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Comment by smegger001 | Hacker News Reader

when I was a college student I have to admit I resented continuing education programs. Here were thousands of people like me were racking up of thousands of dollars in debt literally mortgaging our future to pay for these classes and there were senior paying little to nothing to take classes. I still am not sure how we can justify a system where we convince impressionable minors that they need to in-debt themselves for decades and then allow seniors to take the classes free? this just seems inequitable to me.

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It make sense. You could go online and take many of those courses or better courses for free. But you signup go in person and pay thousands per year to get a degree. That degree is a key that opens up employment opportunities and wealth. Most people your age go to school for future employment opportunities and pay the cost as an investment. The cost reflects the demand.

Seniors have no employment goals. There is no need to limit supply because it doesn't affect the marketplace. These seniors buy books and pay for other costs and schools can get additional government money. It helps society because you have more educated people with additional knowledge who may share back with the community at little cost.

This opinion sounds evil to me (not a reflection on you personally).

> It helps society because you have more educated people with additional knowledge who may share back with the community at little cost.

Same could be said of younger people - but they can actually do the good over many more decades than the senior people! So the social good is much more compounded!

> Seniors have no employment goals. There is no need to limit supply because it doesn't affect the marketplace.

This has many assumptions baked in that are hard to justify, such as:

- Younger people will 'flood' free PhD programs and successfully complete them, the price is the only thing keeping the flood under control. This sounds wrong because a PhD will still take time, effort & interest to complete.

- The job marketplace for PhDs is a fixed pie and a zero sum game. This sounds wrong because I buy into the belief system that more progress for all leads to more jobs (and prosperity) for all.

- It is morally justifiable to keep poor or disadvantaged - yet interested - people, out of the hallowed academic gates, by simply pricing the programs high. This is egregious for self explanatory reasons.

You are probably "telling it like it is", but I really hope that awful status quo is overhauled for the better, and for more access to all - old and young.

not an American, but I also view this very critically. In Germany the university is free, but in reality it's just hugely subsidised. I just can't justify pumping a lot of money into free (real) university education for seniors. The money is needed elsewhere. There's a huge difference between a university and other education-institutions, university-education is just such a luxury. You can take classes with highly-esteemed researchers etc. It's really unbelievable valuable, but also quite a societal investment.

There should, of course, be ways for pensioners challenge their intellectual ability, but studying at a university is just way over the top I think. There must be another way. Maybe expand the adult-education-centres with special programs for seniors, I don't know.

EDIT: this comment is not about getting a PhD. I would not lobby for any age-restricted subsidy for getting your PhD, since I think PhDs are producing an immense amount of benefit for society, regardless of whether they're in humanities or natural science.

On the contrary. Seniors have paid taxes their whole lives so others can get their heavily subsidized goodies. I think it only makes sense that they have the same rights to education and other things that they have helped fund for others. Many seniors today simply did not have the opportunity to study because they had to go to work at an early age. It wasn't uncommon to be a provider at 17 or 18 in the past.

From a taxation point of view I'm under the impression that for a country such as France for example seniors are gonna get _on average_ way more benefits during their pension than the equivalent of their lifetime contribution. Mainly due to demographics and life expectancy evolution. And also for home owners due to the housing market. I do not think this should be a reason to limit the access to university to seniors though. What better use of life to increase and share knowledge, maybe even contribute to it. It would be such a low point for society to bar access to knowledge only because it is not profitable.

> From a taxation point of view I'm under the impression that for a country such as France for example seniors are gonna get _on average_ way more benefits during their pension than the equivalent of their lifetime contribution. Mainly due to demographics and life expectancy evolution.

(I'm making a digression here from the main topic, so don't read on if you're not interested.) I'm not sure why you would think pensioners in France will get far back far more than they paid in.

Under the current system in France, when you're working, you pay into one or more of the dozens of different pension plans. Each plan is designed to be self-sufficient. It receives money from those who are currently working, invests or saves the money, and pays out those who paid in in the past and who are now retired.

Doing things this way has several pitfalls. The main problem is that if demographics change (greater percentage of pensioners as compared to workers) it puts a strain on those left in the workplace. This doesn't mean however that each pensioner is getting more than they paid in, it just means that proportionately there are less people left paying into the plan.

The retirement system is currently being revised. In the future, there will be one universal plan where each euro paid in will buy a certain number of points, which will have some value when you retire. Since the value of a point can fluctuate, pensioners may end up getting more or less than they paid in. (They'll get what the plan can afford to pay out.)

The only people that really got substantially more out of the pension plan than those that take part in them today were those that lived right about at the pensionable age when those systems were introduced. They did not pay in at all and yet had immediate benefits because it has always been the working that were paying for the pensioned people to begin with.

If the pension funds had been managed responsibly (which is not the responsibility of the people paying in to them) then there would have been plenty of money to make the system work. Pension funds management has been responsible more than once for funds not being able to make good on their obligations resulting in a reduction of pensions. In many countries this has already resulted in the pension age being raised from 65 to 67 and there is talk about raising that even further.

Long term financial planning for pension funds and actuarial computations including an adjustment for increased longevity are simply things that go with that territory, that these adjustments are necessary is further proof that the responsible people messed up.

Universities' financial affairs should also not be the limiting factor in people's quest for education and knowledge. I'd much rather that people that are pensioned have access to free university courses because it will always be a very small minority that is driven to do so and they have a unique perspective to bring to the table compared to the rest of the university crowd. You are also automatically pretty sure that they are not following courses because they want to get another job, but mostly because they are really driven about a particular subject, which tends to make for the best kind of students.

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