Let's scale this up huge, let everyone take part, and have all of society invest in education and reap the rewards. We can call it "public education" and even capture the public externalities of having a well-educated population!
Second, and more reasonable to me, is that the political climate makes public universal education impossible at the moment so why not pioneer in the private space? I would love to see society invest in citizens, and in fact I would go farther and fully federalize the preK-12 system and ban charters. Such things are just not realistic with a government that can’t even pass a simple budget without fireworks.
It would take all of about two decades, maybe less, for program spending to spiral out of control. And the only way to solve it would be to expand the tax to non-students.
Arguably a very important job with high impact, sadly it’s not well paid.
Why? What's the difference between publicly funded versus publicly funded and operated?
Federalizing K-12 in the US is a pretty radical proposal but I think it's necessary if we ever want to get out of the inequality quagmire we're in now. Leveling the playing field would mean that no matter where you happen live your kids have access to well funded high quality primary education.
In either case, why should "easy" students be held back to the level of the "expensive" ones when instead they could go to a tech- or arts-focused charter school and contribute far more back to society?
Leveling the playing field would mean that no matter where you happen live your kids have access to well funded high quality primary education.
This seems...highly unlikely. Instead you will see everything reduced to the lowest common denominator, metal detectors at the doors, prison schools.
If we offered free college, how long before we start dropping the standards to earn a degree (for the same reasons we did so with high school diplomas) and have students waste even more of their lives in extremely sub par education environments?
The most successful and competent people who I have ever worked with don't share much in the way of education, but they all feel some sort of passion and drive for what they do. They see potential in their work and think about it all the time, so they are good at it and they have a lot of useful insights.
"Education" shouldn't be a simple signal that you have enough diligence and financial werewithal to consistently show up in the same place over the course of 4 years. It should be a lifelong process of both asking and informing people what they are capable of.
Personally, I think the all-or-nothing approach of primary school->secondary school->career->grave is a huge waste of people. I think we just need to figure out how to provide adults with the time and safety to uproot their lives for a couple of years at a time.
And it can be gained independent of college and independent of educating oneself for a career as well. It is easy for someone going to college to get both a degree in something that will allow them financial freedom in the future and to learn all sorts of topics that employers would not care about.
I can't speak for all of Europe, but Germany avoids having university degrees becoming a mere piece of paper useful only for signaling by having alternate paths to a fulfilling career.
You can easily enroll in any university you like, but can't advance in that major if held back in the rather difficult weed-out classes.
If I had to give a single root cause, it would be how we vote (the US system leads to a far stronger polarized two party system than Europe has).
The result was that literaly thousands of bullshit private universities were created not to educate you, but to help you avoid military. This also created additional income source for university professors, who earn pretty shitty salary in Poland.
Now, obligatory military service was abolished few years ago, but the trend of everyone going to college after high school remained.
I was born and lived in an "university town", and I remember military recruiters in my town were absolutely expecting that everyone's going to university, and they defaulted to giving people the status of "not suitable for service during peace time" for any reason whatsoever. I heard that in smaller towns, on the other hand, it was much more difficult to avoid getting pushed into service.
I don't know how prevalent this is in Europe.
But it's a general economic fact that people don't value what they get for free. They need to have "skin in the game", so to speak.
If you want evidence, look at how people treat rental cars vs their own. Or how they treat those ride share bikes. Or how they treat public bathrooms. Etc.
I personally treat rental cars, bikes and public bathrooms the same as anyone else. I don’t trash them but don’t clean them meticulously. I still value their presence.
Once a group I was in was staying in a hotel. We were all heading out to dinner, and one person came out of her room, leaving the light on. I asked why she didn't turn out the light. She replied: "why should I? I'm not paying the electric bill."
Apparently that's pretty common, as most hotel rooms I stay in these days require you to insert your room key into a device that enables turning on the lights, so they turned off when you leave.
They understand empathy and the concept of a carbon footprint, but don't consider them when it comes to decision making. In my experience, it is as if it isn't a variable in the equation.
High school was populated by people "doing their time", who wanted to get by doing as little as possible, thought it was cool to be disruptive, cut classes, etc. They definitely dragged the whole thing down for the others.
College was different. People paid to be there, the work was hard, people wanted to be there and would take the hard classes to get their money's worth. There weren't any disruptive students.
What a difference.
I studied in a university in a country where you have a dual-track system - either you get in for free, but have to pass a far more rigorous exam (since you're competing against everybody else who is trying to get in for free), or you pay and get your spot. The people who paid their way in - or rather, whose parents paid their way in - tended to do that "doing their time" thing you described. The people who were studying for free were far more determined to make all the efforts that they had to put into passing the entry exam worthwhile.
My shoes started lasting several times longer. I was still a child.
My dad didn't think of this himself. The Army had the same problem with combat boots, and solved it by having the GIs pay for their boots.
Note, that OP isn't suggesting that the educational process be centralized. Just the funding. Unlike K-12 public schools, universities will still maintain full autonomy on how they want to go about teaching or structuring curriculum.
European countries offer free education, and their quality is still great.
The key piece of this is that should any universal college education legislation pass, it needs to be designed in such a way that we don't make the focus of college be the same as high school where the goal is to make sure everyone can pass. And in turn, include a very rigorous minimum education standard in order for an institution to provide government funded education.
This is assuming the actual standards for a degree aren't lowered to achieve the goal of universal college education. That's why I bring up high school diplomas where the standards to graduate were lowered to increase the percentage of people with a degree. The end result was damage done to the degree and to the education that is needed for the degree. See the modern day nightmare of standardized testing preparation instead of education.
In this case, the investor(s) could look at the potential value/income for the person going in. If you want to focus on an area that has limited job prospects and low salary, then you're unlikely to get funding.
Do you think the school cares if you pay them using a federal student loan vs a group of private investors making payments on your behalf?
How does one align the incentives of the school with students any more than the other?
The only alignment of interests the school has with the students is when the student has a rich parent who could be a donor or the student is a super athlete that can measurably impact the school revenue as an unpaid student athlete.
The students interest is getting an education, converting that education into employment, and not being indebted. The schools interest is revenue.
The student would be best off with a free tax funded education and no debt, the school is best off with guaranteed federal loans allowing them to charge imaginary tuition rates no one can normally afford but for guaranteed student loans.
Where is the alignment of interests come from with private capital in exchange for future earnings? Students are left indebted (maybe not in debt but indebted) and schools face the reality the private market isn’t willing to pay runaway tuition costs like guaranteed federal loans because private market knows it’s a bad investment (as evidenced by the current amount of outstanding student loans and default rates, nearly 1million defaults a year). Next thing we know the private investors will begin negotiating tuitions on behalf their investments and leaving non- capital backed students footing the bill for the difference (kind of like our messed up healthcare system).
If the student does get a good job, the school gets paid more.
Thus the school is highly incentivized to make sure that their graduating students are highly employable.
This is very different from the other systems where the school gets paid no matter what happens after graduation.
The school isn’t the one making these deals (at least from the example in the article), private investors are entering into these agreements with students.
If the student doesn’t get a job the private investors don’t get paid, whereas the school has already been paid.
In theory a government agency could do the same, but I think there is enough evidence that investors do a better job of investing their own money than government employees do for investing tax payer money.
It's bad enough that students are likely to be naturally drawn towards certain career choices - such as advertising technology - because of the generous pay to be found in that sector, rather than because they see an opportunity to make the world a better place. Let's not give educational institutions an added financial incentive to promote the most lucrative courses and careers rather than the most beneficial ones.
First, that is quite a different question than the one I was answering. When someone is asked what is the best way to eat an elephant and tries to give an answer, mentioning that people shouldn't eat elephants is a comment better directed at the person asking the original question and not the one answering.
Second, no, but we also have scholarships and such which reduce cost for those deemed having potential that isn't restricted just to making money. It would be unwise to overlook the increase in earning potential being the reason so many college students justify taking on their degree, and it would also be unwise to insist that the college experience is the path for those who want a general purpose education without a specific purpose.
Third, that figuring out how to trick more people into buying something is a more lucrative career than something that advances human society is an indictment of humanity at large. Is colleges promoting beneficial courses (based on what ever definition you go with) over lucrative ones really benefiting society when it leaves the student without the ability to earn money in a society that runs on money?
Yes, you should have to be able to make a living at something to convince someone to loan you the money, even on ISA terms.
Surely you mean “force everyone to take part”.
> and have all of society invest in education
I would prefer you not “have” me or other people do things against my or their will.
I guess we all have to make sacrifices
That way those that prefer more expensive forms of education, can be free to do that and pay for it, and those who don't, don't have to do so.
(Hint, we have some attempts to answer this question, and it suggests that college is a private good with a value that is mostly in signaling rather than skill acquisition, and casts some doubt on whether high school really meets the criteria)