531–540 of 565 posts
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If it's such a negligible amount of people then what is the issue with denying them student loans? Very few people will be affected by this, so you say; not worth arguing about then I suppose.
If it's such a negligible amount of people then what is the issue with funding them?
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I think the corollary is about taxpayer accountability. It's easy to make the argument: "If we invest $1M in education, we will have $10M in additional future economic output, $4M in future taxes, and $20M less in law enforcement / criminal prosecution / jail fees. It improves global competitiveness." That's a no-brainer. Education is a very high ROI investment for a country. Like infrastructure spending or industria…
You don’t think investing in arts, humanities, and music contributes to a functioning democracy?
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The discussion is about what the average person pays.... surely student body size _is_ the relevant metric? What else would you propose?
If you look at the annual tuition rates for public schools in the United States, you will find the UC system to be an outlier. I gave a system in the same state that is closer to the national median. How much simpler can this be communicated?
2. The question that started this thread was “does anyone really pay 250k for college?” Even as an outlier, the UC system price is relevant. It is an existence proof that many people _do_ pay close to that sum for undergrad.
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This is such a shitty American take (or any of the countries that somehow decide the USA is a good model to follow), it's kind of baffling that this is a popular opinion and explains a lot of the social issues (or near lack of social system) you guys have. You know that technically, people are allowed to have fun and not strive to be a billionaire, right? Its everyones right to pick a path they want, and enjoy, and i…
Why not gather up with other like-minded individuals and fund scholarships and grants if you feel strongly about this? I disagree that taxing the rich is our way out of this. There's a reason the starving artist is a cultural trope. Not only that but the higher ed industry has abused the hell out of this program. I'm close to people who were studying degrees they will never come close to paying and now they're $100k+…
Because I live in a country where University is nearly free (like 200-300 bucks per semester). If the third strongest economy in the world can do it, I don't think it's necessary for the other top economies to pull it off without activism or private funds.
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The reality is the degree should have been entirely funded by the government’s coffers. Funding arts and humanities education is so cheap and provides so much relative societal benefit that it’s a no brainer.
OK but how many? There has to be some upper limit. It's hardly fair to ask citizens who went to work or joined the military out of high school to pay taxes to fund free education for an unlimited number of liberal arts scholars.
> joined the military out of high school to pay taxes to fund free education
If you think that's fair, and that changing it would be unfair, I'm not sure there's a basis for discussion. I think it isn't fair to make people go to the military so they can afford an education, in fact that sounds like something from a backwater 3rd world dictatorship that is struggling to get their military staffed, not a first world country.
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You are allowed to have fun. Do what you want I don't care. I don't even know you. However if you want me the taxpayer to pay for the fun it needs to be a good investment for me. Otherwise I want to use my money to have fun myself.
The post is full of inaccuracies. USA has more Art degree graduates as a % of population than Germany, almost double. It is incredibly difficult to get a subsidized art degree in Germany. Only under 0.4% of the total yearly graduates receives a subsidized state art degree
Not sure why you need that subsidized. That's why it's difficult to find subsidies, it simply doesn't make any sense at all for 50 bucks a month (which includes, by the way, free public transport, bus and train).
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> They need to demonstrate that it's somehow beneficial on average to economic outcomes. Well we can demonstrate conclusively with data that people who get a humanities education have lower unemployment and earn higher wages than people without college degrees. What else is needed? > I added on top that as a liberal society, we could perhaps agree that being well versed in liberal tradition is itself valuable. I do n…
People earning higher wages as the result of their degree are explicitly and exactly not the topic of discussion. The discussion is about funding for programs that measurably do not produce economic benefits, and some supposed intangible benefit to just being educated. I get the conclusion from having been a student, having socialized with other students, observing discussions from teachers online and seeing that thi…
I really do not think that your understanding of a modern humanities education is correct. I get my conclusion by being married to a humanities professor and friends with a lot of humanities professors. I also get this from reviewing syllabi at large universities. The idea that there is some widespread project to deliberately undermine texts that are part of the western canon because of some bias against them is just simply not based in reality.
What would be an example of a piece of evidence that you see that you find compelling here?
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i like your framing of "holes" in political systems. one way to put it is that a political system has "holes" if the ideal/desired outcome is not a Nash equilibrium. however, my understanding (though i can't speak for the other commenters) is that the reasoning behind "humanities-educated people make better democracies" is NOT that humanities-educated people are more virtuous, and thus will willingly not degrade the…
> rather, it's that humanities-educated people cannot be manipulated as easily by a demagogue (and other similar things). I can see where your reasoning is coming from but I mostly disagree. I can see two factors that could prevent manipulation: 1. The rare case of wisdom (that I define as being strong willed enough to think independently and not fall for self-deception/wishful thinking + intelligent enough to think…
but i also believe that in fact knowledge is another very important factor in resisting manipulation (absent from your list), and more generally, being part of a functioning democracy. i mean here knowledge of lofty things like history, economics, sociology, which can then serve as a base to know and understand more practical things, like laws, regulations, taxes, government subsidies, or how roads, schools, or health insurance is funded -- otherwise how could anyone make any decision regarding these topics? and all of these things can be taught.
independent thinking is important but with zero knowledge you could maybe be convinced to join a cult or something, for example. like, for ancient peasants the king was effectively a god anyway.
of course, all of this is highly idealized. i agree with you and Uncle Ted. academia, in practice, often is not a place that champions these ideals. but maybe it could be.
> Sadly, the Western world I (we?) belong to has almost finished removing teaching of DIY and even the individual ability to do so
yeah, i fear these developments
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What other ways of contributions do you have in mind that can fund the education of the next generation?
For example, you could teach them things. But why is funding the education of the next generation the only possible contribution to society?