Stop Arguing over Elite Schools. Just Make Public Colleges Free(thenation.com)
thenation.com
Stop Arguing over Elite Schools. Just Make Public Colleges Free
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/tuition-free-public-college/
287 comments
> My parents couldn't afford anything…
Not saying its the right way, but grew up without a lot of financial resources, no money specifically to pay for college, and I went to a private 4 year engineering program starting in 1999 by taking out boat-loads of loans. Going into school I had nothing and needed 100% of my tuition covered by loans, grants, or scholarships.
I was reasonably confident that having an engineering degree would allow me to pay back the loans (it did, but it didn't go as smoothly for all of my classmates).
Based on my experience, I don't really understand the idea of not being able to afford college (at least for degrees which will put you in reasonably paying positions). Am I an outlier? I doubt it. I didn't go to a particularly well known school, but was able to figure out employment and self-sufficiency. Now I have the pride of finishing a relatively difficult program and paying for it through my own labor.
Medical professionals, engineers, and the like have so many opportunities that it's not clear why we should subsidize their education. Educators, on the other hand, have to pay the same price for a degree, have to have continuing education, and then get paid crappy wages. While I'd rather reward them on the back end with better benefits, if there is a program worth subsidizing, it's probably educators.
Not saying its the right way, but grew up without a lot of financial resources, no money specifically to pay for college, and I went to a private 4 year engineering program starting in 1999 by taking out boat-loads of loans. Going into school I had nothing and needed 100% of my tuition covered by loans, grants, or scholarships.
I was reasonably confident that having an engineering degree would allow me to pay back the loans (it did, but it didn't go as smoothly for all of my classmates).
Based on my experience, I don't really understand the idea of not being able to afford college (at least for degrees which will put you in reasonably paying positions). Am I an outlier? I doubt it. I didn't go to a particularly well known school, but was able to figure out employment and self-sufficiency. Now I have the pride of finishing a relatively difficult program and paying for it through my own labor.
Medical professionals, engineers, and the like have so many opportunities that it's not clear why we should subsidize their education. Educators, on the other hand, have to pay the same price for a degree, have to have continuing education, and then get paid crappy wages. While I'd rather reward them on the back end with better benefits, if there is a program worth subsidizing, it's probably educators.
I am close to people who have experiences similar to your (as recently as 2018). It's true that they are making it work, but it'll be another ten years before their debt is paid off. Furthermore, they all graduated on time, they are all in well-paid engineering disciplines, and they are all relatively free of other situations that cause large financial burden (heath crises, disasters, family drug issues, etc). For any of them, I'm not sure it'd be going smoothy if any of things had gone differently.
Put another way: when everything goes right, you can just barely pay for private college yourself. As soon as anything goes awry, all bets are off.
Put another way: when everything goes right, you can just barely pay for private college yourself. As soon as anything goes awry, all bets are off.
You could means test repayment. That's how it's done here in Germany, only once I earn a good deal I'll have to pay back a small percentage each month. If I never get a steady income I just won't have to repay it if I understand it correctly.
We already means-test repayment in the US, we just make the means-testing opt-in, and have loan servicers who have a financial incentive to steer people who would benefit away from the means-tested option.
Honest question: in what way are student loan servicers in the US financially incentivized to steer borrowers away from income based repayment plans? I think that the opposite is true.
Servicers are paid a flat fee per outstanding loan, without regard to balance or monthly payment, _as long as payments are current_. Delinquent accounts are worth less. Being put on an IBR reduces your monthly payment, making it more likely it can remain in the state that is most profitable for the servicer.
https://thecollegeinvestor.com/36556/how-much-do-federal-stu...
From that perspective, the servicer is strongly incentivized to use IBR plans for accounts at risk, with no downside to them for erring on the side of lower payments.
Furthermore, income based repayment plans aren’t a forgiveness of debt or reduction in interest rate. They simply reduce the monthly payment by extending the term as needed. In practice this can mean adding decades to the term, sometimes creating a situation where the principal grows every month. The longer the extension, the more fees paid to the servicer, since they make a flat monthly fee per loan. Again, one would think that the servicers would have every incentive to promote such a system.
Servicers are paid a flat fee per outstanding loan, without regard to balance or monthly payment, _as long as payments are current_. Delinquent accounts are worth less. Being put on an IBR reduces your monthly payment, making it more likely it can remain in the state that is most profitable for the servicer.
https://thecollegeinvestor.com/36556/how-much-do-federal-stu...
From that perspective, the servicer is strongly incentivized to use IBR plans for accounts at risk, with no downside to them for erring on the side of lower payments.
Furthermore, income based repayment plans aren’t a forgiveness of debt or reduction in interest rate. They simply reduce the monthly payment by extending the term as needed. In practice this can mean adding decades to the term, sometimes creating a situation where the principal grows every month. The longer the extension, the more fees paid to the servicer, since they make a flat monthly fee per loan. Again, one would think that the servicers would have every incentive to promote such a system.
My college experience was similar and around the same time (but I tacked on a biology PhD and post-doc, which delayed earning considerably). My impression is that the cost of higher education has increased considerably over the past two decades relative to general inflation and expected income. Increased expense reduces lifetime ROI of education considerably and delays many milestones (e.g. purchase of first home).
The same things were being said in the 90s: college is too expensive, only wealthy families can afford it or you'll need to get a full ride scholarship (that's what I was guilted with during HS).
You're right though, about increased tuition, and it's easy loans that cannot be discharged that are one of the major culprits, but living on campus at a public university costs as much as my private tuition plus room/board did 20 years ago. Inflation adjusted, it's 55% of what I paid and starting engineering salaries are 250% higher than when I graduated (it makes me a little sick to see what college hires make ;-) ).
This isn't true for maybe 90% of the degrees a university offers. I would never suggest anyone take out a loan for a degree that wouldn't pay for itself with low risk. This includes degrees that are undervalued (teaching, for example).
You're right though, about increased tuition, and it's easy loans that cannot be discharged that are one of the major culprits, but living on campus at a public university costs as much as my private tuition plus room/board did 20 years ago. Inflation adjusted, it's 55% of what I paid and starting engineering salaries are 250% higher than when I graduated (it makes me a little sick to see what college hires make ;-) ).
This isn't true for maybe 90% of the degrees a university offers. I would never suggest anyone take out a loan for a degree that wouldn't pay for itself with low risk. This includes degrees that are undervalued (teaching, for example).
> starting in 1999
That was almost 25 years ago. A lot of things have changed since then, mostly for the worse. Being young today is intense. Massive student loans(unless your parents are wealthy), extremely expensive rents(unless your parents are wealthy), 10% inflation, etc, etc, etc.
Why you should subsidize their education? Because it makes your civilization stronger. You want an educated citizenship for every possible reason there is.
That was almost 25 years ago. A lot of things have changed since then, mostly for the worse. Being young today is intense. Massive student loans(unless your parents are wealthy), extremely expensive rents(unless your parents are wealthy), 10% inflation, etc, etc, etc.
Why you should subsidize their education? Because it makes your civilization stronger. You want an educated citizenship for every possible reason there is.
> That was almost 25 years ago. A lot of things have changed since then, mostly for the worse.
While I agree that the costs have been continuously ballooning and certain things got somewhat worse, their story isn’t just some “back in my day” tale. I graduated college 6 years ago with very similar circumstances to the ones described in that comment.
Georgia Tech, public state school, in-state cost of tuition was around $5k/semester (without any financial aid), got HOPE/Zell Miller scholarship that essentially covers full tuition at any public state college if you maintain a gpa of 3.0. And with some hefty nice gpa bump modifiers for STEM classes that were introduced closer towards my graduation. E.g., so if you got a B (aka 3.0) in your intro to physics, it would count as 3.5 for the purpose of the scholarship eligibility. This wasn’t a school-specific policy, this was the state deciding that for all schools, and it expanded access to the scholarship for even more students.
On top of that, I was fortunate enough to get an RA job after my first year for fall+spring semesters (while interning during off-season), which essentially provided free housing. And while this is not something everyone can do (as the number of RAs needed is limited), HOPE/Zell Miller scholarship covers absolutely everyone who qualifies.
And many states have somewhat similar programs. Can’t speak for all, but one off the top of my head is Florida with their Bright Futures program with somewhat similar requirements covering tuition too. Thanks to this thread, I learned about the Louisiana one too.
While I agree that the costs have been continuously ballooning and certain things got somewhat worse, their story isn’t just some “back in my day” tale. I graduated college 6 years ago with very similar circumstances to the ones described in that comment.
Georgia Tech, public state school, in-state cost of tuition was around $5k/semester (without any financial aid), got HOPE/Zell Miller scholarship that essentially covers full tuition at any public state college if you maintain a gpa of 3.0. And with some hefty nice gpa bump modifiers for STEM classes that were introduced closer towards my graduation. E.g., so if you got a B (aka 3.0) in your intro to physics, it would count as 3.5 for the purpose of the scholarship eligibility. This wasn’t a school-specific policy, this was the state deciding that for all schools, and it expanded access to the scholarship for even more students.
On top of that, I was fortunate enough to get an RA job after my first year for fall+spring semesters (while interning during off-season), which essentially provided free housing. And while this is not something everyone can do (as the number of RAs needed is limited), HOPE/Zell Miller scholarship covers absolutely everyone who qualifies.
And many states have somewhat similar programs. Can’t speak for all, but one off the top of my head is Florida with their Bright Futures program with somewhat similar requirements covering tuition too. Thanks to this thread, I learned about the Louisiana one too.
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How did you get the loans? Cosigners with decent credit were required when I looked into loans 5 years ago.
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well, but UL Lafayette was where Bill Evans went. So it's got that going for it.
> There’s the age-old question of how we pay for this. Sanders proposed a Wall Street financial transactions tax. A 0.1 percent tax, according to a Congressional Budget Office estimate, could raise $777 billion over 10 years. Or we could hike taxes on corporations and the wealthiest Americans.
I have no problem taxing wall street or "the wealthiest Americans", but I don't see the connection between this proposal and this funding source. It feels like taking money away from people who don't vote for you, and giving it to people who do. That's a bad direction to go down, and I'm generally skeptical about politicians who do this (which is a lot of them).
I have no problem taxing wall street or "the wealthiest Americans", but I don't see the connection between this proposal and this funding source. It feels like taking money away from people who don't vote for you, and giving it to people who do. That's a bad direction to go down, and I'm generally skeptical about politicians who do this (which is a lot of them).
It’s not a partisan issue and politics should not even be involved. Other countries do it and it’s a no brainer. For example, India has a blanket education cess that individuals and corporations pay, and in return public education (school and college) is heavily subsidized (Schools are next to free). Everyone benefits from this investment and it’s mind boggling we still are fighting over this.
https://cleartax.in/g/terms/education-cess/amp
https://cleartax.in/g/terms/education-cess/amp
Where do you think Indians (like me) move for higher education when given the opportunity.
Let’s be really honest about this, most people don’t move for education.
60.08% of Stanford students come from out of state, and 12.26% come from out of the country.
https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/stanford-university/...
https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/stanford-university/...
I think you’re missing the context of my comment. What I meant was most people moving from India don’t move to US purely for “education”, if that was the case, they’d be going back to India after they were done.
The parent of my comment was arguing that public education in India (schooling and college) is not great and therefore people move to US. In reality that’s far from the truth. Sure, there’s always exceptions and some people do purely want to pursue some specific form of education that’s unavailable in India, pretending that publicly funded education is never good is just plain disingenuous.
The parent of my comment was arguing that public education in India (schooling and college) is not great and therefore people move to US. In reality that’s far from the truth. Sure, there’s always exceptions and some people do purely want to pursue some specific form of education that’s unavailable in India, pretending that publicly funded education is never good is just plain disingenuous.
My point is pretty simple and obvious.
If Indian public education is better, why aren't US students going there (and coming back)?
If Indian public education is better, why are Indian students coming to the US?
> publicly funded education is never good is just plain disingenuous
Pretending that publicly funded education is always good is just plain disingenuous and frankly silly.
Anyone who has lived in India will attest to the utter failure of Indian public education (sans some handful of exceptions like IITs).
Even with IITs, IITians come to the US for their MS or PhD or MBA.
If Indian public education is better, why aren't US students going there (and coming back)?
If Indian public education is better, why are Indian students coming to the US?
> publicly funded education is never good is just plain disingenuous
Pretending that publicly funded education is always good is just plain disingenuous and frankly silly.
Anyone who has lived in India will attest to the utter failure of Indian public education (sans some handful of exceptions like IITs).
Even with IITs, IITians come to the US for their MS or PhD or MBA.
Again, they don’t do it for education, if they did, why don’t they go back to India after their MS or PhD or MBA?
> Again, they don’t do it for education, if they did, why don’t they go back to India after their MS or PhD or MBA?
Read my original comment. Reread it again. Nowhere did I say, they come *ONLY* for education.
Do you think they don't marry and have kids?
Education being better in the US, doesn't mean ONLY education is better in the US!
If the Indian moving here have kids, marry in the US, they would prefer better education for their kids.
Society is a function of education. US is not better magically better independent of its education system.
To any Indian, your claims are obviously false. If we deny the ground reality, we can't improve it.
https://www.thenationalnews.com/business/india-education-gap...
https://educationforindia.medium.com/private-vs-government-s...
Just because a govt funds it, doesn't mean it is automatically good (it ought to be, but it is not).
Read my original comment. Reread it again. Nowhere did I say, they come *ONLY* for education.
Do you think they don't marry and have kids?
Education being better in the US, doesn't mean ONLY education is better in the US!
If the Indian moving here have kids, marry in the US, they would prefer better education for their kids.
Society is a function of education. US is not better magically better independent of its education system.
To any Indian, your claims are obviously false. If we deny the ground reality, we can't improve it.
https://www.thenationalnews.com/business/india-education-gap...
https://educationforindia.medium.com/private-vs-government-s...
Just because a govt funds it, doesn't mean it is automatically good (it ought to be, but it is not).
Also, since I can’t edit my other comment, by your logic, if you are able to move from India to US, get into great universities for higher education, I would consider that as a testament to the fact that publicly funded education absolutely works, unless your argument is that only people who went to private schooling can make it here.
> unless your argument is that only people who went to private schooling can make it here
Most students who come here are from private schools.
Most students who come here are from private schools.
The connection is that we're alll living together on Earth. If you prefer a smaller "unit of belonging", those of us in the USA are all under the same governmental umbrella. What is a reasonable role of government?
My gentics and life experiences have shaped me into a person with the opinion that, for communities beyond Dunbar's Number of members (400? The point is that beyond a particular size for each culture and group of individuals things like laws, regulations, government entities, etc become necessary because we can't settle our differences well enough), taxes are generally a good thing, especially when spent on infrastructure, health care, housing, education, and food- basic needs that benefit everyone and reduce acute stresses that bring us all down, even if they're not in your backyard.
How much money or access to resources do you feel like is enough for you?
What's the value proposition in caring for, and lobbying for, the collective health of all people under the USA umbrella?
To what extent is it okay that we still, in 2023, benefit from legal slavery? The 13th Amendment keeps costs down for my military uniforms, for example, and keeps consumer prices lower than they might be if we paid workers a fair wage rather than assuming they're only value is as enslaved prisoners.
Wall Street money games are on the backs of people who help meet our basic needs. It is a height of entitlement to think that I should be able to benefit from their labor without paying for it with a progressive tax just because I want to play the game of "amass more and more money".
My gentics and life experiences have shaped me into a person with the opinion that, for communities beyond Dunbar's Number of members (400? The point is that beyond a particular size for each culture and group of individuals things like laws, regulations, government entities, etc become necessary because we can't settle our differences well enough), taxes are generally a good thing, especially when spent on infrastructure, health care, housing, education, and food- basic needs that benefit everyone and reduce acute stresses that bring us all down, even if they're not in your backyard.
How much money or access to resources do you feel like is enough for you?
What's the value proposition in caring for, and lobbying for, the collective health of all people under the USA umbrella?
To what extent is it okay that we still, in 2023, benefit from legal slavery? The 13th Amendment keeps costs down for my military uniforms, for example, and keeps consumer prices lower than they might be if we paid workers a fair wage rather than assuming they're only value is as enslaved prisoners.
Wall Street money games are on the backs of people who help meet our basic needs. It is a height of entitlement to think that I should be able to benefit from their labor without paying for it with a progressive tax just because I want to play the game of "amass more and more money".
This sounds pretty dumb and naive as I'm typing it, but we live in a world of massive computational models and technological progress -- instead of relying on academic pundits, think tanks and goofballs on social platforms floating economic ideas and theories on how to pay for things, why hasn't anybody modeled thousands of possible scenarios to figure out the top 10 over-optimized plans showing how to tax fairly + effectively, how to spend / divert / incentivize business effectively, and present many options on "where the money is going to come from" for many beneficial things for the greater good?
"A rising tide lifts all boats", and that sort of thing.
Is it due to lack of data? Politics? Greed? Pressures from business / "the rich" / orthodox academia to maintain the status quo? All of the above?
I just get the feeling that the world isn't necessarily a zero-sum game anymore, but nobody whose sum is currently far greater than zero wants to admit it.
"A rising tide lifts all boats", and that sort of thing.
Is it due to lack of data? Politics? Greed? Pressures from business / "the rich" / orthodox academia to maintain the status quo? All of the above?
I just get the feeling that the world isn't necessarily a zero-sum game anymore, but nobody whose sum is currently far greater than zero wants to admit it.
This question reminds me of the computer scene from “Willy Wonka”.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=tMZ2j9yK_NY
I’m imagining the computer guru presenting his plan to Congress: “my 100% infallible computer model says here’s what the tax law should be. Please overhaul society now and make sure you don’t let any of your prior opinions cloud your judgement now that the computer has told you what’s best.”
Computational models are models: they work best with systems we already basically understand the rules to or can at least approximate. Like weather or physics.
Economics is a social science. Economies are incredibly dynamic systems because they’re made of people. Every change to the system causes the participants to change their behavior. People are significantly more complicated than Game Of Life gliders. A model that can correctly simulate the economy requires strong AGI or magic, neither of which have been invented yet.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=tMZ2j9yK_NY
I’m imagining the computer guru presenting his plan to Congress: “my 100% infallible computer model says here’s what the tax law should be. Please overhaul society now and make sure you don’t let any of your prior opinions cloud your judgement now that the computer has told you what’s best.”
Computational models are models: they work best with systems we already basically understand the rules to or can at least approximate. Like weather or physics.
Economics is a social science. Economies are incredibly dynamic systems because they’re made of people. Every change to the system causes the participants to change their behavior. People are significantly more complicated than Game Of Life gliders. A model that can correctly simulate the economy requires strong AGI or magic, neither of which have been invented yet.
I would imagine all such models would rely on thousands or more factors which, when tweaked based on individual bias, show widely variable outcomes.
It’s probably a pretty smart idea. The “ideal tax” is probably a wealth indexed income tax. We don’t like the idea of just taxing wealth because you have it. We do tax income but it’s hard to scale it in a way that people perceive as fair. What we want is to make it harder for the rich to get richer without making it harder for the poor to get rich. That is, if you’re a billionaire, every dollar is taxed at 99 cents. If you have no money it’s taxed at 0. And if you’re middle class it’s done at a rate ballpark like today.
But measuring wealth as a pre req to implement a tax is really hard. You can assume that wealthy people own the wealth generating assets though basically by definition. A 0.1% tax on financial transactions would affect very little in the average Americans life. It would matter immensely to people who derive their income largely by sitting back and collecting economic rent.
But measuring wealth as a pre req to implement a tax is really hard. You can assume that wealthy people own the wealth generating assets though basically by definition. A 0.1% tax on financial transactions would affect very little in the average Americans life. It would matter immensely to people who derive their income largely by sitting back and collecting economic rent.
You seem to be either assuming that the rich are making large numbers of transactions. Consider Bill Gates and Warren Buffet as counterexamples. They're mainly holding stock and watching it go up.
I mean, a 0.1% tax on financial transactions would kill day trading, and I'm not sure anything would be lost. But if your goal is to tax the rich, then tax the rich, not financial transactions.
I mean, a 0.1% tax on financial transactions would kill day trading, and I'm not sure anything would be lost. But if your goal is to tax the rich, then tax the rich, not financial transactions.
It doesn’t really matter if someone becomes passively wealthy in a liquid form they don’t access. So long as you catch edge cases like collateralizing those shares for debt it’s still fine. They don’t need to make a lot of trades either.
Taxing the rich is incredibly hard because first you need to quantify how rich everyone is.
Taxing the rich is incredibly hard because first you need to quantify how rich everyone is.
> collateralizing those shares for debt
If you take a loan (collateralizing future income for money) should you pay taxes on that loan today? It isn't a tax loophole, it is insane to think that taking a loan should make you pay taxes on future income, it would cause so many issues for everyone. The taxes will be paid some day, you don't get richer or pay less by taking a loan. The reason these people take loans on their shares is to keep control of the company, but doing that costs them more not less.
And finally, the government already takes out loans on future taxes to pay for things today, so not having taxes today isn't an issue for them either. So rich people taking out loans on shares is a total non issue that people for some reason talks about a lot, it doesn't make a difference at all.
If you take a loan (collateralizing future income for money) should you pay taxes on that loan today? It isn't a tax loophole, it is insane to think that taking a loan should make you pay taxes on future income, it would cause so many issues for everyone. The taxes will be paid some day, you don't get richer or pay less by taking a loan. The reason these people take loans on their shares is to keep control of the company, but doing that costs them more not less.
And finally, the government already takes out loans on future taxes to pay for things today, so not having taxes today isn't an issue for them either. So rich people taking out loans on shares is a total non issue that people for some reason talks about a lot, it doesn't make a difference at all.
0.1% same as any transaction involving the shares would be fine
Why does receiving rent involve more layered financial transactions than paying rent?
I’m not sure what you’re referring to. Perhaps you’re not familiar with “economic rent”?
It's not clear to me that rent of any sort of metaphorical capacity involves a larger number of transactions per dollar than anything else. All I can see it accomplishing is getting rid of high frequency trading and to a lesser extent day trading... Neither of which are pastimes of rich people but rather are middle class jobs of questionable yet arguable value.
An argument can be made that participating in the stock market and participating in post-HS education are participating in "peak society". Peak society arm 1 should lend a hand to peak society arm 2.
Argument I read from an economist was that economists want to you pretend that negative externalizes don't matter. And that positive ones don't exist. He said if you accept positive ones exist then that changes a lot. What economists hate is the idea that a society where people chose actions with positive externalities is better off than one where they are selfish.
Someone going to night school to get a learn something and get a degree has large positive externalities .
So think of the the reverse of a pigovian tax where you tax people doing things with negative externalizes. Here you subsidize people doing things you do want and tax everyone else who might benefit to pay for it.
Someone going to night school to get a learn something and get a degree has large positive externalities .
So think of the the reverse of a pigovian tax where you tax people doing things with negative externalizes. Here you subsidize people doing things you do want and tax everyone else who might benefit to pay for it.
I have a problem with taxes in general, and this is yet another stupid idea. Increased tax loads always get passed on to the consumer.
What we will end up with is higher cost of doing business and 100% for certain federally run universities will still need taxpayer bailouts every single year.
Lose lose all the way around.
I have an even better idea: get rid of all freebies. If someone wants something, they can get off their asses and work for it for a change.
What we will end up with is higher cost of doing business and 100% for certain federally run universities will still need taxpayer bailouts every single year.
Lose lose all the way around.
I have an even better idea: get rid of all freebies. If someone wants something, they can get off their asses and work for it for a change.
In the 50s/60s/70s at minimum wage you used to be able to pay for a whole school year with 109 hours. Now, at minimum wage, just for 1 year is around 2250 hours. That's 13 months just to pay off 1 year of school, not including any living costs.
That’s a result of govt guaranteed student loans inflating tuition. Those need to be stopped first. Then we can have cheap public universities that cost only what is required. Shouldn’t be free as it is costly and won’t be appreciated. But definitely competitive to drive down prices.
That is remarkably depressing to see.
It's also wrong. His numbers are exaggerated and provided without any source. In 1970, it was closer to 250 hours of minimum wage for tuition alone (no living expenses) as minimum wage was $1.60 and the cost of tuition for a public university (near me) was $420 for 30 credit hours. Today, that same university is $6,270 for 30 credit hours of tuition, which is around 520 hours of work at $12/hour (which is $1.60 expressed in nominal 2023 dollars and is also the minimum wage in the state).
While I realize that's still a little more than 2x the amount of working hours, it's definitely not as depressing as 20x the amount of working hours as the poster stated.
While I realize that's still a little more than 2x the amount of working hours, it's definitely not as depressing as 20x the amount of working hours as the poster stated.
What if you include living expenses?
nothwithstanding all the things that taxes get used for, education is the last thing that you want to force people to pay for by themselves, because the result will be that much less people will send their kids to school because they can't afford it, and so you will end up with a large portion of uneducated and unemployable people.
you really do not want to live in a country where that is the case.
only education can lead to prosperity of the whole population. and the more educated people you have, the better off everyone is.
i am gladly paying taxes for education, because i know in the future i and my kids will benefit from everyone around us being smarter.
you really do not want to live in a country where that is the case.
only education can lead to prosperity of the whole population. and the more educated people you have, the better off everyone is.
i am gladly paying taxes for education, because i know in the future i and my kids will benefit from everyone around us being smarter.
But would they vote for you if they were educated? Then they might understand that they are voting against their economic self-interest...
well, if i am the one pushing for free education then i hope that those who did receive free education will recognize the benefit they received from that education and continue to vote for me, or for anyone else pushing in the same direction
> Increased tax loads always get passed on to the consumer
Yep, taxes are a little bit worse than that too because the cost also gets passed to the producer as well in the form of decreased demand.
The result is fewer goods and services exchanged - ie less economic activity - than there would have been with a lower tax.
Formally, it is called deadweight loss in microecon:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadweight_loss?wprov=sfla1
Yep, taxes are a little bit worse than that too because the cost also gets passed to the producer as well in the form of decreased demand.
The result is fewer goods and services exchanged - ie less economic activity - than there would have been with a lower tax.
Formally, it is called deadweight loss in microecon:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadweight_loss?wprov=sfla1
Is there an example of negative repercussions of this in modern society? I hear people complain about extreme taxation relative to history, but I also have plenty of access to goods and services in my region, so it seems there must be other, perhaps higher weighted, factors?
I learned about it in intro microecon in college. My understanding is that it is part of standard microecon curriculum.
From my perspective education isn't a "freebie", it's an investment in our nation's future. Change is coming at us really fast and we need a bunch of sharp kids out there looking at all the angles. It's the same situation with school lunches. We need a bright, healthy population to face challenges.
You might look at this from a national security angle. Did you know that the largest category of recruit disqualification in both WWI and WWII was malnourishment? Did you know that our technological 'edge' comes out of public universities? We don't want a small pool of healthy Americans to call on, we want the Roman ideal of a sound mind in a sound body for every citizen.
You might look at this from a national security angle. Did you know that the largest category of recruit disqualification in both WWI and WWII was malnourishment? Did you know that our technological 'edge' comes out of public universities? We don't want a small pool of healthy Americans to call on, we want the Roman ideal of a sound mind in a sound body for every citizen.
What's the "consumer" of HFT trading firms? Those would be the ones affected by it.
Who is the consumer in the context of a tax on financial transactions?
> It feels like taking money away from people who don't vote for you, and giving it to people who do. That's a bad direction to go down, and I'm generally skeptical about politicians who do this (which is a lot of them)
I'm trying to follow this logic, but I'm struggling. Do you think that people should be able to opt out of taxes by just not voting, or voting for a third party that never wins, or strategically trying to vote for the minority party in an area that heavily leans in a certain direction? I think your interpretation of this also assumes causation in a direction that isn't at all obvious; does he want to tax Wall Street because they won't vote for him, or does Wall Street not vote for him _because_ he wants to tax them? I'd argue that Wall Street isn't likely to vote for anyone who proposes a policy to tax financial transactions, but that's far from sufficient to conclude that such a tax is unreasonable.
I'm trying to follow this logic, but I'm struggling. Do you think that people should be able to opt out of taxes by just not voting, or voting for a third party that never wins, or strategically trying to vote for the minority party in an area that heavily leans in a certain direction? I think your interpretation of this also assumes causation in a direction that isn't at all obvious; does he want to tax Wall Street because they won't vote for him, or does Wall Street not vote for him _because_ he wants to tax them? I'd argue that Wall Street isn't likely to vote for anyone who proposes a policy to tax financial transactions, but that's far from sufficient to conclude that such a tax is unreasonable.
It's effectively buying votes with someone else's money. You run a campaign with a promise that amounts to: I'm going to tax 0.01% of the population and distribute it to everyone else. Do you think that impacts whether you get votes from the remaining 99.99%?
It's easy to suggest taxing people who aren't in your target supporter base.
It's easy to suggest taxing people who aren't in your target supporter base.
A bit off topic, but honestly meeting people at top schools and mid/low ranked schools, I don't see much of a difference except in the opportunities these people have. Whether it is physics or CS, I don't see a meaningful quality difference in their work, only that the Stanford/MIT/Berkeley kid gets more internships and has an easier opportunity getting a new job if they mess up at their old one. I routinely see people from very prestigious universities with PhDs fail on rather simple concepts that are within their domain (or answered by a google search). E.g. I've had someone from a top 5 CS school, with a PhD in ML, ask on my github to solve a tensor mismatch for them when my research code uses pytorch's nn.Embeddings and we direct them to the correct checkpoint to use (but they don't). (not our code so we don't directly provide the embedding checkpoint, but we indirectly do)
A bit on topic, if this trend is as strong as it appears to be (many people I talk to see the same thing) then it really shows an over valuing of elite schools and frames this entire argument a bit differently. It would make sense that this should happen too, as teaching positions are highly competitive so there's a strong trickle down effect. You routinely see at low ranked schools professors from high ranked schools (often in a soft retire, for location, or in a junior position). It would make sense that quality levelizes when a single top ranked school produces more PhDs than there are positions to fill nation wide. And on top of the general _trend_ that you can only work at a university lower in ranking than the one you attended (immediately post graduation).
A bit on topic, if this trend is as strong as it appears to be (many people I talk to see the same thing) then it really shows an over valuing of elite schools and frames this entire argument a bit differently. It would make sense that this should happen too, as teaching positions are highly competitive so there's a strong trickle down effect. You routinely see at low ranked schools professors from high ranked schools (often in a soft retire, for location, or in a junior position). It would make sense that quality levelizes when a single top ranked school produces more PhDs than there are positions to fill nation wide. And on top of the general _trend_ that you can only work at a university lower in ranking than the one you attended (immediately post graduation).
I will echo this.
The only things top school really do is gate-keep who is allowed to get in, providing as a consequence some sense of exclusivity. The quality of education does not seem to be that different. And even if it was, it doesn't matter that much in a field like CS that is mainly self-learned and gets reinvented every decade.
The only things top school really do is gate-keep who is allowed to get in, providing as a consequence some sense of exclusivity. The quality of education does not seem to be that different. And even if it was, it doesn't matter that much in a field like CS that is mainly self-learned and gets reinvented every decade.
I had an interesting experience a decade ago when I spent a week recruiting at UT Austin and the next week recruiting at MIT, both for software engineering jobs. UT Austin is no slouch, but it doesn't have the reputation of MIT for software engineering related majors.
We collected several hundred resumes from each. Only the best resumes from UT Austin were as good as the worst resumes from MIT. But, talking to the students and interviewing them revealed that the quality distribution, in terms of what we wanted to see in interns and new grads, was much harder to tell apart. My conclusion was that the MIT admissions process did a great job of selecting for people who present themselves well on paper, probably because admission is so competitive. Both schools offer a great education for those who take full advantage of it. And we wanted to hire from that pool of people, regardless of school.
We collected several hundred resumes from each. Only the best resumes from UT Austin were as good as the worst resumes from MIT. But, talking to the students and interviewing them revealed that the quality distribution, in terms of what we wanted to see in interns and new grads, was much harder to tell apart. My conclusion was that the MIT admissions process did a great job of selecting for people who present themselves well on paper, probably because admission is so competitive. Both schools offer a great education for those who take full advantage of it. And we wanted to hire from that pool of people, regardless of school.
I think part of this too is that the top universities are really good at metric hacking. I do agree that the biases are baked in, but the other aspect is the compounding effects. E.g. MIT students have a better "foot in the door" for internships, research opportunities (especially at undergrad), and so on. Not only does their name do lifting, but they get more recruiters and the universities themselves do a lot of lifting. We know many internships are provided not through blind applications but connections (often grad students get internships via their advisors). These will definitely make the resumes look far better, but don't necessarily correlate with skills.
It gets worse because this metric hacking is everywhere. As a researcher I honestly believe that were I at a higher ranked university more of my papers would be published in conferences (instead of arxiv or dead), I'd have to refine less to get published, and I'd have double the citations (university evangelism. Just being a MIT student will get you more Twitter followers than being a UT Austin student, so more people see when you post about your work). None of these things have to do with the actual quality of the work. Though of course, they can also tend to do "better" work in the sense that they have more resources. In a world where we have ill-defined goals and metrics compute becomes a large edge because instead of performing nuanced analysis you instead perform a more exhaustive analysis (the sledgehammer approach). Which is not necessarily better, though can (often) have lower entropy.
As I posted in a sibling comment, measuring and evaluating things is insanely hard. Idk why as our world is increasing in complexity we've adopted to simplifying things more and more. Maybe the double edge sword of access to knowledge is feeling more knowledgeable than we are.
It gets worse because this metric hacking is everywhere. As a researcher I honestly believe that were I at a higher ranked university more of my papers would be published in conferences (instead of arxiv or dead), I'd have to refine less to get published, and I'd have double the citations (university evangelism. Just being a MIT student will get you more Twitter followers than being a UT Austin student, so more people see when you post about your work). None of these things have to do with the actual quality of the work. Though of course, they can also tend to do "better" work in the sense that they have more resources. In a world where we have ill-defined goals and metrics compute becomes a large edge because instead of performing nuanced analysis you instead perform a more exhaustive analysis (the sledgehammer approach). Which is not necessarily better, though can (often) have lower entropy.
As I posted in a sibling comment, measuring and evaluating things is insanely hard. Idk why as our world is increasing in complexity we've adopted to simplifying things more and more. Maybe the double edge sword of access to knowledge is feeling more knowledgeable than we are.
Yeah, it certainly can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. One of the MIT students we hired eventually left us to create a startup when they were accepted into a Y Combinator class. When it came time to pitch for their series A at Andreessen Horowitz, their YC advisor told them to wear their college sweatshirts to the pitch (MIT and an ivy). Apparently, the business plan / product hardly even came up in the pitch - according to one of them, it was just a "bro-down about our schools." They got the money.
I've heard plenty of stories like this actually. It just makes me surprised because it clearly leaves so much efficiency off the table. But then again, the system they're trying to optimize might be about something else...
That's why I wish there were exams just like high-school ending exams.
This way it aint as relevent where you went, but what your score was, so people from the "bottom" can bootstrap themselves easier.
In India there's such a thing
>Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) is an entrance examination conducted in India that primarily tests the comprehensive understanding of undergraduate subjects in engineering and sciences for admission into postgraduate programs.
This way it aint as relevent where you went, but what your score was, so people from the "bottom" can bootstrap themselves easier.
In India there's such a thing
>Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) is an entrance examination conducted in India that primarily tests the comprehensive understanding of undergraduate subjects in engineering and sciences for admission into postgraduate programs.
> That's why I wish there were exams just like high-school ending exams.
I'm not sure exams are good at measuring actual abilities. Measuring things is an insanely difficult problem that isn't given enough credit. All too often people think it is just to perform an experiment and measure the outcome but this is really only a tractable when we have a well defined mathematical theory to test our results against. Most often in the real world this is done empirically and in these cases there are loads of assumptions that are being made and often not realized being made. Assumptions that are highly impactful. They come from the data that is being measured as well as the metrics being used to measure them. Remember, metrics are models too, and like all models are "wrong."
I'll give two points of evidence to why having a testing system is likely ineffective:
1) These elite schools already have exams that correlate strongly with who is admitted. This gives evidence that exams like SAT and ACT or even the GRE do not do a good job at filtering the issue given the downstream observation.
2) You mention India and the testing structure. Several other countries have similar structures. Personal beliefs aside[0], the fact that India and other countries do this already results in a baked in effect into the US job market. Presuming the effect that I and others are observing is real, then these too look to be ineffective metrics. Since these metrics are likely going to correlate strongly with university rankings as well.
[0] Side note, I do not think these systems are good for countries. They appear to be highly ineffective and just promote gate-keeping. They additionally create a lot of strain and pressure on the society because they result in career bottlenecks. Without these systems people have larger opportunities to change later in life. People make highly effective career changes even into their late 30's but these tests are usually performed on people under 18.
[1] Other note: meritocracies are flawed at the core due to many effects and this can be quite counterintuitive. First off is the well known Goodhart's Law, where systems optimize the cost function rather than the intended goal of the cost function. This is seen in India's famous Cobra effect, reinforcement (and other ML) learning models, bureaucracies, and so on. This is because the metric is not perfectly aligned with the intention behind the metric, which is often ill-defined and static in nature compared to the dynamic solution space. Aligning metrics is nearly impossible and has only been achieved in the most simple of cases. To learn more take any optimization class, learn about optimal transport and non-convex solutions. Metric hacking is quite common in the wild and we should be really aware of it. This even happens in the precise example we're talking about. I'm sure you've known people who are really good at taking tests but are not so good at generalizing their knowledge (using it in the real world or adapting to new situations). It is because they overfit the cost function. Remember, costs functions are models too.
So the question here is about how to properly evaluate things (distinguishing from measuring). Evaluation requires nuance and processing the data and metrics. Most importantly interpreting them (this is where bureaucracies fail and why everyone hates them. Lack of nuance). The truth is that this is always fuzzy and inexact. The only real way to perform this properly is to incorporate noise and uncertainty into your evaluation method. Not to remove it completely, but to acknowledge it and have it play a role in your model. You should of course remove as much noise as possible (reduce), but you can never reduce it to zero and if you remove it from your model you won't be able to capture your uncertainties. These problems only get harder as we move into multi-dimensional data (things we try to measure). High dimensional spaces are highly non-intuitive and the geodesics are not going to be what you expect. This is actually a relatively new area of mathematics and it would be extremely naive to think we have a good understanding of this. (not to knock on the great work that people have done in these areas, but these are fucking hard problems and we haven't had as much time)
I'm not sure exams are good at measuring actual abilities. Measuring things is an insanely difficult problem that isn't given enough credit. All too often people think it is just to perform an experiment and measure the outcome but this is really only a tractable when we have a well defined mathematical theory to test our results against. Most often in the real world this is done empirically and in these cases there are loads of assumptions that are being made and often not realized being made. Assumptions that are highly impactful. They come from the data that is being measured as well as the metrics being used to measure them. Remember, metrics are models too, and like all models are "wrong."
I'll give two points of evidence to why having a testing system is likely ineffective:
1) These elite schools already have exams that correlate strongly with who is admitted. This gives evidence that exams like SAT and ACT or even the GRE do not do a good job at filtering the issue given the downstream observation.
2) You mention India and the testing structure. Several other countries have similar structures. Personal beliefs aside[0], the fact that India and other countries do this already results in a baked in effect into the US job market. Presuming the effect that I and others are observing is real, then these too look to be ineffective metrics. Since these metrics are likely going to correlate strongly with university rankings as well.
[0] Side note, I do not think these systems are good for countries. They appear to be highly ineffective and just promote gate-keeping. They additionally create a lot of strain and pressure on the society because they result in career bottlenecks. Without these systems people have larger opportunities to change later in life. People make highly effective career changes even into their late 30's but these tests are usually performed on people under 18.
[1] Other note: meritocracies are flawed at the core due to many effects and this can be quite counterintuitive. First off is the well known Goodhart's Law, where systems optimize the cost function rather than the intended goal of the cost function. This is seen in India's famous Cobra effect, reinforcement (and other ML) learning models, bureaucracies, and so on. This is because the metric is not perfectly aligned with the intention behind the metric, which is often ill-defined and static in nature compared to the dynamic solution space. Aligning metrics is nearly impossible and has only been achieved in the most simple of cases. To learn more take any optimization class, learn about optimal transport and non-convex solutions. Metric hacking is quite common in the wild and we should be really aware of it. This even happens in the precise example we're talking about. I'm sure you've known people who are really good at taking tests but are not so good at generalizing their knowledge (using it in the real world or adapting to new situations). It is because they overfit the cost function. Remember, costs functions are models too.
So the question here is about how to properly evaluate things (distinguishing from measuring). Evaluation requires nuance and processing the data and metrics. Most importantly interpreting them (this is where bureaucracies fail and why everyone hates them. Lack of nuance). The truth is that this is always fuzzy and inexact. The only real way to perform this properly is to incorporate noise and uncertainty into your evaluation method. Not to remove it completely, but to acknowledge it and have it play a role in your model. You should of course remove as much noise as possible (reduce), but you can never reduce it to zero and if you remove it from your model you won't be able to capture your uncertainties. These problems only get harder as we move into multi-dimensional data (things we try to measure). High dimensional spaces are highly non-intuitive and the geodesics are not going to be what you expect. This is actually a relatively new area of mathematics and it would be extremely naive to think we have a good understanding of this. (not to knock on the great work that people have done in these areas, but these are fucking hard problems and we haven't had as much time)
All I want, is fair and transparent system that allows me to compete with people from $top_school.
Why somebody from $top_school should have an advantage just because he/she went there, not that they were better?
If I went to $no_name school, but put effort and scored well, then I advertise myself with "scored well", meanwhile now I cant.
No system is perfect, but at least there's minimal amount of bias in standardized tests.
Why somebody from $top_school should have an advantage just because he/she went there, not that they were better?
If I went to $no_name school, but put effort and scored well, then I advertise myself with "scored well", meanwhile now I cant.
No system is perfect, but at least there's minimal amount of bias in standardized tests.
Of course want a fair system, but I'm trying to explain why a fair system is quite difficult to create. It isn't about perfection getting in the way of good enough, it is that we've already been trying your suggestion and that's how we've ended up with the system we're at. To be clear, there is a lot of bias in standardized tests. There's also, as we've discussed, not a strong correlation with test performance and work performance.
But I don't just preach this, I practice this. When I teach I make my students do projects. The projects are far more important than the single test I have (to fit department suggestions). I give them lots of freedom and let them explore. Basically I treat them like junior engineers but let them pick their projects. Honestly, I see all aspects of students improve through this rather than when I tried testing or homeworks because they are more likely to find motivation. Because memory is based on how useful you think something is. Granted I teach a popular class but still. I can definitely judge a student's performance and how much they've learned FAR better from a project or two than from any amount of testing or homeworks. They just don't even compare in ability to evaluate. Problem is, there's absolutely no way to standardize such a thing. In fact, I'm literally arguing that the problem here is that these aspects are diametrically opposed.
The thing is that what sounds nice and "should work" often isn't. It's also often the thing people have already tried. You have to actually embrace the noise and complexity of the environment otherwise you just get hacking. I know it sucks, but you sometimes gotta do things the hard way.
But I don't just preach this, I practice this. When I teach I make my students do projects. The projects are far more important than the single test I have (to fit department suggestions). I give them lots of freedom and let them explore. Basically I treat them like junior engineers but let them pick their projects. Honestly, I see all aspects of students improve through this rather than when I tried testing or homeworks because they are more likely to find motivation. Because memory is based on how useful you think something is. Granted I teach a popular class but still. I can definitely judge a student's performance and how much they've learned FAR better from a project or two than from any amount of testing or homeworks. They just don't even compare in ability to evaluate. Problem is, there's absolutely no way to standardize such a thing. In fact, I'm literally arguing that the problem here is that these aspects are diametrically opposed.
The thing is that what sounds nice and "should work" often isn't. It's also often the thing people have already tried. You have to actually embrace the noise and complexity of the environment otherwise you just get hacking. I know it sucks, but you sometimes gotta do things the hard way.
>To be clear, there is a lot of bias in standardized tests
Is there? I'd say that there is very, very minimal amount of bias in them.
>When I teach I make my students do projects. The projects are far more important than the single test I have
Projects are better, but you cannot do them at scale and compare them.
Is there? I'd say that there is very, very minimal amount of bias in them.
>When I teach I make my students do projects. The projects are far more important than the single test I have
Projects are better, but you cannot do them at scale and compare them.
> Is there? I'd say that there is very, very minimal amount of bias in them.
Yes, it is the exact thing we've been talking about since standardized testing is the status quo. There are also plenty of studies on this if you'd like to google for more. It's also important to remember that there are very clear test taking skills, and that these standardized tests intentionally try to trick students (you'll even see mentions of this in your test prep books).
> Projects are better, but you cannot do them at scale and compare them.
Unfortunately some things don't scale very well. Best you can do is scale by hierarchy. Using local groups. But before you say that this requires more trust I'd also note that we do require a lot of trust in our society and for the most part people are pretty trustworthy. It is when metric hacking is encouraged that trust is lost. A lot of standardized testing has a lot of trust built in as well.
But there's another way to think about it. If at the local level you are evaluating someone a certain way then those are the skills that you are teaching them. When you are doing standardized testing you are mainly teaching students how to be good test takers. But we've seen that that tends to overfit as any standardized test is incapable of incorporating nuanced thinking due to requiring to allow for high variance in test takers. On the other hand, local evaluations via projects are directly teaching students to learn to do something much closer to what they'll do in the real world. Also tends to have larger benefits in keeping students excited/motivated as well as find their direction. But yes, this requires more hierarchical trust. But this kinda already exists. We already rank schools, we just tend to do this by standardized test scores. But you can use other metrics as well. The schools could even improve by weighting teachers differently.
But my main point here is that the main benefit here isn't actually the evaluation ability at the abstracted level (the level bureaucrats want, the level we judge populations, the aggregate levels -- which I am actually arguing are extremely noisy predictors (read: unreliable). Aggregate metrics are often unreliable fwiw: see {Simpson's,Berkson's} Paradox). Means often get you into trouble), but rather that if in local cliques you enforce good metrics that this propagates upwards. Think like Conway's game (or even physics): if your local set of rules is good, you can generate arbitrary complexity at the large scale due to compounding effects.
To be clear: the goals I'd want schooling to align with are: 1) maximizing education of people (both specific to their desired specialization as well as general knowledge and skills to learn to learn), 2) achieve threshold value for socialization level (ensuring people can interact in society. This is often implicit but I'm making explicit), 3) maximizing labor efficiency when student enters the workforce (minimize onboard training). This is an incomplete list and should be thought out more and far more carefully so we can describe the nonlinear program, but this is a good enough outline -- at least for HN.
But I'll also add that there's a certain level of noise that is quite hard to get rid of. To truly evaluate good teaching methods with good accuracy you actually need to track students over very long periods of time. Which gets extremely difficult to model since those students take varying paths and interact with a lot of different teachers who you must all decouple. You're now essentially trying to solve a problem similar to neural network interpretation/explainability. This is true for no matter what evaluation method you use.
TLDR: metrics are fucking hard, do not underestimate the difficulty of evaluation. It'll bite you in the ass
Yes, it is the exact thing we've been talking about since standardized testing is the status quo. There are also plenty of studies on this if you'd like to google for more. It's also important to remember that there are very clear test taking skills, and that these standardized tests intentionally try to trick students (you'll even see mentions of this in your test prep books).
> Projects are better, but you cannot do them at scale and compare them.
Unfortunately some things don't scale very well. Best you can do is scale by hierarchy. Using local groups. But before you say that this requires more trust I'd also note that we do require a lot of trust in our society and for the most part people are pretty trustworthy. It is when metric hacking is encouraged that trust is lost. A lot of standardized testing has a lot of trust built in as well.
But there's another way to think about it. If at the local level you are evaluating someone a certain way then those are the skills that you are teaching them. When you are doing standardized testing you are mainly teaching students how to be good test takers. But we've seen that that tends to overfit as any standardized test is incapable of incorporating nuanced thinking due to requiring to allow for high variance in test takers. On the other hand, local evaluations via projects are directly teaching students to learn to do something much closer to what they'll do in the real world. Also tends to have larger benefits in keeping students excited/motivated as well as find their direction. But yes, this requires more hierarchical trust. But this kinda already exists. We already rank schools, we just tend to do this by standardized test scores. But you can use other metrics as well. The schools could even improve by weighting teachers differently.
But my main point here is that the main benefit here isn't actually the evaluation ability at the abstracted level (the level bureaucrats want, the level we judge populations, the aggregate levels -- which I am actually arguing are extremely noisy predictors (read: unreliable). Aggregate metrics are often unreliable fwiw: see {Simpson's,Berkson's} Paradox). Means often get you into trouble), but rather that if in local cliques you enforce good metrics that this propagates upwards. Think like Conway's game (or even physics): if your local set of rules is good, you can generate arbitrary complexity at the large scale due to compounding effects.
To be clear: the goals I'd want schooling to align with are: 1) maximizing education of people (both specific to their desired specialization as well as general knowledge and skills to learn to learn), 2) achieve threshold value for socialization level (ensuring people can interact in society. This is often implicit but I'm making explicit), 3) maximizing labor efficiency when student enters the workforce (minimize onboard training). This is an incomplete list and should be thought out more and far more carefully so we can describe the nonlinear program, but this is a good enough outline -- at least for HN.
But I'll also add that there's a certain level of noise that is quite hard to get rid of. To truly evaluate good teaching methods with good accuracy you actually need to track students over very long periods of time. Which gets extremely difficult to model since those students take varying paths and interact with a lot of different teachers who you must all decouple. You're now essentially trying to solve a problem similar to neural network interpretation/explainability. This is true for no matter what evaluation method you use.
TLDR: metrics are fucking hard, do not underestimate the difficulty of evaluation. It'll bite you in the ass
I think there's a classic fallacy here of confusing signals with proof. Admittance to an elite program signals (with higher confidence) higher competency, but it can never prove it, largely because part of what determines competency is emotional engagement, which can naturally change long after admission to the elite program.
You would think that there would be arbitrage here on the part of employers - find more people from non-elite backgrounds who are actually competent. And surely they exist, but they don't have a way to signal it. Application queues (for jobs, grants, etc.) are already incredibly long. Good luck finding the competent people in the pile who can't signal it.
You would think that there would be arbitrage here on the part of employers - find more people from non-elite backgrounds who are actually competent. And surely they exist, but they don't have a way to signal it. Application queues (for jobs, grants, etc.) are already incredibly long. Good luck finding the competent people in the pile who can't signal it.
Sure, that's possible. But at least with my observations the likelihood of the samples doesn't line up. It isn't that there's just some duds, it is that there are some duds and nearly all other samples are on par with those of others. Which puts the sampling pretty consistent with a random effect rather than a correlation with school ranking. But such a thing would be incredibly difficult to prove one way or another (that competency strongly correlates with ranking or no effect). But I did give a mechanism for a plausible explanation of no effect. I'll add that at least with csrankings.com if you do a regression analysis there's a huge correlation with ranking and number of faculty, but that should also make sense if you just look at the metric used to rank those schools.
Same experience herw - I've met Stanford/MIT grads and PhDs that struggled with the simplest things the brand has entirely worn off. I think I'd have an easier time trusting a tier 2 grad who "made it" than tier 1s in general, at least as far as technical competency is concerned.
I've known both Stanford and MIT grads who were top notch. That said, they worked at top firms, so there's some selection going on.
Oh yeah of course many of them are top notch - but it feels like ivy's produce a lot more duds too.
Making public colleges free isn't... free. The perception is often that public universities are already getting most of their money from the state or federal government, so why not just close the gap. But the typical funding level is between 40-50%. The remaining 50-60% is currently covered by tuition and philanthropic giving. So closing the gap to make universities free to the public would involve (in most cases) more than doubling the current level of state/federal funding.
That doesn't mean it should not be done - but the magnitude of the investment should be made clear.
That doesn't mean it should not be done - but the magnitude of the investment should be made clear.
Those funding levels you are talking about used to be the norm until "trickle down" become the holy grail of fiscal policy. There's no reason we couldn't return to those funding levels.
Reagan slashed university funding and funded the GI bill instead. No need to draft people, we can just send the poor. It’s a win-win /s
>>So closing the gap to make universities free to the public would involve (in most cases) more than doubling the current level of state/federal funding.
Or, a mix of increasing the level of state/federal funding and closing down a portion of the roughly 1900 public colleges[1] around the country. Unfortunatley, as soon as this approach is used, then the "access" problem rears its head since public colleges that are shutdown require more students to commute/reside further away from their home towns.
[1] https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=1122
Or, a mix of increasing the level of state/federal funding and closing down a portion of the roughly 1900 public colleges[1] around the country. Unfortunatley, as soon as this approach is used, then the "access" problem rears its head since public colleges that are shutdown require more students to commute/reside further away from their home towns.
[1] https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=1122
I agree with the 'stop arguing over elite schools' bit. To me, elite schools look like a huge waste of money and I urge anyone considering an elite school to study the law of diminishing returns. To other people, going to such a school is absolutely worth it and crucial to their life plan.
Let them charge what the market will bear and let them accept students within the same framework that any other business follows when determining what customers to work with.
Part of what makes so-called elite schools elite is scarcity, so even if you completely rewrote how they operate, the number of actual students affected would be too small to move the needle anyway.
Let them charge what the market will bear and let them accept students within the same framework that any other business follows when determining what customers to work with.
Part of what makes so-called elite schools elite is scarcity, so even if you completely rewrote how they operate, the number of actual students affected would be too small to move the needle anyway.
Elite schools transmute money into merit. Even if we completely marketize them, the human biases that exist in relation to them are sticky.
This doesn't mean that "people's biases are wrong, therefore the consequences are irrelevant." It means that the choices made must account for those biases. The choices we make regarding merit laundering, must account for people's biases toward graduates. We would be fools not to.
This doesn't mean that "people's biases are wrong, therefore the consequences are irrelevant." It means that the choices made must account for those biases. The choices we make regarding merit laundering, must account for people's biases toward graduates. We would be fools not to.
> Elite schools transmute money into merit.
Eh, I don't know. Those schools transmute money into networks for sure, but the degree they do it for merit seems drastically less, perhaps it's even initially a negative at first. I mean, the lazy rich kid who got into Yale because of daddy is such a well-established stereotype now that it's almost the default expectation. :)
Eh, I don't know. Those schools transmute money into networks for sure, but the degree they do it for merit seems drastically less, perhaps it's even initially a negative at first. I mean, the lazy rich kid who got into Yale because of daddy is such a well-established stereotype now that it's almost the default expectation. :)
The point of laundering is sneaking in just enough bad with the good that it's more difficult/expensive to sort it out again than it is to accept that it's good and doesn't damage the brand.
The reputation of elite institutions is a product of them mixing in just enough bad[sons and daughters of the elite[1]] with the meritorious[high student performers] that it's not worth it for us to sort it out ourselves and doesn't damage the reputation of the institution.
The lazy rich kid to you, may be the perfect candidate to a VP hiring for an influential role. I'd be hasty to generalize your own perspective to those who are filling those seats.
I brought up merit laundering for a reason: offering free public institutions reduces the merit pool for elite institutions in a way that reduces their efficacy in laundering merit.
The meritorious care far less about the reputation of elite institutions than the elite do. After all, the launderers gain more from cleaning the dirty money than they do from dirtying the clean.
The reputation of elite institutions is a product of them mixing in just enough bad[sons and daughters of the elite[1]] with the meritorious[high student performers] that it's not worth it for us to sort it out ourselves and doesn't damage the reputation of the institution.
The lazy rich kid to you, may be the perfect candidate to a VP hiring for an influential role. I'd be hasty to generalize your own perspective to those who are filling those seats.
I brought up merit laundering for a reason: offering free public institutions reduces the merit pool for elite institutions in a way that reduces their efficacy in laundering merit.
The meritorious care far less about the reputation of elite institutions than the elite do. After all, the launderers gain more from cleaning the dirty money than they do from dirtying the clean.
> The lazy rich kid to you, may be the perfect candidate to a VP hiring for an influential role.
If the candidate is perfect because of the skills, work ethic, etc. then they by definition have merit, so that's not the type we're talking about.
> I'd be hasty to generalize your own perspective to those who are filling those seats.
I'm not. :)
> The meritorious care far less about the reputation of elite institutions than the elite do.
Yes, that's what I've been saying from the get-go.
If the candidate is perfect because of the skills, work ethic, etc. then they by definition have merit, so that's not the type we're talking about.
> I'd be hasty to generalize your own perspective to those who are filling those seats.
I'm not. :)
> The meritorious care far less about the reputation of elite institutions than the elite do.
Yes, that's what I've been saying from the get-go.
> If the candidate is perfect because of the skills, work ethic, etc. then they by definition have merit, so that's not the type we're talking about.
I mean like that "nobody got fired for choosing IBM"-type perfect fit.
I mean like that "nobody got fired for choosing IBM"-type perfect fit.
A nearly content-free article. The idea is not new, and little data is offered to support it.
The success criteria seems to be "enrollment", which leaves a lot of room for things to go wrong. No downsides are mentioned aside from cost, which is dismissed with a tax that sounds like free money.
The success criteria seems to be "enrollment", which leaves a lot of room for things to go wrong. No downsides are mentioned aside from cost, which is dismissed with a tax that sounds like free money.
what other downsides could there be from making education accessible to everyone and not just those that can afford it?
i can think of two: one is the quality of the education. if it is to low and everyone graduates without having learned much then that would be bad.
another is having to many graduates without jobs.
but both can be fixed with more quality and being more demanding. one benefit: when you don't pay for education yourself there is no pressure to let you pass classes just to get your money.
i can think of two: one is the quality of the education. if it is to low and everyone graduates without having learned much then that would be bad.
another is having to many graduates without jobs.
but both can be fixed with more quality and being more demanding. one benefit: when you don't pay for education yourself there is no pressure to let you pass classes just to get your money.
ETH Zurich and EPFL (in Lausanne) are elite technical schools, which also have extremely low tuition (roughly $1000 total per semester) and open admissions.
There is no entrance exam required for students who have a Swiss high school degree that qualifies them to attend university at all -- they may simply enroll.
The trick is that the first year or two are made extremely difficult so many people drop out. However, tuition is so low that this is not really a disaster that derails your whole life.
There is no entrance exam required for students who have a Swiss high school degree that qualifies them to attend university at all -- they may simply enroll.
The trick is that the first year or two are made extremely difficult so many people drop out. However, tuition is so low that this is not really a disaster that derails your whole life.
Only if you satisfy a long list of conditions. The reason this is the case is that Switzerland sorts kids very early, at 12 years essentially. Get sorted wrongly once and while you do get a second chance, they make sure it takes you 2 years absolute minimum, 4-6 years normally and even more is possible to enter university. Oh, and if you get sorted wrong (lang or kurzgymnasium), it takes years and expensive courses to get back.
The low tuition only applies if you enter before you turn 25 years old. And Zurich is very expensive to rent a room.
Even once in university, you only get one chance (you should see the crying on results day), if you want to redo a year, you can do it in Germany (closest) or France/Italy that do allow it. Which of course is anything but cheap, as a non-local you do not qualify for any kind of aid.
But sure, what you say is correct, tuition is not that high and if you really try, yes you can get through it as a very poor person. But one mistake and it'll take you a very long time to claw back, and a lot of money.
(this is about ETH Zurich, EPFL is similar, but not quite as bad)
The low tuition only applies if you enter before you turn 25 years old. And Zurich is very expensive to rent a room.
Even once in university, you only get one chance (you should see the crying on results day), if you want to redo a year, you can do it in Germany (closest) or France/Italy that do allow it. Which of course is anything but cheap, as a non-local you do not qualify for any kind of aid.
But sure, what you say is correct, tuition is not that high and if you really try, yes you can get through it as a very poor person. But one mistake and it'll take you a very long time to claw back, and a lot of money.
(this is about ETH Zurich, EPFL is similar, but not quite as bad)
what is the tuition if you are over 25? I think it is still about 800 CHF. This is extremely cheap.
Compare to MIT which is about $40,000 a semester, with the average student after financial aid paying $20,000, and is in Cambridge, a city where rents are about as bad as Zurich (although most students live in MIT dorms). if MIT failed out 50% of their class with $40-80k in debt, this could not be tolerated.
Compare to MIT which is about $40,000 a semester, with the average student after financial aid paying $20,000, and is in Cambridge, a city where rents are about as bad as Zurich (although most students live in MIT dorms). if MIT failed out 50% of their class with $40-80k in debt, this could not be tolerated.
It's not the tuition that's expensive (well, if you're not Swiss it's 1000/month instead of 1200/year, but that's still way cheaper than US. Germany's still cheaper though), it's the courses you have to take before you can even enter Uni ("passerelle", 6 month mandatory course, you cannot start before you've completed at least a Berufsmaturitat, costs for the course according to kme.ch: 2* 17000 to 20000 CHF (meaning ~40000 CHF), not including study materials or the actual exam cost, oh and to add insult to injury you get to pay extra for a mandatory psychological interview to see if you're motivated).
This does not consider that you'll need to actually attend this course, either in the evenings (min. 10hrs per week, for 2 years), during which you'll have living + ... expenses. Attendance is mandatory, and frankly it's the only part that I can imagine you'll fail.
Because passerelle is waste of time (look up the course ...) you're much better off getting a degree in Munich or Stuttgart, any will do (any bachelor degree also gets you admission to any Swiss university, regardless of language, but of course that doesn't help to get you your first degree). You can for example get a philosophy bachelor (which you can get for 800euro + attending the exam once, and while I'm sure it's possible to fail this course, you'll have to fail it a lot before you run up the 40000CHF bill it costs in Zurich to get admission to university, plus it's so easy I suspect a dead cat might pass. Can be fully studied in an afternoon). But passerelle is what you're supposed to do in Switzerland, as a Swiss. A lot of people do it this way. (note: a non-German bachelor will only get you admission if you also present a Goethe C1 or C2, or a some school finishing certificate from a German school)
That gets you ONE chance. If you fail any year in Zurich at any university, you can't continue studying at all.
This is ignoring the demands of the university itself, the one you want to get into (ETH Zurich), has extra conditions which they publish one year in advance.
And even that isn't the end of it. If you're studying a "desirable" degree, like medical doctor for example, there's many more traps to fall into. At that point you might want to consider just studying entirely in Germany, without even trying in Switzerland, even if by some miracle you actually satisfy the conditions.
Lastly, the government is looking to limit enrollment further. So I, for one, expect these requirements to become more onerous over time, not less. The goal of these regulations is not what the regulations actually regulate (there's funny idiotic parts to the rules. For example: German Swiss degrees count as proving your German language skills ... even when the classes are in English, like most scientific bachelors are). Also, for example Passerelle is effectively a local jobs program, at the expense of university students. You will not learn anything in the course.
But yeah, tuition is pretty cheap, even the auslander rate. Great.
This does not consider that you'll need to actually attend this course, either in the evenings (min. 10hrs per week, for 2 years), during which you'll have living + ... expenses. Attendance is mandatory, and frankly it's the only part that I can imagine you'll fail.
Because passerelle is waste of time (look up the course ...) you're much better off getting a degree in Munich or Stuttgart, any will do (any bachelor degree also gets you admission to any Swiss university, regardless of language, but of course that doesn't help to get you your first degree). You can for example get a philosophy bachelor (which you can get for 800euro + attending the exam once, and while I'm sure it's possible to fail this course, you'll have to fail it a lot before you run up the 40000CHF bill it costs in Zurich to get admission to university, plus it's so easy I suspect a dead cat might pass. Can be fully studied in an afternoon). But passerelle is what you're supposed to do in Switzerland, as a Swiss. A lot of people do it this way. (note: a non-German bachelor will only get you admission if you also present a Goethe C1 or C2, or a some school finishing certificate from a German school)
That gets you ONE chance. If you fail any year in Zurich at any university, you can't continue studying at all.
This is ignoring the demands of the university itself, the one you want to get into (ETH Zurich), has extra conditions which they publish one year in advance.
And even that isn't the end of it. If you're studying a "desirable" degree, like medical doctor for example, there's many more traps to fall into. At that point you might want to consider just studying entirely in Germany, without even trying in Switzerland, even if by some miracle you actually satisfy the conditions.
Lastly, the government is looking to limit enrollment further. So I, for one, expect these requirements to become more onerous over time, not less. The goal of these regulations is not what the regulations actually regulate (there's funny idiotic parts to the rules. For example: German Swiss degrees count as proving your German language skills ... even when the classes are in English, like most scientific bachelors are). Also, for example Passerelle is effectively a local jobs program, at the expense of university students. You will not learn anything in the course.
But yeah, tuition is pretty cheap, even the auslander rate. Great.
^This proves my point well:
course work is so easy that if school was largely free for applicable courses tye jobarket would get Very swamped.
course work is so easy that if school was largely free for applicable courses tye jobarket would get Very swamped.
One of my favorite cultural artefacts from Europe is that "Oh you pay tuition? Sorry your grades weren't good enough"
My university only charged you for retaking exams (after 3 tries) and for redoing a year, if you didn't make a baseline of credits. 1 re-do was free. You can re-take any class for free as long as you're enrolled. I used this to take classes from past years that I didn't pass.
While I'm a bad example of using free schooling well, this is exactly the sort of thing taxes should pay for. If the world's richest country can't pay for schooling, ...
edit: I also remember various professors explaining how paid tuition and good education are opposites. You can't have good education with high standards, if people expect a return on their investment (a degree). How can you look someone who paid $100k in the eye and say "Sorry, you do not meet the bar. No degree"?
My university only charged you for retaking exams (after 3 tries) and for redoing a year, if you didn't make a baseline of credits. 1 re-do was free. You can re-take any class for free as long as you're enrolled. I used this to take classes from past years that I didn't pass.
While I'm a bad example of using free schooling well, this is exactly the sort of thing taxes should pay for. If the world's richest country can't pay for schooling, ...
edit: I also remember various professors explaining how paid tuition and good education are opposites. You can't have good education with high standards, if people expect a return on their investment (a degree). How can you look someone who paid $100k in the eye and say "Sorry, you do not meet the bar. No degree"?
Some zero-price schools in the US, like high schools, have essentially no standards at all. You can get a diploma even if nearly illiterate.
Good schools with high standards can be delivered with or without paid tuition, and the same for bad schools with no standards.
Good schools with high standards can be delivered with or without paid tuition, and the same for bad schools with no standards.
That's true in the US, but probably to a lesser degree than in Europe.
If you had good enough SATs, you can often get full scholarships to your state's public universities. Other states' schools as well, although to a lesser degree—it would be more selective, like scholarships for private schools, since public colleges obviously prefer to subsidize their own states' residents over others, given equal test scores.
If you had good enough SATs, you can often get full scholarships to your state's public universities. Other states' schools as well, although to a lesser degree—it would be more selective, like scholarships for private schools, since public colleges obviously prefer to subsidize their own states' residents over others, given equal test scores.
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 school buddies?
People want to have status markers to point to. Attending an elite school or sending your kids to one are great status markers, plus the value of elite networking and all the elite opportunities. The argument is often framed in terms of race-conscious admissions to elite schools, but in reality it's over who gets to gatekeep the ranks of the elite. These are fundamentally contentious and limited.
This author wants to talk about broad access to education instead. They note correctly that there are really not that many people who are affected by these policy squabbles and far more who benefit from getting access to higher education of any non-elite quality.
This author wants to talk about broad access to education instead. They note correctly that there are really not that many people who are affected by these policy squabbles and far more who benefit from getting access to higher education of any non-elite quality.
If you want to be a CEO, it's a lot better to network with the kids of all the CEO's than the kids of the dentists and middle managers, if you can arrange it.
Totally and this is what I imagined elite schools and colleges were providing. Kinda like signalling. But if you don't have the means to hobnob then might as well get educated affordably?
Hobnobbing with the children of rich families is easier on a college campus compared to moving to Manhattan and trying to climb the social ladder from scratch. The earlier you can get into these circles the better. That's why private schools like Trinity or Andover are so coveted. Even certain daycares are becoming "elite."
Their point is that not everyone is looking to "hobnob", period. Some (most) people want a decent education and a decent job.
Of course, but that has nothing to do with the demand of elite schools. There's plenty of cheaper decent education options for better outcomes and decent jobs that have proliferated recently (online schooling, bootcamps, etc). But in regards to "elite" institutions, those with more money and a "stronger need" (ie more money) have and continue to drive the demand there.
Very few students pay full tuition for the elite (first tier) private schools. They have large enough endowments to offer generous financial aid. Plus the students who can gain admission based on merit often qualify for additional scholarships from other organizations.
The students who accumulate crippling debt usually attended second and third tier private colleges. Those are generally a terrible value.
The students who accumulate crippling debt usually attended second and third tier private colleges. Those are generally a terrible value.
> 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?
In San Francisco, where I live, some in the community are challenging smart kids tracking into exclusive experiences in public K-12 schools.
Among people who are eligible for tracking, tracking seems really popular. But the plurality seems really unhappy with it. So there will always be XYZ, a word I cannot use, in communities to de facto track in public schools, or sometimes there will be legacy admissions, or whatever.
Maybe you don't believe these stylized facts. Like you already sound like the same people in this community who want to end tracking: us vs. them. I know you probably don't actually want that, but you're the perfect example of a tipping point, expressing an eensy weensy amount of resentment for "elite school buddies," that somehow winds up in "end gifted programs." Surely you see that.
In San Francisco, where I live, some in the community are challenging smart kids tracking into exclusive experiences in public K-12 schools.
Among people who are eligible for tracking, tracking seems really popular. But the plurality seems really unhappy with it. So there will always be XYZ, a word I cannot use, in communities to de facto track in public schools, or sometimes there will be legacy admissions, or whatever.
Maybe you don't believe these stylized facts. Like you already sound like the same people in this community who want to end tracking: us vs. them. I know you probably don't actually want that, but you're the perfect example of a tipping point, expressing an eensy weensy amount of resentment for "elite school buddies," that somehow winds up in "end gifted programs." Surely you see that.
Sorry I didn't quite get this. This is also the first time I heard of "tracking". Il admit may be there is resentment re elite schools folks having more etc but I understand that is a fact of life. We are human after all :) The "elite" will find a way to be exclusive etc. Is this what you were getting at?
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?
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?
What type of "raising the bar" do you have in mind that would be detrimental if done?
If MIT and Stanford raise the bar on education, isn't that a good thing? Don't we want them to be giving the very best education that they possibly can?
If MIT and Stanford raise the bar on education, isn't that a good thing? Don't we want them to be giving the very best education that they possibly can?
I almost put this in there, I don’t think it would inherently be a bad thing at all, it just keeps the imbalance there.
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.
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.
Seems to be a cultural issue in the USA, as this is not happening in Europe. Quite the contrary; going to private colleges is very widely perceived as a last-ditch way for rich kids with bad grades to get some paper at least.
I guess this in the USA this is an insider/outsider problem where "elite" school insiders prefer other "elite" insiders over other, potentially equally capable candidates.
I guess this in the USA this is an insider/outsider problem where "elite" school insiders prefer other "elite" insiders over other, potentially equally capable candidates.
There is elitism in hiring within Europe as well.
The difference is that most European countries didn't have private universities.
And if you go to Western US states, you'll see similar recruiting elitism from top public schools like UCB, UCLA, and UT Austin.
The difference is that most European countries didn't have private universities.
And if you go to Western US states, you'll see similar recruiting elitism from top public schools like UCB, UCLA, and UT Austin.
What?! Have you never heard of "Les grandes écoles" in France? They are not private but they are absolutely worse than the US ivy leagues when it comes to creating an insider culture. Good luck becoming more than an office drone in some corporations there if you don't graduate from one of those schools.
I tune out as soon as someone says “make it free”.
First off, make it tax payer funded is what they mean. And no thank you.
Second, we already pay for 13 years of school, why would I believe 4 more years would help? Who is out there championing public school is the excellent model of education?
13th grade is not a solution to anything.
It’s clear to me we are facing a complexity crisis and almost no one sees it.
People that don’t belong in college aren’t going to be better off when everything is too complex for them as is, and getting worse.
A tech at Jiffy Lube needs to know so much more than 20 years ago, but the kid isn’t any smarter at all.
The guy pouring concrete needs to know a lot more, paying for his degree won’t help, but it will take 4 years of experience away.
IDGAF about “elite schools” if you someone took those away, the rich would self-sort another using another method.
The issue here is we aren’t ready to say “we’ve made most of the world too complex for most people in it”. And so have no remedy for that.
First off, make it tax payer funded is what they mean. And no thank you.
Second, we already pay for 13 years of school, why would I believe 4 more years would help? Who is out there championing public school is the excellent model of education?
13th grade is not a solution to anything.
It’s clear to me we are facing a complexity crisis and almost no one sees it.
People that don’t belong in college aren’t going to be better off when everything is too complex for them as is, and getting worse.
A tech at Jiffy Lube needs to know so much more than 20 years ago, but the kid isn’t any smarter at all.
The guy pouring concrete needs to know a lot more, paying for his degree won’t help, but it will take 4 years of experience away.
IDGAF about “elite schools” if you someone took those away, the rich would self-sort another using another method.
The issue here is we aren’t ready to say “we’ve made most of the world too complex for most people in it”. And so have no remedy for that.
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.
You could always make public colleges free, and also make the exams to get in actually hard.
That comes with its own suite of issues, of course.
That comes with its own suite of issues, of course.
We've done the opposite for decades. We've lowered the bar every year and the quality of k-12 education has dropped significantly. Perhaps now that Lucy Calkins is fully exposed as a fraud, reading can get better? https://www.timesunion.com/education/article/phonics-f-sound...
> 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...
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.
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.
To whatever extent your concern is backed up by data, that's an argument for making public colleges free rather than an argument against it, IMO.
"Today, children of upper middle class families have a path to getting good paying jobs that the poor are largely shut out from. We don't wish for that change by making public universities free, thereby preventing competition for these desirable jobs by the children of the poor."
"Today, children of upper middle class families have a path to getting good paying jobs that the poor are largely shut out from. We don't wish for that change by making public universities free, thereby preventing competition for these desirable jobs by the children of the poor."
Oh yeah, don't get me wrong, I'm definitely in favor of free colleges, even if it means a slight lowering of entry-level jobs that require a degree. It would lower wealth inequality by allowing upward mobility by the poor.
It only means that if your goal is to intentionally devalue labor.
You're advocating we toss escapees from the crab bucket back into the bucket because it's not fair to the rest of the crabs.
You're advocating we toss escapees from the crab bucket back into the bucket because it's not fair to the rest of the crabs.
The alternative can be characterized as trying to keep the lid on the pot to ensure no other crabs escape and charging escaped crabs a fee for their offspring to be able to live outside the pot.
exactly this, the quality of education needs to be improved. not every job today needs a college degree (but that may change in the future with manual jobs being automated away) but the access to a degree should not depend on the income of the parents.
> making the degree easier to get
You are confusing "easier to afford the degree" with "easier to learn and obtain the degree." The former does not imply the latter in any way, shape, or form.
You are confusing "easier to afford the degree" with "easier to learn and obtain the degree." The former does not imply the latter in any way, shape, or form.
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.
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.
>>I don't follow the logic the author is using.
The article argues that public colleges being free "[...] will alleviate the student debt crisis and enable low-income students, particularly those of color, to go to college."
Your point about elite schools still existing can (and will) be true at the same time in this hypothetical universe where US public college tuition is free.
The article argues that public colleges being free "[...] will alleviate the student debt crisis and enable low-income students, particularly those of color, to go to college."
Your point about elite schools still existing can (and will) be true at the same time in this hypothetical universe where US public college tuition is free.
The logic is that a good education is actually useful for the student outside of signaling membership in a zero-sum social elite.
Thanks for saying the obvious in a polite fashion. I started to write something out but realized I'd just cause offense. To me, it's obvious that a better educated society is a better society. We could actually go further and actually pay people to go to school.
You can still have elite public universities (UC Berkeley, Michigan)
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 military. Whether prudent or not, at least that spending produces an objectively superior product. We spend even more on education with ambiguous results.
The US also spends a lot of money on the military. Whether prudent or not, at least that spending produces an objectively superior product. We spend even more on education with ambiguous results.
> 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...
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...
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.
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.
"Total expenditures for public elementary and secondary schools in the United States were $870 billion in 2019–20 (in constant 2021–22 dollars)"
That does not include college funding.
https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66
That does not include college funding.
https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66
The overwhelming majority of education funding is at the state or lower level, not federal.
D-of-Ed is just federal funding, most education funding (unlike defense funding) is at the state/local level.
The entire US military budget is federal, but most of the education budget comes from the states.
You're comparing apples to oranges.
You're comparing apples to oranges.
> The entire US military budget is federal,
False. For instance, California’s military spending in FY 2023-2024 is budgeted at $293.6 million (putting it between Paraguay and Niger in military spending), of which the majority is state funds, not federal support (by state funds alone, its somewhere around Monogolia’s military spending.)
It is true that the vast majority of the US’s defense spending is federal, though.
[0] https://ebudget.ca.gov/2023-24/pdf/Enacted/GovernorsBudget/8...
False. For instance, California’s military spending in FY 2023-2024 is budgeted at $293.6 million (putting it between Paraguay and Niger in military spending), of which the majority is state funds, not federal support (by state funds alone, its somewhere around Monogolia’s military spending.)
It is true that the vast majority of the US’s defense spending is federal, though.
[0] https://ebudget.ca.gov/2023-24/pdf/Enacted/GovernorsBudget/8...
So... it isn't ALL federal, it's just 99.99% federal. Gotcha. Meanwhile the US federal education budget is just 10% of the total spending on education in the US.
I'm going to say that the former is a rounding error, and the latter is massively significant.
I'm going to say that the former is a rounding error, and the latter is massively significant.
When rounding in any reasonable way, it's true.
Importantly, I'm asking for the original commenter to clarify their position. I'm not comparing any sort of fruit at this point other than pointing out the disparity at the federal level.
Do you have figures comparing "all-in" funding for both defense and education at the state and federal levels?
From casual inspection of the points posted so far, it seems like a more correct statement is: "The United States, nationally, funds education at about the same level as defense." If correct, I'd argue the initial poster's comment is inaccurate.
Do you have figures comparing "all-in" funding for both defense and education at the state and federal levels?
From casual inspection of the points posted so far, it seems like a more correct statement is: "The United States, nationally, funds education at about the same level as defense." If correct, I'd argue the initial poster's comment is inaccurate.
Here are some figures: https://educationdata.org/public-education-spending-statisti...
Putting the US as the 2nd in terms of "per pupil" funding in the world and pointing out that the federal education budget is just 10.5% of the total spend on education in the US.
Putting the US as the 2nd in terms of "per pupil" funding in the world and pointing out that the federal education budget is just 10.5% of the total spend on education in the US.
> 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...
"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...
Can't see the article but I assume they are comparing it to Dept. of education spending as most do. The vast majority of educational spending is at the state and local level which people frequently leave out when making this comparison.
You'd need to consider the state military and education budgets as well.
You think that won't improve the argument?
If the argument is the US spends more on military than education, and we only look at federal numbers, it's an incomplete and misleading accounting.
States spend a lot on education, and not a lot on state military. This article claims California's 2022-2023 budget includes $128 Billion for education [1]. For 2018-2019, the California Military Department budget was $233 Million [2]. If other states are similar (and I think they are), state education budgets are significant relative to federal budget and make a difference in comparing the balance of spending; state military budgets are relatively small, but should be included for a more complete accounting regardless.
[1] https://edsource.org/2022/californias-new-budget-includes-hi...
[2] https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/3743
States spend a lot on education, and not a lot on state military. This article claims California's 2022-2023 budget includes $128 Billion for education [1]. For 2018-2019, the California Military Department budget was $233 Million [2]. If other states are similar (and I think they are), state education budgets are significant relative to federal budget and make a difference in comparing the balance of spending; state military budgets are relatively small, but should be included for a more complete accounting regardless.
[1] https://edsource.org/2022/californias-new-budget-includes-hi...
[2] https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/3743
You're saying that we need to look at both federal and state levels of funding for both education and military. Sure, if that's the only way you can consider things. If you add it all up across the entire US, with your terms, which one gets more funding today, Education or Military?
Regardless, this isn't a d/ck size competition. What I'm saying is that we prioritize too much on military and too little on education. The numbers are irrelevant unless you're trying to prove we don't prioritize that way. I could easily argue against that by saying we have the best military on the planet and the dumbest kids [0].
[0] https://www.crossrivertherapy.com/research/literacy-statisti...
Regardless, this isn't a d/ck size competition. What I'm saying is that we prioritize too much on military and too little on education. The numbers are irrelevant unless you're trying to prove we don't prioritize that way. I could easily argue against that by saying we have the best military on the planet and the dumbest kids [0].
[0] https://www.crossrivertherapy.com/research/literacy-statisti...
We spend about twice as much money on education as we do on the military. Education spending is at 6% of GDP (https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-exp...), military spending is at 2.8%.
I don't need to bring better numbers to say your numbers aren't meaningful. I don't have time to find all 53? budgets for the states, territorities, and such, and probably neither do you, that's fine.
If your point wasn't to compare sizes, why did you bring your numbers?
If your point wasn't to compare sizes, why did you bring your numbers?
> If your point wasn't to compare sizes, why did you bring your numbers?
I'm not the one who cares about state funding, you are.
It is easy enough to say that at a federal level, we prioritize funding the military over education.
I'm not the one who cares about state funding, you are.
It is easy enough to say that at a federal level, we prioritize funding the military over education.
> The US also spends a lot of money on the military. Whether prudent or not, at least that spending produces an objectively superior product. We spend even more on education with ambiguous results.
Nice. Didn’t think I’d see “bombs over books” argued so early in the morning.
Nice. Didn’t think I’d see “bombs over books” argued so early in the morning.
I also think military spending is generally a horrible waste, but it is important to remember that it is a huge jobs program, not just for "people that can't be educated" but also for the defense industry. For example the growth of the Boston "Metro West" region was driven largely by engineers employed by Lincoln Labs, Raytheon, etc.
Also the military runs training programs which are probably more practically results oriented and efficient than most college programs, so maybe the Army could take over the function of general public education :)
Also the military runs training programs which are probably more practically results oriented and efficient than most college programs, so maybe the Army could take over the function of general public education :)
Isn't that the GI Bill?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.I._Bill
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.I._Bill
Thinking more of the "schools" inside the services themselves - "Arabic language school", "electronics for radar technicians", "nuclear reactor plumbing" etc.
I've always had this crazy idea that we could make high school useful again. Run year round and provide more opportunities for swapping in college-level course work or actual college or trade school courses.
This kind of opportunity would have allowed me to finish my education sooner, or at least enjoy it more. As it was, I worked full time every summer since I turned 16 and then 30+ hours a week while I was completing my bachelor's degree and taking classes year-round. I got my degree from a private school, but transferred in about 25% of my credits which reduced the total cost significantly.
It sucked and I missed out on a lot of experiences during that time period BUT I had a minimal amount of debt when I graduated.
This kind of opportunity would have allowed me to finish my education sooner, or at least enjoy it more. As it was, I worked full time every summer since I turned 16 and then 30+ hours a week while I was completing my bachelor's degree and taking classes year-round. I got my degree from a private school, but transferred in about 25% of my credits which reduced the total cost significantly.
It sucked and I missed out on a lot of experiences during that time period BUT I had a minimal amount of debt when I graduated.
I agree. High school in America today is full of conflicting priorities. I believe that choice is the only viable answer. Not the two plus two choices we have today (public/charter and private/home schooling). But throw it all open. Each state should publish a minimum curriculum standard for high school. If Big Tech wants to create an online version of high school that meets the standards, parents and students should have that choice. If Big Health Care wants to create a health oriented high school that meets the standards, parents and students should have that choice.
I honestly believe this is the best possible solution but grade school curriculum and funding being controlled by state legislatures is a real issue.
I couldn't bring myself to be indebted at such a young age so I skipped college then. But this is america, not europe things are different.
For better or worse, indebting people at a young age is how the "college educated worker" pipeline works and the class system functions and controls upward mobility. Not to mention military service.
If you are ok with mandatory military service and more stringent and competitive college entry exams as well as the government telling you based on your score what degrees you can pursue for free, now all you have to do is convince this union of 50 different states to agree with you and it is doable.
Even though college is paid, you can still get plenty of well paying jobs without college or work your way up by gaining experience to compensate for lack of college. This is only possible in America. It doesn't matter how much skills or experience I have, no one will hire me in the EU or Asia based on lack of degree alone for example, but even if it is 10+ years, I can make up for it in America.
I am just saying it isn't as simple as they're making it sound.
For better or worse, indebting people at a young age is how the "college educated worker" pipeline works and the class system functions and controls upward mobility. Not to mention military service.
If you are ok with mandatory military service and more stringent and competitive college entry exams as well as the government telling you based on your score what degrees you can pursue for free, now all you have to do is convince this union of 50 different states to agree with you and it is doable.
Even though college is paid, you can still get plenty of well paying jobs without college or work your way up by gaining experience to compensate for lack of college. This is only possible in America. It doesn't matter how much skills or experience I have, no one will hire me in the EU or Asia based on lack of degree alone for example, but even if it is 10+ years, I can make up for it in America.
I am just saying it isn't as simple as they're making it sound.
the government telling you based on your score what degrees you can pursue for free
in germany this is solved by allocating a number of slots for each degree. those slots are then filled with the best students first, until all slots are allocated. the score that you needed to get in was effectively the lowest score of any student that did get in. this means that in one year it could be that you needed an A to get into eg physics and in another year a C was enough. so it's very much supply and demand, and better grades give you more choices.
in germany this is solved by allocating a number of slots for each degree. those slots are then filled with the best students first, until all slots are allocated. the score that you needed to get in was effectively the lowest score of any student that did get in. this means that in one year it could be that you needed an A to get into eg physics and in another year a C was enough. so it's very much supply and demand, and better grades give you more choices.
That's a very level headed approach. But I wonder if the US would be more like India where kids kill themselves over college admission scores because since college is free, everything you can do in life depends on it.
Personally, I like free college but only for very specific degrees where is demand and having a degree makes sense. Like IT shouldn't be free but medicine or law should, because you can learn IT on the job and it is more close to a trade you can apprentice in. Where apprenticing or learning on the job makes sense, degrees should not be subsidized and pursuits like philosophy where there isn't any economic demand for the degree should be paid by the student.
Personally, I like free college but only for very specific degrees where is demand and having a degree makes sense. Like IT shouldn't be free but medicine or law should, because you can learn IT on the job and it is more close to a trade you can apprentice in. Where apprenticing or learning on the job makes sense, degrees should not be subsidized and pursuits like philosophy where there isn't any economic demand for the degree should be paid by the student.
i'd like to refer to this discussion why learning on the job can be a problem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37718230
especially for IT which can easily be learned in a school setting unlike some other professions where learning on the job is necessary.
learning on the job in IT would work if it is a formalized apprenticeship so that trainees are motivated to stay for the full three years that this usually takes and don't have an opportunity to run away for a higher paying job after the first year.
for your last point i pretty much agree with you here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37743011
especially for IT which can easily be learned in a school setting unlike some other professions where learning on the job is necessary.
learning on the job in IT would work if it is a formalized apprenticeship so that trainees are motivated to stay for the full three years that this usually takes and don't have an opportunity to run away for a higher paying job after the first year.
for your last point i pretty much agree with you here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37743011
If you mean being trapped in a job, that's not an issue often because the pay is bad. The company training you risks your leaving too soon but they also pay you like $30k at most where a college grad would be 3x that.
In my experience, college educated IT people pretty much have the same if not harsher time to productivity, mostly because you simply can't teach very specific products and most of IT is experiential, what you learn in college is googleable, it's the rest that you can't that has value. The only advantage of a degree in IT is it makes the employee a better long term bet because it would be easier to promote them up the ladder and have them stay longer.
In my experience, college educated IT people pretty much have the same if not harsher time to productivity, mostly because you simply can't teach very specific products and most of IT is experiential, what you learn in college is googleable, it's the rest that you can't that has value. The only advantage of a degree in IT is it makes the employee a better long term bet because it would be easier to promote them up the ladder and have them stay longer.
If you mean being trapped in a job, that's not an issue often because the pay is bad
no i mean the risk for the employer spending money on training and then loosing the employee before they can recoup the investment.
no i mean the risk for the employer spending money on training and then loosing the employee before they can recoup the investment.
Every investment has a risk. Lower the cost by paying less during training and try to get them to stay by allocating as much to promotion an advancement opportunities in the budget as is allocated for new hires and treating them well. I have had jobs where I took 50% less than others (even more) and stayed very long at jobs despite much better paying roles because I was treated ok and the pains of adapting to a new company felt too much. They say losing a job or changing jobs is as impactful as divorce or death in the family emotionally.
Another way to look at it is it looks bad on one's resume when you job hop. But also, if training people was the norm, the abundant supply would make it difficult for people to change jobs often.
Another way to look at it is it looks bad on one's resume when you job hop. But also, if training people was the norm, the abundant supply would make it difficult for people to change jobs often.
It is much cheaper to offer online courses than to offer in-person courses.
Source: I teach college.
What if state schools offered free online tuition?
Cheating would be an issue, so we make the students take some tests in testing centers (like we did for industry IT certs before the reaction to COVID-19 started.)
We gradually automate as much as we can using tools like AI.
Source: I teach college.
What if state schools offered free online tuition?
Cheating would be an issue, so we make the students take some tests in testing centers (like we did for industry IT certs before the reaction to COVID-19 started.)
We gradually automate as much as we can using tools like AI.
I don't believe even public colleges want this. They're raking in too much money, at this point.
You think they'd be raking in less money under this proposal? Why?
Because public uni income now is obscene (IMHO) and under our broken two party system, funding would likely be much less as the parties squabble over funding and making compromises.
It would also be interesting to see how the government deals with the often-immense income from college athletics programs (football, basketball, etc).
It would also be interesting to see how the government deals with the often-immense income from college athletics programs (football, basketball, etc).
It would depend on the details.
Let's say public universities educate X students at a cost of $Y. If the government says "We can't pay $Y, we'll pay $Z", then the universities will almost certainly say "We can't educate X people for $Z, we can at most only educate $Z * X/$Y people for $Z". Then the remaining slots are for sale to the highest bidder, who will on average be able to pay more than the average of all X could, because they're the highest bidders.
More generally, those who have to pay for themselves are in general more price-sensitive than those who have someone else to pay for them. That's true of the students who have the government to pay for them, and it's also true of the government who has the taxpayers to pay for them.
Let's say public universities educate X students at a cost of $Y. If the government says "We can't pay $Y, we'll pay $Z", then the universities will almost certainly say "We can't educate X people for $Z, we can at most only educate $Z * X/$Y people for $Z". Then the remaining slots are for sale to the highest bidder, who will on average be able to pay more than the average of all X could, because they're the highest bidders.
More generally, those who have to pay for themselves are in general more price-sensitive than those who have someone else to pay for them. That's true of the students who have the government to pay for them, and it's also true of the government who has the taxpayers to pay for them.
who cares what they want.
Nobody. That's not the point. The point is that they will fight (and lobby) tooth and nail to prevent such an action.
They already have a close relationship with their political representatives, now imagine that plus large amounts of campaign donations and favors.
And YOU, you support this?! Why, it would degrade the quality of education students get now! /s of course
They already have a close relationship with their political representatives, now imagine that plus large amounts of campaign donations and favors.
And YOU, you support this?! Why, it would degrade the quality of education students get now! /s of course
As others in the thread have noted, there are two separeate issues here:
1. Young people should be able to get a quality education regardless of their families' financial situation.
2. Everyone should have an equal shot at attaining positions of power in society (not so much for their own good, since almost nobody is going to attain these positions anyway it's a small benefit relative to the total population, as for everyone else's good - we don't want to be governed by a hereditary caste).
For (1), you want high quality free public colleges (elite institutions are simply too small regardless of what you do with their admissions process).
For (2), you need to make sure admissions at elite institutions is equitable (most important priority: ban legacy admissions).
1. Young people should be able to get a quality education regardless of their families' financial situation.
2. Everyone should have an equal shot at attaining positions of power in society (not so much for their own good, since almost nobody is going to attain these positions anyway it's a small benefit relative to the total population, as for everyone else's good - we don't want to be governed by a hereditary caste).
For (1), you want high quality free public colleges (elite institutions are simply too small regardless of what you do with their admissions process).
For (2), you need to make sure admissions at elite institutions is equitable (most important priority: ban legacy admissions).
As someone who is likely funding what is ultimately a money/power grab, if I'm paying for education, I want it to be for degrees that have direct, immediate impact: educators, doctors, hard sciences. While there is a possibility of funding the education of the next great novelist, sociologist, artist, or historian, there will never be a return on that investment for the vast number of students in those fields. I don't know why we'd force that risk on the public.
Colleges (public or private) are too good at absorbing any money that is made available to them, to be trusted as being fiduciaries of public education, IMHO. As student loans and public money are made available, they have raised tuition to fill the gap without providing any additional benefit for their increased incomes.
For the second one, the only thing that mucking with a private institutions admissions process will do is turn it into a public institution that is no longer elite. They're private, let them do what they want.
Colleges (public or private) are too good at absorbing any money that is made available to them, to be trusted as being fiduciaries of public education, IMHO. As student loans and public money are made available, they have raised tuition to fill the gap without providing any additional benefit for their increased incomes.
For the second one, the only thing that mucking with a private institutions admissions process will do is turn it into a public institution that is no longer elite. They're private, let them do what they want.
> As someone who is likely funding what is ultimately a money/power grab, if I'm paying for education, I want it to be for degrees that have direct, immediate impact: educators, doctors, hard sciences. While there is a possibility of funding the education of the next great novelist, sociologist, artist, or historian, there will never be a return on that investment for the vast number of students in those fields. I don't know why we'd force that risk on the public.
Do you also feel this way about public high schools? Personally, I just think that a world in which everyone has access to education is a better world for everyone.
> Colleges (public or private) are too good at absorbing any money that is made available to them, to be trusted as being fiduciaries of public education, IMHO. As student loans and public money are made available, they have raised tuition to fill the gap without providing any additional benefit for their increased incomes.
Agreed, but this is a problem than can and must be solved. Public universities are nowhere near as bad in this regard as private ones and are thus the best place to invest.
> For the second one, the only thing that mucking with a private institutions admissions process will do is turn it into a public institution that is no longer elite. They're private, let them do what they want.
Private universities are deeply embedded in our society as gatekeepers to positions of power and thus the public has a legitimate interest in how their admissions process works (not to mention that they receive large amounts of public funding). If getting rid of legacy admissions means that they are "no longer elite" (to be clear it should make them more "elite" in terms of actual research and academic performance, but possibly less elite in terms of controlling access to money and power) that's an outcome I'm happy to see.
Do you also feel this way about public high schools? Personally, I just think that a world in which everyone has access to education is a better world for everyone.
> Colleges (public or private) are too good at absorbing any money that is made available to them, to be trusted as being fiduciaries of public education, IMHO. As student loans and public money are made available, they have raised tuition to fill the gap without providing any additional benefit for their increased incomes.
Agreed, but this is a problem than can and must be solved. Public universities are nowhere near as bad in this regard as private ones and are thus the best place to invest.
> For the second one, the only thing that mucking with a private institutions admissions process will do is turn it into a public institution that is no longer elite. They're private, let them do what they want.
Private universities are deeply embedded in our society as gatekeepers to positions of power and thus the public has a legitimate interest in how their admissions process works (not to mention that they receive large amounts of public funding). If getting rid of legacy admissions means that they are "no longer elite" (to be clear it should make them more "elite" in terms of actual research and academic performance, but possibly less elite in terms of controlling access to money and power) that's an outcome I'm happy to see.
>They're private, let them do what they want.
Have you also bitched about private schools not being allowed to use affirmative action for admissions, or were you only too happy to read about the courts interfering with that as well?
Have you also bitched about private schools not being allowed to use affirmative action for admissions, or were you only too happy to read about the courts interfering with that as well?
i think the solution here is to limit the number of students per field as needed. funding should absolutely be used to direct education towards the needs of society. we do need artists, sociologists and historians as well, but not as much as educators, doctors, etc. funding should reflect that.
Giving out legacy admission is Equity. You're giving "legacy" people the same education as people who earned it through merit, which is the definition of being equitable. Unless, you believe equity only applies to race?
Equality is the term you're looking for.
Equality is the term you're looking for.
Equitable, adj: fair and impartial.
If you actually believe that legacy admissions are a fair and impartial way to decide who gets to go to Harvard, I'm not really sure what to say.
If you actually believe that legacy admissions are a fair and impartial way to decide who gets to go to Harvard, I'm not really sure what to say.
Equity is an outcome. You're suggesting we FORCE an outcome and apparently you don't want to base it on legacy. So, what are we basing the forced outcome on? Race? Victim-hood? Gender? Class? Are lower class people of color more deserving of equity?
How do you make something equitable? You need to think through the process of how that works. It's every bit as "fair" to gift admissions to family members as it is to someone because they're a different skin tone. Which is to say, both are stupid.
How about we give people the resources and they can prove they deserve it through merit?
How do you make something equitable? You need to think through the process of how that works. It's every bit as "fair" to gift admissions to family members as it is to someone because they're a different skin tone. Which is to say, both are stupid.
How about we give people the resources and they can prove they deserve it through merit?
The thing is, Americans by and large don't really believe either of those points. At least not in enough numbers to push policy.
What are the non-merit based criteria you propose?
Over the past few decades, college tuition and fees have metastasized, hitting an average of nearly $11,000 a year for in-state students who attend public four-year institutions, and now undergraduate enrollment is plummeting. There is a solution: Congress and more states should adopt tuition-free public higher education. This will alleviate the student debt crisis and enable low-income students, particularly those of color, to go to college.
The article fails to make a case that the stated problem, "tuition and fees have metastasized," will be addressed by "tuition-free public higher education."
The article fails to make a case that the stated problem, "tuition and fees have metastasized," will be addressed by "tuition-free public higher education."
First: That isn't even the correct use of "metastasized". (Unless you assume that any cost at all is a cancer.) That's rather jarring in an article about higher education.
Second: If prices are out of control, so people aren't going there because it's too expensive, maybe the answer is to let supply and demand do its thing? This proposal takes universities that are too expensive, and looks for an alternate way to pay them anyway. That's not the answer - or at least, it's not the answer to the problem that they say they're trying to solve.
Find a way to lower the cost of college, rather than changing who pays for it. (We can also talk about who pays for it, but the solution to the stated problem is to find a way to undo the insane increase in college costs.)
Second: If prices are out of control, so people aren't going there because it's too expensive, maybe the answer is to let supply and demand do its thing? This proposal takes universities that are too expensive, and looks for an alternate way to pay them anyway. That's not the answer - or at least, it's not the answer to the problem that they say they're trying to solve.
Find a way to lower the cost of college, rather than changing who pays for it. (We can also talk about who pays for it, but the solution to the stated problem is to find a way to undo the insane increase in college costs.)
Or, just stop making a college degree a requirement for the jobs which don't require specialized training...
i think the problem here is the low quality of education before college and the lack of alternative forms of education. (on the job training, apprenticeships). improving that should reduce the demand for college degrees.
>>Over the past few decades, college tuition and fees have metastasized, hitting an average of nearly $11,000 a year for in-state students who attend public four-year institutions, and now undergraduate enrollment is plummeting.
>>[...] Last year, as enrollment stagnated or declined in other states, New Mexico posted record gains. From spring 2022 to spring 2023, overall enrollment grew by 6 percent, and it jumped nearly 12 percent at branch community colleges.
This entire article conveniently omitted the fact that another driver for plummeting undergraduate enrollment is the "enrollment cliff"[1] that has already started to affect colleges across the board.
Yes, affordability is a large factor, and it's great that New Mexico was able to increase their enrollment numbers (as the article stated, a true anomaly), but the demographic backdrop should have been at least acknowledged.
[1] https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23428166/college-enrollmen...
>>[...] Last year, as enrollment stagnated or declined in other states, New Mexico posted record gains. From spring 2022 to spring 2023, overall enrollment grew by 6 percent, and it jumped nearly 12 percent at branch community colleges.
This entire article conveniently omitted the fact that another driver for plummeting undergraduate enrollment is the "enrollment cliff"[1] that has already started to affect colleges across the board.
Yes, affordability is a large factor, and it's great that New Mexico was able to increase their enrollment numbers (as the article stated, a true anomaly), but the demographic backdrop should have been at least acknowledged.
[1] https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23428166/college-enrollmen...
It'd be great if the U.S. would invest in very affordable elite educational institutions, to the point that they are superior academically and research-wise to the private universities. They should be national (rather than state) universities, to draw attendees from across the country. In an ideal world, today's "elite" private universities would have reputations more like Amherst--fancy places where rich people send their kids, but not schools that the best and brightest aspire to attend.
The U.S. pubic universities are arguably superior to the private ones already in aggregate, we just need a few flagship schools to take the crown of "very best".
The U.S. pubic universities are arguably superior to the private ones already in aggregate, we just need a few flagship schools to take the crown of "very best".
Or perhaps we should stop pushing everyone to college and encourage those who have the aptitude to go into trades. Of the successful tradespeople I know, the only thing going to college would have done was delayed their entry into the workforce and saddle them with debt. Might they be able to run their businesses 10% more efficiently or grow twice as big had they had more business education? Probably, but there are far more businesses that succeed by being just the right size for the owner than there are hyper growth oriented, lean machines.
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I don't think it's fair or reasonable for only those from well off families to have the chance at college though. College access shouldn't be tied to ones socioeconomic background.
I commented elsewhere, but I came from a not-well-off single parent house. I paid for college with loans. Then I paid off the loans.
If someone has done well in school and wants to go into a stable, well-paying profession, it's probably the only area (besides a mortgage) that I'd recommend taking a loan. I paid zero dollars for four years to go to school and live and eat on campus.
Going into an engineering program, the risk was relatively low that I would not be able to pay it back while still in my 20s (which I did). 20 years later, while the cost of the degree was high the opportunities that it made available were beyond what would have been available without it and payback was amortized over time.
If someone has done well in school and wants to go into a stable, well-paying profession, it's probably the only area (besides a mortgage) that I'd recommend taking a loan. I paid zero dollars for four years to go to school and live and eat on campus.
Going into an engineering program, the risk was relatively low that I would not be able to pay it back while still in my 20s (which I did). 20 years later, while the cost of the degree was high the opportunities that it made available were beyond what would have been available without it and payback was amortized over time.
If you think the cost of the degree 20 years ago was high, you should see what the cost is today!
It just seems like there's endless excuses to write off empathy & countless "I did it and so can others" anec-data, that doesn't reflect on what has become of a social opportunity both for the student, and for society to invest in & improve itself, in the long term.
It just seems like there's endless excuses to write off empathy & countless "I did it and so can others" anec-data, that doesn't reflect on what has become of a social opportunity both for the student, and for society to invest in & improve itself, in the long term.
Who would oversea the spending of our taxes? There's no responsibility to provide a viable product currently because people are forced to pay and can't default on the loan if the product the college sold them wasn't variable to earning money to pay back the loan for payment college requested.
Think a world where colleges have to take more responsibility in making sure the loans they demand can by paid back would result in a better system where more people who leave actually end up earning amounts that justify what they loaned to go there.
Think a world where colleges have to take more responsibility in making sure the loans they demand can by paid back would result in a better system where more people who leave actually end up earning amounts that justify what they loaned to go there.
I do not think it is a good idea to treat public universities like a big vocational school. Academics at liberal arts institutions provides value to society that is unrelated to those discipline's vocational utility.
i don't think loans are the problem. quality of education can be measured in different ways. the key thing for me is that by not having everyone pay for their own education, there is no incentive to let them pass just to get their money. quality of education can be raised without risking funds because students drop out.
funding of the schools can be made dependent on the taxes that the students pay once they are working. it's a long feedback loop, but i think it could be the right incentive.
funding of the schools can be made dependent on the taxes that the students pay once they are working. it's a long feedback loop, but i think it could be the right incentive.
This is an excellent point. The selective private schools account for a tiny number of students (e.g. MIT takes in about 1K undergrads a year). And in my experience of both having attended such a school and having hired tons of people from all sorts of backgrounds over almost four decades, while some really do benefit from that fancy schooling, most end up with an OK education. Meanwhile the ones who did community college->state school have all been great hires, and you can get a super education at a lot of state schools.
It doesn't even have to be free.
Just create a subsidy and regulate the colleges that agree to be subsidized. Make it fully voluntary but also give the participant colleges a special badge to let people know that the college is federally funded and therefore has to provide various information to the students or possible put a maximum loan cap on the student, and if the student is making progress and reaches that cap then the remainder of their education is free of charge to the Bachelors level.
Just create a subsidy and regulate the colleges that agree to be subsidized. Make it fully voluntary but also give the participant colleges a special badge to let people know that the college is federally funded and therefore has to provide various information to the students or possible put a maximum loan cap on the student, and if the student is making progress and reaches that cap then the remainder of their education is free of charge to the Bachelors level.
Just a reminder, free public college was the norm for a long time, and many people benefited from it before turning around and working hard to dismantle it. It's not some foreign concept. It's very much apart of America's history. The question we need to ask is whether it's a better system now than it was in the past, and I don't see anyone arguing that it's better now.
Free tuition at public college might have been the norm; but not free room and board and books etc. Unless you could pay for all of that, there were also no guaranteed loans which meant that college was still unavailable except to the relatively wealthy.
This. Sending kids to public universities in the US has always been a big money issue for even the better-off parents (not elite), especially with more than 1 kid seeking higher education. It's definitely not just tuition. You have to enable 3 young adults financially like in my parents case. They had to juggle a lot to stay afloat! Thankfully I landed a great paying job after 2 years on the market and was able to help push my brother and sister through Arizona State, although we all picked up a lot of debt in the process though credit cards.
Institutions on a small scale a long time ago are not easily comparable to institutions means to serve a much larger fraction of a much larger population.
It's important to refer to this as "taxpayer funded" and not "free". That doesn't mean it shouldn't happen, but saying something is free strips it of value. What we should be internalizing is that this is a public good, like roads and bridges. Nobody's like "Dude, we are getting a free road!"
It’s already free in several states. Georgia pays full tuition for in-state students who maintain a certain GPA, and I know Florida does something similar, both funded completely by a tax on the lottery. Students do still have to pay some fees, but the cost is relatively quite small.
Profits are not equal amongst Public Schools.
What you're suggesting would work well, for an industry not designed to milk every bit of money from their 'subscribers.'
Colleges are profit driven. Free doesn't drive profits.
What you're suggesting would work well, for an industry not designed to milk every bit of money from their 'subscribers.'
Colleges are profit driven. Free doesn't drive profits.
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.
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).
Community schools at no cost would be excellent. Not a full bachelors but the associates degree in America, without cost, would at least put many more adults on a level to attain higher education if they so choose.
How much is college in other places? It's free here in San Francisco. You don't pay anything. You can get an education at CCSF without a dime paid if you live here.
CCSF is a community college. Community colleges are great, but associate degrees by themselves don't do much for you. The issue here is public universities that offer 4-year and postgraduate programs.
Free in Germany. It used to cost 500 euros per semester. but you still get your bachelors and masters here for cheaper than a quarter at some schools. Our bachelors are 3 years masters are 2.
https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-college
That has a breakdown for you.
That has a breakdown for you.
There will always be elite, private schools, and people will pay to go to them. If public universities are completely free, then it becomes a scarcity of resources, as each tries to stretch a dollar. This will mean those who can afford it will pay to go to elite institutions.
Do you realize how "free college" works in other nations? Not everyone gets to go. In places like Germany you're put on a track when you're like middle school age and if you're not on the university track you do not get to attend college. IF we're going to start using tax dollars to full fund public higher ed then not everyone gets the chance to go like they do now. Maybe this is a better way of doing it but I can guarantee you a lot of people will not like the outcome of mostly minorities (minus Asians) being axed from ever getting the opportunity to attend college.
If tax dollars are to be used then you HAVE to use them appropriately and giving out free education to a lot people that'll just fail and waste it is not a good solution.
If tax dollars are to be used then you HAVE to use them appropriately and giving out free education to a lot people that'll just fail and waste it is not a good solution.
It is close to that in the US. In middle school you are put on an advanced/honors track and without it you won't get AP or other advanced classes in high-school. You can make all A's and won't be anywhere near the top of your class because A's in those advanced class are usually set up to count for more on your GPA.
It's not. You might not get into Ivy League school but ANYONE can take out a loan and get into a state university of a public university. Hell, a lot of colleges don't even require SAT or ACT anymore.
Where are you getting the idea that you need to have good grades to attend college in the US?
Where are you getting the idea that you need to have good grades to attend college in the US?
Teachers don’t work for free, nor do janitors or administrators. Building maintenance and leases aren’t free.
Free in this context (and in health care discussions) obviously just means free at the point-of-use. It's so odd that people continue to pretend not to understand that to make some other point.
Roads don't build themselves, water treatment doesn't happen by itself.
What is society for if not to serve the common needs of the people?
What is society for if not to serve the common needs of the people?
Does it cost you anything to call the police or the fire department? No- it's free to use. You know what it means; stop trying to muddy the waters with disingenuous arguments.
Yes, "free at the point of use" is what was meant, but for the record, emergency services are not universally free in the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_response_fee
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_response_fee
This ridiculous talking point isn't the "gotcha" you think it is, and quite frankly, it's getting exhausting to see it all the time.
Yes, we know, it's not "free" and is paid for by taxes. Likely even increased taxes. Everyone knows this.
And we don't have a problem with it.
Yes, we know, it's not "free" and is paid for by taxes. Likely even increased taxes. Everyone knows this.
And we don't have a problem with it.
How exactly do you think taxes are used?
I’m amazed by how many people use the word “free” to mean “pay even more tax for the rest of your life.”
I probably pay more tax than you do (based on your comment).
I live in Sweden, in Europe. For that I (and everyone around me) have free school up to and including university studies (actually I would get paid USD 330 in grants, up to 240 weeks, plus the ability to take a loan, neither which I have to use for tuition fees).
I have nearly free health care and medicine (max costs for 12 months $120 and $230 respectively). Subsidised child care, and more.
Cost of living is lower in Sweden [1] rather than in the US, as a comparison (partially because the Swedish currency has dropped in value). But I don’t have to go bankrupt just because I got cancer and didn’t have a good health insurance or sign up for a massive debt to get a university education.
[1] https://livingcost.org/cost/sweden/united-states
https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_countries_resu...
https://www.mylifeelsewhere.com/cost-of-living/sweden/united...
I live in Sweden, in Europe. For that I (and everyone around me) have free school up to and including university studies (actually I would get paid USD 330 in grants, up to 240 weeks, plus the ability to take a loan, neither which I have to use for tuition fees).
I have nearly free health care and medicine (max costs for 12 months $120 and $230 respectively). Subsidised child care, and more.
Cost of living is lower in Sweden [1] rather than in the US, as a comparison (partially because the Swedish currency has dropped in value). But I don’t have to go bankrupt just because I got cancer and didn’t have a good health insurance or sign up for a massive debt to get a university education.
[1] https://livingcost.org/cost/sweden/united-states
https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_countries_resu...
https://www.mylifeelsewhere.com/cost-of-living/sweden/united...
You're just reinforcing his/her 's point.
It's not free. You're forcefully taking money out of people's pockets to support the system.
It's not free. You're forcefully taking money out of people's pockets to support the system.
Yes, we prefer to share the good stuff and not let a few hoard it. It actually makes everyone better off. There is no coincidence that the Nordic countries have a better life quality in essentially every way measured.
Everybody knows it's not free. But it's much better when it's much cheaper or free at the point of use.
I'm from Germany that also lived in the US. I paid 300-400$ out of pocket for a 30 minute surgery with just a local anesthesia. In Germany I paid 40 euros for 30 minutes with full anesthesia 3 days in the hospital. I also had weekly check ups for 3-4 months at no out of pocket cost.
An American coworker here at had a 3-4 month old kid that had a lump on her back. Next day pediatrician. Next day oncologist. First chemo within 10 days. Never paid anything out of pocket.
I'm from Germany that also lived in the US. I paid 300-400$ out of pocket for a 30 minute surgery with just a local anesthesia. In Germany I paid 40 euros for 30 minutes with full anesthesia 3 days in the hospital. I also had weekly check ups for 3-4 months at no out of pocket cost.
An American coworker here at had a 3-4 month old kid that had a lump on her back. Next day pediatrician. Next day oncologist. First chemo within 10 days. Never paid anything out of pocket.
your is misused here. It's "free" for the person attending. I don't think many people are confused and think there is no cost or that it's not borne by taxpayers.
It's not free for them, it's being taken out of their income to the point their salaries are significantly lower than the US. This is like saying if I pre-order a game and then play it when it comes out I'm getting a free game.
I have no idea why this is the default answer whenever this comes up. It seems like you're trying to sway opinions by gaslighting what's really happening. Why is it hard to admit the term free is obviously being misused in this case to present socially funding healthcare as better?
I have no idea why this is the default answer whenever this comes up. It seems like you're trying to sway opinions by gaslighting what's really happening. Why is it hard to admit the term free is obviously being misused in this case to present socially funding healthcare as better?
The thing the article talks about is: not charging for tuition, ever. It's not some kind of loan program or pay later program. Those programs have been discussed, are in place in certain places (australia for example), but is not what people are talking about here.
Unless you are saying "if everyone goes, and everyone pays taxes, it's a wash"? In which case, that's not close to the reality of the situation. As a percentage of the population, attendees of in state public universities is low and always has been. If you don't think that some subset is being subsidized by the general population is good, that's a reasonable argument, but to suggest it's a wash just isn't accurate.
Unless you are saying "if everyone goes, and everyone pays taxes, it's a wash"? In which case, that's not close to the reality of the situation. As a percentage of the population, attendees of in state public universities is low and always has been. If you don't think that some subset is being subsidized by the general population is good, that's a reasonable argument, but to suggest it's a wash just isn't accurate.
I'm not talking about the article. I'm referring directly to the comment chain about "free" healthcare.
Regardless, taxes are NOT FREE. College will never be free, you can only pass the cost on to someone else. Somewhere, someone in the chain has to pay for it. If someone provides you a service then it gets paid for by someone. If no one pays for it then it's slavery and the people providing the service pay with their own bodies/minds.
Obviously you're not suggesting professors and people that run the university not get paid.... so who is paying for it? This isn't a hard concept and yet you keep kicking the can down the road suggesting it's free free free. Where does the money come from?
Regardless, taxes are NOT FREE. College will never be free, you can only pass the cost on to someone else. Somewhere, someone in the chain has to pay for it. If someone provides you a service then it gets paid for by someone. If no one pays for it then it's slavery and the people providing the service pay with their own bodies/minds.
Obviously you're not suggesting professors and people that run the university not get paid.... so who is paying for it? This isn't a hard concept and yet you keep kicking the can down the road suggesting it's free free free. Where does the money come from?
Oh, i missed that re healthcare.
You are arguing a semantic issue that practically everyone is aware of. "free" in this context refers to the person receiving the service without paying for it, irrespective of who else is paying for it. Everyone knows it's not great wording.
You are arguing a semantic issue that practically everyone is aware of. "free" in this context refers to the person receiving the service without paying for it, irrespective of who else is paying for it. Everyone knows it's not great wording.
Everyone is not aware of it that's why I'm saying it. It's a deliberate use of the word free to confuse and gaslight people. There are many people out there that are 1 dimensional thinkers and can't think past a few steps. This is why we had a large portion of the population demanding they get their school loans forgiven in the U.S. They're unable to think of the repercussions of totally swamping the economy and the fact that in the end the money will be paid back by them anyway.
I agree that socialized healthcare has its advantages but it's not even free for the person receiving service, they're just pre-ordering their service. Just like I said in an above comment, you don't call pre-order game free even though at the moment it comes at you're not paying anything.
I agree that socialized healthcare has its advantages but it's not even free for the person receiving service, they're just pre-ordering their service. Just like I said in an above comment, you don't call pre-order game free even though at the moment it comes at you're not paying anything.
What's a better way to phrase it concisely?
Just call it public funded healthcare or socialized healthcare. I'm assuming you believe it's a better option so presenting the positives of this system should be enough. I think cons should be presented as well though, because no system is perfect.
Nothing is “free”. Sometimes the costs are hidden from most people.
It’s like immigration. If you say, “anyone who comes here can’t be kicked out and you instantly get access to healthcare, food stamps, and free housing” then your maximum payout is the entire planet and you are bankrupt once people realize this.
For public college to be free, I want to limit access, like happens in Europe. Sure college can be free… to the top N people in the state, with N being decided by the payers (i.e. democratic electorate).
Otherwise it’s just wasted money as we delay adulthood for a huge number of people who have no business getting degrees.
It’s like immigration. If you say, “anyone who comes here can’t be kicked out and you instantly get access to healthcare, food stamps, and free housing” then your maximum payout is the entire planet and you are bankrupt once people realize this.
For public college to be free, I want to limit access, like happens in Europe. Sure college can be free… to the top N people in the state, with N being decided by the payers (i.e. democratic electorate).
Otherwise it’s just wasted money as we delay adulthood for a huge number of people who have no business getting degrees.
Honest question, do you have a college degree, and do you think the majority of the population being generally educated is actually a bad thing?
I can understand the reaction to the cost, and many people work outside of the degree they majored in, but I do value the general education of the population. It’s been a remarkably uplifting force in society, if you look back over history.
I also wonder what that means for the competition between nations, it seems like the countries that I think are doing well really lean in to general education of their populations.
I came to college a different way, I went into the Marines first and only attended college after that. I didn’t live in the dorm and didn’t have a traditional college experience, but I am glad every day that I didn’t just have engineering classes.
I can understand the reaction to the cost, and many people work outside of the degree they majored in, but I do value the general education of the population. It’s been a remarkably uplifting force in society, if you look back over history.
I also wonder what that means for the competition between nations, it seems like the countries that I think are doing well really lean in to general education of their populations.
I came to college a different way, I went into the Marines first and only attended college after that. I didn’t live in the dorm and didn’t have a traditional college experience, but I am glad every day that I didn’t just have engineering classes.
education is good compared to sitting on your hands for four years. it's not necessarily good compared to all the other things a person could have done in that time or the other ways those resources could have been used.
personally, I don't think that giving every 18yo a full ride to study whatever they feel like for four years is a great use of public funds. I would rather see targeted funding to fill in demonstrable gaps in the labor force.
personally, I don't think that giving every 18yo a full ride to study whatever they feel like for four years is a great use of public funds. I would rather see targeted funding to fill in demonstrable gaps in the labor force.
We are talking about taking something that individuals pay for, that costs about $40k in total at affordable schools, and making it totally free for as many people who want it.
If additional people want to pay beyond the cap, wonderful. But I don’t see how the financials make any sense otherwise.
If additional people want to pay beyond the cap, wonderful. But I don’t see how the financials make any sense otherwise.
I'm just going to default to the: how do you think other countries do it?
I'm really tired of being told "we can't afford to give healthcare" "we can't afford to give higher education" "we can't afford early childcare" "we can't afford maturity leave" "we can't afford guaranteed sick/vacation"
Of course we can. The powers at be don't want that because it levels the playing field, costs them some money, and ultimately makes them less powerful.
I'm really tired of being told "we can't afford to give healthcare" "we can't afford to give higher education" "we can't afford early childcare" "we can't afford maturity leave" "we can't afford guaranteed sick/vacation"
Of course we can. The powers at be don't want that because it levels the playing field, costs them some money, and ultimately makes them less powerful.
A number of other countries do it by separating students into different tracks bound for university, the trades, or unskilled labor, respectively, already while they are schoolchildren. Public universities are free or nearly so, but the system ensures that only a portion of society is directed to them. Those who didn't get on the university track while still at school may be able to gain a public university education later as adults, but the process is complicated enough that many are discouraged, or in some countries they turn to private universities that are not free.
I’m sick of people saying we can afford everything! We really, truly can’t. We have the largest peace time deficit of all time - we are running deficits the size of WW2 when no emergency exists!
The good part is that all of this will sort itself out. Economic gravity will hit and democracy will sort out who pays the bill.
The good part is that all of this will sort itself out. Economic gravity will hit and democracy will sort out who pays the bill.
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could you answer those questions I asked you?
On this thread I prefer to debate in the abstract rather than let emotions into it.
Emotionally speaking my friend’s kid has muscular dystrophy and it’s extremely sad and heart wrenching to watch what was formerly an active toddler degrade into wheel chair bound pain and suffering, leading to a death around 30 years old. I wish society would put unlimited funds into solving this disease because I personally see how devastating it is to my friend’s family and the child himself.
However in an argument about where to allocate scarce resources, putting all of our money into solving that is probably not what most people would choose.
Similarly I don’t think unlimited free education to every 18 year old is a good choice, despite emotional pleas.
Emotionally speaking my friend’s kid has muscular dystrophy and it’s extremely sad and heart wrenching to watch what was formerly an active toddler degrade into wheel chair bound pain and suffering, leading to a death around 30 years old. I wish society would put unlimited funds into solving this disease because I personally see how devastating it is to my friend’s family and the child himself.
However in an argument about where to allocate scarce resources, putting all of our money into solving that is probably not what most people would choose.
Similarly I don’t think unlimited free education to every 18 year old is a good choice, despite emotional pleas.
That answers the question. You’ve got a college degree, probably for a lot less than kids today are faced with paying, you’re probably quite successful and yet… it’s just not enough right. The most important thing is that you keep as much wealth as you can. The broader concerns of what’s good for society, that shouldn’t come into play. You got yours, how do you stay there if not by keeping the rest down and not contributing
When you don’t like someone’s arguments, attack the source!
I like to use rhetoric to debate topics, ideally with facts and statistics. Attacking someone else personally, or making up a lot of stuff about them, is a very weak line of attack (for me at least) when trying to push your point forwards.
This is an anonymous Internet forum so I don’t have a degree, I was raised by a single mother and an abusive uncle who beat me with a belt when I asked for more eggs at breakfast. What difference does it make?
I like to use rhetoric to debate topics, ideally with facts and statistics. Attacking someone else personally, or making up a lot of stuff about them, is a very weak line of attack (for me at least) when trying to push your point forwards.
This is an anonymous Internet forum so I don’t have a degree, I was raised by a single mother and an abusive uncle who beat me with a belt when I asked for more eggs at breakfast. What difference does it make?
but that education would allow more people to do research on muscular dystrophy and other problems.
if we want to solve the worlds problems we need more people with the capacity to work on them. only education is capable of doing that.
if we want to solve the worlds problems we need more people with the capacity to work on them. only education is capable of doing that.
> Sometimes the costs are hidden from most people. [..] It’s like immigration
The costs of immigration are not hidden, nor are its benefits. Financially speaking and from the point of view of the state, immigrant are net negative in the first couple of years - and then they are net positive for the rest of their lives. Immigration exists because market demand for workforce exists... I always find hilarious that it is the most free market advocates who tend to ignore that.
The costs of immigration are not hidden, nor are its benefits. Financially speaking and from the point of view of the state, immigrant are net negative in the first couple of years - and then they are net positive for the rest of their lives. Immigration exists because market demand for workforce exists... I always find hilarious that it is the most free market advocates who tend to ignore that.
> 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!
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.
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.
> 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).
These are the sorts of arguments which get trotted out for only certain kinds of immigrants.
Where I live in Chicagoland, Eastern European immigrants (Poles especially) face a lot of the same kinds of issues. Lots of signs and documents are printed in English, Spanish and Polish around here. They just try like hell to get here, however they can (often illegally, via visa overstays, just like immigrants from Latin America). But for reasons I will leave as an exercise for the reader, nobody around here is advocating these sorts of rules to be applied to Poles.
I used to live in a town that was 49% Latino (really, Mexican was most of that). You will find that most of those folks would pass this test you suggest. Most people are not moving to a country where they have no job and no place to stay - there's always some community of friends and family they are connected with where they can land and get on their feet. Obviously! You'd have to be mad to move your whole family to a place where you have no job and no place to stay. If that option seems attractive to you, then probably conditions in your country of origin are so bad that you really should be a refugee.
These are the sorts of arguments which get trotted out for only certain kinds of immigrants.
Where I live in Chicagoland, Eastern European immigrants (Poles especially) face a lot of the same kinds of issues. Lots of signs and documents are printed in English, Spanish and Polish around here. They just try like hell to get here, however they can (often illegally, via visa overstays, just like immigrants from Latin America). But for reasons I will leave as an exercise for the reader, nobody around here is advocating these sorts of rules to be applied to Poles.
I used to live in a town that was 49% Latino (really, Mexican was most of that). You will find that most of those folks would pass this test you suggest. Most people are not moving to a country where they have no job and no place to stay - there's always some community of friends and family they are connected with where they can land and get on their feet. Obviously! You'd have to be mad to move your whole family to a place where you have no job and no place to stay. If that option seems attractive to you, then probably conditions in your country of origin are so bad that you really should be a refugee.
That’s fine - let’s codify it then. The law says you have to have that situation, or you can’t come to the US. I’d support it.
Legal work/family visa holders already have this check:
https://www.usa.gov/visas
Are you suggesting changes to the visitor visas?
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/tourism-...
What you propose doesn't make sense for visitor visas.
What exactly are you suggesting, and what problem do you think it is going to solve?
Furthermore, if you accept that it's not really that much of a problem and a "Trust but Verify" type of situation, why bother given the risk of unequal/selective enforcement?
https://www.usa.gov/visas
Are you suggesting changes to the visitor visas?
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/tourism-...
What you propose doesn't make sense for visitor visas.
What exactly are you suggesting, and what problem do you think it is going to solve?
Furthermore, if you accept that it's not really that much of a problem and a "Trust but Verify" type of situation, why bother given the risk of unequal/selective enforcement?
The problem is we have hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants streaming across the border with no plan, so they sleep in shelters and on the street in NYC. We can’t kick them out because they have the right to see a judge which often takes over 6 months. Who will feed and clothe and shelter and care for them? Taxpayers, which is why NYC is begging for a federal bailout.
The legal immigration system should be reformed and made easier. But the illegal system we have is a joke and disaster.
The legal immigration system should be reformed and made easier. But the illegal system we have is a joke and disaster.
What you are wanting will not fix that.
Having a more organized system, where people can apply and receive residency and the chance for citizenship if they prove various skills and income and housing abilities, seems very reasonable to me. And then the illegal immigrants get deported immediately. This sounds very possible to me, and far more fair to legal immigrants.
Open immigration is obviously incompatible with a society that has open social benefits, but the United States currently has neither.
> Immigration exists because market demand for workforce exists
The massive wave of migration the US is seeing from (say) Venezuela is due to market demand in the US? Are you sure there isn't a bigger factor driving this?
The massive wave of migration the US is seeing from (say) Venezuela is due to market demand in the US? Are you sure there isn't a bigger factor driving this?
Arbitrage, it is not just for hedge funds.
And by now, everyone south of the Mediterranean, or south of the Rio Grande, knows that North America and the EU are not the land of milk and honey. They know what to expect, the price to pay to build a better life.
Half of my friends here are sub-saharan Africans, most of whom came illegally, a bunch of which came on the dreaded pneumatic boats through Libya, Morocco and Turkey. One thing is certain: they know an opportunity when they see it and they'll hang on to it. They left their friends, their family, their weather and their food behind - they work to make the adventure worth that.
Most fun is that, in practice and not in theory, the French government recognizes that: come illegally, work hard illegally, prove that you don't depend on the state for survival and, in practice, you'll have residency within about five years. It is unwritten and cannot be expressed openly for fear of a xenophobic backlash, but that is administrative reality in France.
I could wax lyrical about "land of opportunity" but yes, it is about working to achieve potential, in conditions they don't find on their home market.
And by now, everyone south of the Mediterranean, or south of the Rio Grande, knows that North America and the EU are not the land of milk and honey. They know what to expect, the price to pay to build a better life.
Half of my friends here are sub-saharan Africans, most of whom came illegally, a bunch of which came on the dreaded pneumatic boats through Libya, Morocco and Turkey. One thing is certain: they know an opportunity when they see it and they'll hang on to it. They left their friends, their family, their weather and their food behind - they work to make the adventure worth that.
Most fun is that, in practice and not in theory, the French government recognizes that: come illegally, work hard illegally, prove that you don't depend on the state for survival and, in practice, you'll have residency within about five years. It is unwritten and cannot be expressed openly for fear of a xenophobic backlash, but that is administrative reality in France.
I could wax lyrical about "land of opportunity" but yes, it is about working to achieve potential, in conditions they don't find on their home market.
You're conflating "perceived quality of life" with "actual demand in the job market". That's the distinction I was trying to make. I don't get the impression the migrants necessarily know (or have much opportunity to care if so) anything about the job markets at their destinations. They often don't even know where they'll finally end up, let alone what kinds of jobs they'll end up having to take -- or, as many discover, be left unable to take and have to end up on the streets. They just know where they don't want to be (in an impoverished country, in the middle of immediate threats to their lives, etc.), and they know they won't have the same problems they had back home irrespective of whether/how they earn an income, so they solve that part and worry about the rest later.
Orderlies, kitchen help, cleaners, gardeners, construction laborers, nannies... Those hard jobs here are just not staffed without migrant labor. The scarcity is such that the government avert their eyes from all the illegal work: those industries would dysfunction otherwise. Immigration policy does not follow economic logic but the political requirement to cater to xenophobia.
I've traveled in 25 African countries. Everyone and his dog has an Android in his pocket with varying amounts of data access. Yes, some in small towns still entertain illusions, but they are not the ones who travel most. Those are the ones with sufficient education, family connections, friends, motivation and money to make an informed bet and quickly integrate. The goat herder in rural Mali has no idea about Paris but the urban student in Dakar most definitely knows.
And that is the surprising part: desire to migrate follows a bell curve: as people becomes richer and better educated, desire to migrate grows, until sufficient development has been obtained and then, witness Mexico, desire to migrate declines.
I've traveled in 25 African countries. Everyone and his dog has an Android in his pocket with varying amounts of data access. Yes, some in small towns still entertain illusions, but they are not the ones who travel most. Those are the ones with sufficient education, family connections, friends, motivation and money to make an informed bet and quickly integrate. The goat herder in rural Mali has no idea about Paris but the urban student in Dakar most definitely knows.
And that is the surprising part: desire to migrate follows a bell curve: as people becomes richer and better educated, desire to migrate grows, until sufficient development has been obtained and then, witness Mexico, desire to migrate declines.
I’m an open borders guy but the “sanctuary city” I live in seemed to never consider the costs of such sanctuary.
> to the top N people in the state, with N being decided by the payers (i.e. democratic electorate).
I don't know how it works in the EU, but one issue I see with that it has the danger of permanently locking people who grow up with worse early/middle/high school education into their socioeconomic status, i.e. it would prevent social mobility for those with less resources. Unless public schooling standards prior to college are also improved, limiting higher education to "top N%" students ensures entrenched socioeconomic inequity. I think there is already enough class-based discontent, and making it worse via limiting (one of the few) means of social mobility wouldn't help, I think.
I don't know how it works in the EU, but one issue I see with that it has the danger of permanently locking people who grow up with worse early/middle/high school education into their socioeconomic status, i.e. it would prevent social mobility for those with less resources. Unless public schooling standards prior to college are also improved, limiting higher education to "top N%" students ensures entrenched socioeconomic inequity. I think there is already enough class-based discontent, and making it worse via limiting (one of the few) means of social mobility wouldn't help, I think.
In many (most?) EU contries, kids are evaluated and steered into vocational/trades or college-bound tracks at about middle-school age. College/university education may be free or close to it, but not everyone can go. EU approaches to education are more likely to lock you into your socieoeconmic status than those in the USA, where if you are smart but poor you will have schools falling over themselves to recruit you so their enrollment stats for "underserved" students look better.
are you sure? how many poor people in the US do actually get into college?
i doubt that the number of poor european students that fail to qualify for college is higher than the number of poor students in the US that fail to qualify there. but i don't think we can find a good answer without looking at statistics.
You could do top N% (round up) of each high school in the state as a first approximation and capture a lot of socioeconomic diversity, since there's (at least currently) a lot of clustering of poor kids at some schools rich kids at others.
You've also got to have a second option. If you don't qualify for the state school scholarship based on high school grades or maybe alternate qualifiers like test scores, then community college is still an option, and when you graduate from that with an approved program, it should qualify you for state school. Maybe something something GI bill, although dangling college as a hook to get people into the military feels icky to me somehow.
You've also got to have a second option. If you don't qualify for the state school scholarship based on high school grades or maybe alternate qualifiers like test scores, then community college is still an option, and when you graduate from that with an approved program, it should qualify you for state school. Maybe something something GI bill, although dangling college as a hook to get people into the military feels icky to me somehow.
It's telling that people aren't willing to contend with the corollary of "free education" and "free healthcare": limited capacity.
Edit: I should probably mention that I'm generally in favor of state-funded education, for a variety of reasons.
Edit: I should probably mention that I'm generally in favor of state-funded education, for a variety of reasons.
Healthcare capacity in the US is a function of your ability to pay for it. We contend with limited supply today, we just kick the limited supply to groups of people who by and large aren't posting on this website.
Yes... I agree. I'm not sure what your point is?
When I've heard this argument advanced before, it's had the subtext that "limited capacity is not a problem today but becomes one in other contexts"
I made the assumption that's what you were hinting at.
I made the assumption that's what you were hinting at.
Ah, I see. No, my point is rather that countries with public education/healthcare/etc have historically restricted access to these services in some reasonable way. For instance, you can only pursue one degree on the state's dime in France. Or, you can't access public healthcare if you are not a legal immigrant. Things like that.
Why does it work in other countries? I know we have a larger population, but surely that applies just as much to our ability to scale up supply as it does to the inherent increase in demand?
The United States is uniquely bad at covering the costs of health care and education, compared to its economic peers. Why is that?
The United States is uniquely bad at covering the costs of health care and education, compared to its economic peers. Why is that?
>Why does it work in other countries?
Of course it works in other countries; public education, like public healthcare, is an extremely good idea. This having been said, there are currently heated debates in most of Western Europe about the economic feasibility of educating every citizen to a post-secondary level, let alone every immigrant. Moreover, in France (the European country I know best), you are generally permitted to obtain one state-funded degree, and not two. The point here is simply that a discussion of publicly-funded higher education has to be accompanied by some discussion of limitations.
Of course it works in other countries; public education, like public healthcare, is an extremely good idea. This having been said, there are currently heated debates in most of Western Europe about the economic feasibility of educating every citizen to a post-secondary level, let alone every immigrant. Moreover, in France (the European country I know best), you are generally permitted to obtain one state-funded degree, and not two. The point here is simply that a discussion of publicly-funded higher education has to be accompanied by some discussion of limitations.
We definitely need a complete overhaul of the US health system, but we don't just "have a larger population". The largest countries in Europe by population (after Russia) are Turkey and Germany with with 85M and 84M, respectively. The US has 331M. That is almost ~4x!
When we say it works in other countries, most of the time we are referring to Europe. And most countries in Europe are tiny in comparison. The US is the 3rd largest country by population.
This is not to say that the US problems are unsolvable, but they will definitely require unique solutions.
When we say it works in other countries, most of the time we are referring to Europe. And most countries in Europe are tiny in comparison. The US is the 3rd largest country by population.
This is not to say that the US problems are unsolvable, but they will definitely require unique solutions.
Sure, I agree that they will require unique solutions, but the general trend of economies of scale providing efficiency benefits suggests to me that the biggest problems are political rather than logistical.
Public universities in the US do have admission requirements and yearly admission limits. I'm not sure where this idea that they don't comes from.
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.