> As someone who is likely funding what is ultimately a money/power grab, if I'm paying for education, I want it to be for degrees that have direct, immediate impact: educators, doctors, hard sciences. While there is a possibility of funding the education of the next great novelist, sociologist, artist, or historian, there will never be a return on that investment for the vast number of students in those fields. I don't know why we'd force that risk on the public.
Do you also feel this way about public high schools? Personally, I just think that a world in which everyone has access to education is a better world for everyone.
> Colleges (public or private) are too good at absorbing any money that is made available to them, to be trusted as being fiduciaries of public education, IMHO. As student loans and public money are made available, they have raised tuition to fill the gap without providing any additional benefit for their increased incomes.
Agreed, but this is a problem than can and must be solved. Public universities are nowhere near as bad in this regard as private ones and are thus the best place to invest.
> For the second one, the only thing that mucking with a private institutions admissions process will do is turn it into a public institution that is no longer elite. They're private, let them do what they want.
Private universities are deeply embedded in our society as gatekeepers to positions of power and thus the public has a legitimate interest in how their admissions process works (not to mention that they receive large amounts of public funding). If getting rid of legacy admissions means that they are "no longer elite" (to be clear it should make them more "elite" in terms of actual research and academic performance, but possibly less elite in terms of controlling access to money and power) that's an outcome I'm happy to see.