Comment by GeneralMayhem | Hacker News Reader

Comment by GeneralMayhem | Hacker News Reader

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I very heartily disagree with letting the market decide education priorities, for two reasons.

First, education is chock full of positive externalities, which will never be realized correctly. While "the economy" doesn't need underwater basket weaving - or art history, or literature - society still does. Even if people don't work in their field, the world is better for the increase in knowledge. Man does not live on engineering alone.

Second, the invisible hand can only do its work in a world where the effects of decisions are predictable. Given the long lead time on a choice of major affecting your income - at least four years, arguably more if you factor in choice of AP classes on high school - that's never going to be the case. Say this system had been in place in the 90s, and say you're okay with underwater basket weaving students getting the short end of the stick because, well, they signed up for it. Fine. But what do you say to the computer science class of 2001?

"culture" may be good, but at what price? If the price for that degree were 10 million dollars, you wouldn't be insisting we get lots of those degrees. Everything has its price based on how much value it offers.

The problem with every economic system is information -- though that is far less of a problem in a capitalistic society with constitutional freedom of speech (capitalism helping to prevent the black box that forms around centralized economies like socialism, communism, or crony capitalism/fascism). This problem is on full display with those liberal arts degrees. Students leave high school knowing practically nothing about society or how money works (the fault of our education system removing most practical courses from the curriculum). What they have been taught from an early age though, is that getting a degree is the path to success. They hear about making X thousands of dollars more per year if they get one (without the nuance that a select few degrees making a lot more than average offset the entire liberal arts division) and they want to be successful so the go without any real-world knowledge to provide balance.

Instead of getting directed to a degree that will ensure their livelihood, they are told to "follow their heart" and "do what makes you happy". Unfortunately, the definition of a job is "something you wouldn't do for free" and people work jobs to get money to do the things they want so much they'll pay for them.

The simple fact is that most kids aren't cut out for college. They are much more suited for technical schools where they can learn the trades that keep the world turning (and they could leave making far more than a liberal arts degree with practically no debt). But they aren't told about that and instead wash out of the hardest degrees into meaningless degrees that offer a kind of debt slavery without any reward whatsoever. If they had gone to technical school, they could work less, make more, and spend that excess to culture themselves however they like.

>> society still does

That's just, like, your opinion, man. Society certainly does not need so many graduates in English Literature: there are only so many open positions at McDonalds, and they as a rule do not require a degree.

If there's market demand, society can pay real cash money for it. It used to be that most writers, painters, historians, etc, etc, had to also have an useful day job. _Albert Einstein_ had a day job up to a point. There's nothing wrong with that if the market can't support full-time work in a certain profession.

The second part of your argument I do agree with: there are a lot of details to flesh out. Maybe it will compel the colleges to teach broader sets of skills, since if they teach a narrow profession that's not useful they don't get paid.

> That's just, like, your opinion, man. Society certainly does not need so many graduates in English Literature: there are only so many open positions at McDonalds, and they as a rule do not require a degree.

This strikes me as a deeply sad view of the world. As an individual, a well-rounded education is a life-enriching thing, even if it doesn't directly tie into your professional career. As an overall society, having a more highly-educated populace is a net positive for everyone.

> It used to be that most writers, painters, historians, etc, etc, had to also have an useful day job.

And if you look even farther back in time, most artists were supported by a rich patron who believed in the value of art.

>> This strikes me as a deeply sad view of the world.

That's not a "view of the world", that's _objective reality_. There aren't enough jobs for those folks to take, so they end up at proverbial McDonalds. Those that do get jobs often don't get a wage that a degree that's in higher demand would command. That's the world that already exists, you can't will it away no matter how you finance people's education.

>> That's not a "view of the world", that's _objective reality_.

That's just, like, your opinion, man. Setting aside arguments as to the mere existence of "objective reality". You're essentially saying "the way I see it is the only way to see it", which does not help convince someone who sees it differently.

In Germany, college is free, but there are a smaller number of slots available for majors which are not in demand. Is this also a “sad view of the world”?

English major here! I never got the McDonald's gig, but I am now helping the economy and keeping the world turning by making money as a useful software engineer. :)

I wouldn't use the stern-faced "useful" language, but I agree with you about it being perfectly fine to have a day job and pursue literary/artistic interests on the side. TS Eliot insisted on keeping his job as a bank clerk. Gladstone wrote serious history at night after discharging his duties as the English PM. Etc, etc.

Regarding choice of degree, the value of a liberal arts degree is difficult to argue for---and against. It's not like, say, math where you can do the proof or you can't. You can model the system such that transformations actually map onto transformations in the target domain or you can't. But I can often tell when someone has a (successful!) liberal arts degree by, to give one example, how careful they are with imprecise language. And, to give another, how light of a hold imprecise concepts have on them, how flexible and playful they are in such thinking (this has nothing to do with being unable to be "rigorous").

But also the fact is the system did not work for most people. Partly because most students just aren't suited for it...and that's fine. And especially with how broken college is now (for one, non-STEM subjects tend to allow the student to choose from a smorgasbord of unrelated courses instead of systematic growth over years). IMO far fewer people need to go to college, we should increase the funding and prestige of vocational school, and non-STEM subjects need to more regularly be taught again in a demanding way.

>If there's market demand, society can pay real cash money for it.

The point of my argument is that this is one of those cases where that's not going to happen, because we're talking about positive externalities. A generally educated populace, especially in the liberal arts (reading, critical thinking, political science, etc.) is a powerful but diffuse societal benefit in a way that doesn't really have a buyer.

What that likely means is that society needs to collectively come up with a powerful institution to serve as a patron of education and the arts. We could all pay in some token amount of money, and then experts could redistribute it in more globally-optimal ways. While we're at it, that institution could probably take care of a lot of other externality-related problems, like building roads and maintaining some sort of conflict-resolution system. And we should probably all get a say in how it runs. Hey, wait a minute, this sounds familiar...

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