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My roommate can solve this. And he just turned 6. I gave him today some equations with two unknowns....
Why the Downvote? It is true.
Americans attend college as a (1) rite of passage and to some extent (2) to have access to an influence network of peers and alumni. For elite universities, it's conceivable that #2 provides some real opportunity. But in general #1 dominates the dollars spent on this experience and it's really too bad.
I believe the primary reason is to attain credentials in pursuit of access to more lucrative employment prospects. I think your 1 and 2 are both significant factors, but they are quite far behind the pursuit of credentials.
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> People want cheap healthcare, and it got shoehorned into an odd employer fringe benefit system that really is not at all related healthcare in any intrinsic way. Healthcare costs, and hence health insurance premiums, are the same with or without an employer intermediary. The only difference is with an employer intermediary, the insured gets to pay their premium with pre-tax income. The cost of the health insurance…
> Healthcare costs, and hence health insurance premiums, are the same with or without an employer intermediary. If you read the fine print of a health "insurance" plan at a large company, you might discover healthcare costs are directly covered by the employer and the insurance company just administers the plan according to "set rules". In practice, this operates as blame as a service.
So the healthcare isn’t cheap, but the employer is able to gain more control over their employees by tying a piece of their non employee life to the employer creating more friction to prevent people from shopping for jobs with higher pay, and the employee is getting a small tax benefit.
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You can provide the piece of paper at a fraction of the cost too. Nearly all of Europe does, I believe.
> You can provide the piece of paper at a fraction of the cost This isn’t socially useful.
I took just one such course—gender studies—which was utterly abysmal. There was zero tolerance for debating ideas or considering opposing viewpoints. You either assimilated with the group think, or you were castigated for your heresy. It was indoctrination, not education.
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That's what taxes are for. Subsidizing public good. Affordable access to good education is a good outcome from the heavy taxation I pay.
For sure. The main benefit is that it allows smart, hardworking but poor students to get a degree and utilize their brainpower productively for the benefit of all. That's great. Just don't say it's "free" - those who get the education pay back all they got via taxes (which in it's end effect are like paying down a student loan).
And nobody thinks free education doesn't cost anything, just like people don't think the military doesn't cost anything. Somehow, though, there is endless trillions for "defense", and a little moth flies out of the wallet when it's for something that doesn't involve drones.
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Many (most?) people go to college primarily for the piece of paper, not for the educational and social experience.
And resultingly, if you do go to college and immerse yourself in the educational experience, you come out with superpowers compared to your peers. Getting companies to see those superpowers in a hiring pipeline of course is a different story
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Many (most?) people go to college primarily for the piece of paper, not for the educational and social experience.
You can provide the piece of paper at a fraction of the cost too. Nearly all of Europe does, I believe.
If people want to play those exclusivity games that's up to them. What's wrong is asking the taxpayer to fund it under the false mask that the entire product is education.
Americans attend college as a (1) rite of passage and to some extent (2) to have access to an influence network of peers and alumni. For elite universities, it's conceivable that #2 provides some real opportunity. But in general #1 dominates the dollars spent on this experience and it's really too bad.
I feel the same fallacies happen with money and degrees: - People with more money live better lives, so let's just print/hand out money and everyone will live a better life! - People with college degrees live better lives, so let's just push more people through college and everyone will live better lives! In both cases, of course, completely missing the underlying reasons money/college degrees provide(d) better lives…
So you just need to sort of move wealth around such that it is less egregiously unequal. Oh, and states can fund universities like they did a few decades ago. :) Win-win! Poorer people get to participate more freely in society, with more opportunities, and you don't have to print any extra money.