil…

> In the future, this will not be the case. So many capable people will eschew a traditional college education that alternative signaling methods will arise.

As long as 99% of employers depend on the traditional signaling methods, very few capable people will eschew a traditional college education. Only in certain segments of software engineering does the idea even have any traction.

> For instance, Y Combinator is a more powerful signal than Stanford is. (Stanford graduates don't automatically receive $150k in convertible debt for their endeavors once they graduate.)

Not really, outside a very specific niche of people doing a very specific type of startup work. If you want to build a web app, yeah, Y Combinator is a valuable signal. If you want to work for Lockheed-Martin or Goldman Sachs, not so much. As for $150k in convertible debt... you can earn that much in bonuses working on Wall Street for a couple of years, with far less risk and far more predictability.

Re: Anonymous Donor Pays for College of Every Student in Kalamazoo

#90

Post by jbee »

batgaijin wrote: post #84
riffraff wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to believe your statement, but could you share some references for it? I mean, some clue that education has been the driving force in the growth of east asian countries, rather than internal/external factors of other kinds.

Singapore.

Not to discount the benefit of education in promoting economic growth –especially in developing countries, but I don’t think you can say it is the driving force. There are so many other factors.

Particularly for Singapore, its economic growth is probably better attributed to very low tax rates attracting overseas business and investment, low cost foreign workers to exploit due to little to no labour laws, and (unlike most of south-east Asia) extremely low crime and corruption.

But I’m not an economist.

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