Anonymous Donor Pays for College of Every Student in Kalamazoo

Post by justincormack » Sat, Sep 15, 2012, 3:31 PM UTC

prostoalex wrote: post #66

mahmud wrote: post #5

What would be the unintended negative consequences of this? It reminds me of the story of a West African king who went on a pilgrimage to Mecca. On his way to Arabia, the king gifted so much gold to all intervening communities that the price of gold crashed, taking with it the economies of North Africa and Arabia.

You can look to Eastern European economies for that, as they still pick up the tab for majority of university education. 1) There's certain stigma attached to blue-collar jobs now that everyone and their pet hamster are proud bearers of a college diploma. Finding a good plumber is next to impossible. 2) There's a subset of people thrown into permanent unemployment. Might be a cultural thing, but second education is a…

Post by gmrple » Mon, Sep 17, 2012, 11:55 PM UTC

mgkimsal wrote: post #23

gmrple wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only downside I could possibly see is someone taking their education more lightly because they don't have to pay for it.

Many people aren't "paying for it" today already - can we judge if they're taking it more or less lightly than they otherwise would have? Given that we have 20 year olds taking on tens of thousands of dollars in debt, when I don't really think most of them have any perspective at all to judge the seriousness of that, I'm not sure we can say that everyone going to college today is 'paying for it'. We might say that ma…