http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/06/06/against-tulip-subsidies...
The top thing the government can do for it's people is to keep them alive. (Free from invasion, murder, etc).
The second thing the government can do for it's people is to keep them healthy. Access to health care, etc. etc. More of an offshoot of above, but for things deeper than alive.
The third thing the government can do for it's people is to educate them. Not so that they can get "better jobs", but so they can be educated. The people around you vote just as much as you do. They decide the future of the country just as much as you do. Would you rather someone who never ever set foot in school helped elect your local government, or someone who has a PhD from a good college?
Kind of a hierarchy of needs.. education doesn't matter if you aren't safe.. but once you are safe, it seems very important. Not at ALL a 0 sum game. You don't educate to give people better jobs, but to enable them to think critically. Which is why 4 year colleges do a lot more for the world than coding boot camps or trade schools.
Couldn't those be improved instead? It would benefit everyone, not just the upper-middle classes that can afford college.
"The BLS reports that elementary teachers in the U.S. receive an average annual salary of $55,270. Many teachers, including those in New York City, receive their pay at set intervals throughout the course of the year. In other areas, teachers only receive pay when school is in session. The BLS does not gather data relating to hourly wages due to the manner in which most elementary teachers are paid. However, someone working a typical 40-hour work week would have to receive an hourly rate of $26.57 to earn as much as the average elementary teacher over the course of a year."
That article is quoting BLS statistics[0]. Where are your numbers?
[0]http://www.bls.gov/ooh/education-training-and-library/kinder...
That's an odd measure. Why use the average median instead of the median median or the average average?
Remember also to take into account the median (or average, whatever) wage among people with four year degrees + special training + willingness to continue training to maintain their certificates.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United...
>Remember also to take into account the median (or average, whatever) wage among people with four year degrees + special training + willingness to continue training to maintain their certificates.
And then cut that number(50,556)[0] by 1/4th, and you are at a number much lower than what most teachers make currently and that's before you factor in pensions and benefits.
[0]http://time.com/money/3829776/heres-what-the-average-grad-ma...
Universities are useful in attaining a particular type of education that is not suited to every highschool graduate. It's fairly clear once you've spent time on an American university campus that not everyone there "needs" to be there on the governments dime for the betterment of society.
But it's like those synthetic diamonds: It doesn't matter how much shinier, purer and cheaper they are, they will never replace "real" diamonds because the whole purpose of diamonds as a status symbol is that they are expensive.