So you're saying that higher education is (yet another) public good that fails when turned in to a for-profit enterprise?
The problem isn't that university doesn't work. The problem is that the federal government has propped it up with so much poorly underwritten debt that the prices have ballooned beyond value delivered.
That would be fine if the audience taking the debt was rational. But the discourse around university is itself irrational. And the people taking the loans have underdeveloped brains that are bad at long term thinking.
This is much better than subsidizing tuition without cross controls.
Sure, you can nitpick problems with European universities and they are not perfect. But nobody is going into debt slavery in Europe from getting a degree and nobody is talking about the collapse of European universities.
So maybe the problem lies somewhere else? Something to do with the unchecked capitalism of the American system, for example?
Besides which, I think EU countries do subsidize students from other EU countries so an Irish person can study in Sweden, for example, without paying high fees (need to confirm this).
Also, $50k is way higher than I expected. In my old university, NUIG in Ireland, it would be more like $15k/year for international students.
This completely ignores the huge benefits that come from socialized education (and healthcare, public transport and to so on). These are only a net negative when considered over a very short time frame. Long term, having a healthy, highly educated, low debt society is hugely beneficial to that society, especially when you stop looking at things through the narrow lens of "the economy" and consider the overall health of the society instead.
Even when you look at just the economy, yes, the US has higher GDP per capita, but it also has higher income inequality so that doesn't say much about what the average "person on the street" is getting. All measures of the economy have problems, but GDP per capita is one of the worst when it comes to judging how well off people in a country actually are, and it feels like people use it mostly just for scoring points. Median income, access to housing, healthcare, education, public transport, pollution levels, ease of doing business or interacting with government, corruption, freedom of the press, levels of racism and prejudice against minorities, and so on, all of these are at least as important considerations as GDP when considering the wellbeing of a country's citizens and I don't think any country in the world scores highly on all fronts.
EDIT: actually I saw you said GDP PPP per capita which is better than pure (nominal) GDP. But in that case, the US is quite far from the top - it's actually 13th, while Ireland is 5th and UK is 26th
- $7k or less per year for "book sciences" like philosophy, math, economics, business, law school
- $15k for "technical sciences" like MINT topics that need labs
- $20-30k for arts or music
- $30-$60k for medicine (on the lower end for veterinary, upper end for human medicine)
I would actually prefer a system financed purely by student loans. It does put a lot more responsibility on the prospective student to judge the quality of an education programme and the opportunities it affords. Some programmes would no longer be sustainable if they were not given free of charge. I think that would probably be a good thing.
> It does put a lot more responsibility on the prospective student to judge the quality of an education programme and the opportunities it affords.
Children cannot make this estimation, which is why we partially subsidise it. It's already a ton of pressure to know wth you're going to be doing later, let's not make that even worse just to satisfy some weird notion that higher education should be hard to reach. It's going to disproportionately impact folks without a social safety net, which is the one thing you wanted to prevent in the first place.
You seem to be assuming that higher education is something obviously good, that everyone would want if they knew what was best for them. I don't think this is true.
I think student loans (if done right) can be a good thing. They can let anyone from any social setting afford a higher education. But why the people without higher education should foot the bill for it, I have never understood.
And thus they pay more taxes, in the extremely progressive taxation systems you have in Europe that should more than pay back the cost of tuition.
> I think student loans (if done right) can be a good thing. They can let anyone from any social setting afford a higher education.
They really don't, poor people will be more scared of taking on so much debt at a young age and thus more reluctant to apply. It is much better that nobody has to worry about debt from studies, otherwise you wont have an equal playing field. We all know rich kids do better, the closer we can make typical kids experience to a rich kid the better, and that includes not having to pay for college.
If you think that poor people pay too much taxes, just make the taxation more progressive. It has nothing to do with student debt. Rather, you could say that student debt shifts money from poor students to rich people (the top of the progressive tax scale), as most students will never reach the top of the tax scale and you could say that the money that pays for the tuition comes from the top of the tax scale (it could come from anywhere, it coming from the working class was just your imagination as well, if it got freed up it could be put anywhere...).
It’s the US that has highly progressive tax systems. (well, depending on the state)
Europe has more broad-based but very effective taxes like VAT we’d probably be very annoyed if we had them.
The data supports the claim. A higher educated citizen generate more tax and in general use less money in the healthcare system. It's a net surplus to pay for the education, so the "less affluent" citizens are not paying for anything. At least that is what the Danish government claims.
> would actually prefer a system financed purely by student loans. It does put a lot more responsibility on the prospective student to judge the quality of an education programme and the opportunities it affords. Some programmes would no longer be sustainable if they were not given free of charge.
This is rather simple to correct for. If the unemployment is high for a given education it can be reduced. It is in Denmark.
I am going to absolutely need any amount of citations for this. For-profit institutions are notoriously sub-par, shady dealers.
Whether it is the loans or the reduced property taxes, the public is always footing part of the bill.
Every public institution has open board meetings, with board members who are either publicly elected, or appointed by an elected official. They also have constant and consistent reporting to the state and federal government about budget, student achievement, and various institutional and student based outcomes. I think maybe it's less that there needs to be more reporting, and maybe just put what we already have in a more accessible format?