Comment by KorematsuFred | Hacker News Reader

Comment by KorematsuFred | Hacker News Reader

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There are some very good arguments as to why government should not be paying for college education:

- Loosely speaking K-12 can be seen as a public good because of which it may make sense for the society to pay for other people's education. College education is not a public good in the same way because at any rate only few folks will go to college and it is immoral for the other people being forced to pay for college education of those kids. If college educated kids earn even more then it is even more immoral for poor people to pay for rich.

- Unlike K-12, college education involves specialization. A gender studies degree is worthless compared to say a nurse. But because education is free a lot of students might enroll in more and more worthless degrees. This will have great negative impact on productivity of US society. A lot of folks who do not have any productive skills, a lot of folks staying out of labour market in their crucial years. I will work at a local farm for a year rather than pursue some of the college degrees any days.

- When government pays for education it distorts the market. You can see it as a subsidy. But then it also means more and more worthless colleges which have more and more worthless degree programs that focus on "good life" for kids.

I always watch this video from time to time : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3-_r_t7AZU

That argument would've had a lot of weight in 1940, when only 5% or so of folks went to college, but today nearly 2/3 of high school graduates immediately enroll in some form of college. It seems reasonable to assume that, if college were free, that figure would substantially rise.

The opposite of your specialization argument also applies. It costs $20,000-$40,000 to go through nursing school. It's hugely beneficial for society to have nurses, and we have a nursing shortage. Paying for nursing school means more nurses. On the other side, personally I'm in favor of there being a lot more people who have expertise in advanced non-STEM topics. The benefits are less obvious, but a well educated populace is far more desirable than a pile of folks educated just well enough to be useful as well.

Distorting the market is a problem, but just as high schools are public, I think increasing the number of public universities and public community colleges helps that problem. If there is enough high quality public education available, there's no need to subsidize private education.

>The opposite of your specialization argument also applies. It costs $20,000-$40,000 to go through nursing school

that's covered in the video at around the 4 minute mark.

> a lot of folks staying out of labour market in their crucial years

I think companies will live if people take a little longer to enter the workforce. If the tradeoff is a more educated populace and people spending less of their life toiling away vs. corporate profits maybe having a tiny decline then it's definitely worth it.

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