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Comment by SturgeonsLaw | Hacker News Reader

Make education free. I'd love to study something like philosophy or art history but there's just no return on that investment. Unless you're already wealthy, it doesn't make sense to drop five or six figures on a degree unless it's likely to pay for itself.

Which is even becoming less likely with STEM, as we hit a confluence of higher education costs, fewer job openings, and AI as a competitor for work.

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I totally agree! And I think you're right! Education should be free.

Another thing we can add is sealing grades. If you can’t use your grades as a credential, the incentive to cheat is reduced. This won’t solve the relation between getting a job and living - that’s a job for UBI and a comprehensive social security system.

Or, maybe we get rid of them. Like maybe the idea of having grades is kind of silly in the first place?

Free education and no grades with no business purpose already exists; it's called learning about things that interest you on your own time. I don't see why the taxpayer needs to pay for someone to do this.

Then you're missing the point of higher education.

No, I understand the point of it, I just don't think it is worth the tens of thousands per person that it would cost to do it. I could accept a value argument for free university education in some form, but that form would not be for gradeless/credentialless unproductive studies.

And it's not just that it would cost a lot, it's that it would cost a lot and a motivated person can already do a 90% job of it for free on their own.

who defines "unproductive?" You?

That's the thing, like, there's not a whole hell of a lot I learned in Phil 201 that is directly applicable to my job, but, you know the class is valuable. I took art history in college. Turned into being one of the most important classes I ever took and I'm one of those stem major types.

Productivity shouldn't be the point of education - you get productivity indirectly out of the education and search for knowledge, but if we want more data plumbers (which is largely what most of the programming I do for money on a regular basis is), I don't think we necessarily need to make certain that college is paying for them.

I mean, think bigger - this new technology is going to be utterly transformative to our society and economic system. If we could actually approach some sort of reasonable post-scarcity world, what would we want it to be like? So, maybe there's grades, but it's "pass/fail" or something, but all of these metrics that we use to evaluate have become targets.

You're going to have to make an argument for why the taxpayer needs to pay for every citizen to take art history beyond "it's valuable". Okay, but $20,000 is also valuable and there are opportunity costs.

No I'm not, you're the one who said, "unproductive stuff shouldn't get funded" - not me. I think we should fund all of it because well educated people should make better decisions in a democracy and I want the cross disciplinary effects that occur when people can freely study their passions.

I'd say, "why shouldn't so-called unproductive stuff get funded?"

You are the one who said all education should be free and you're also the one arguing for change. I already answered why this is a value judgment. Because money.

The taxpayer pays so that everyone, including that taxpayer, has the right to take an art history class. Everyone pays so that everyone can take whatever course they want, whenever they want.

A bit like public healthcare - everyone pays for it so that everyone can use it.

Your grades tell you and your teachers how well you are doing. It's a useful feedback tool.

It really isn't though, grade inflation is decidedly a thing.

It is a useful measurement. It won’t allow you to compare beyond a short horizon, but it’s useful to gauge your own progress.

Maybe make them sealed? Or you’re only allowed to see your grade during the clads?

Regardless, I never found grades all that useful in college because I had so many classes where either there were like 3 tests and that was it? Or the homework was nothing like the tests.

Old geezer question: Are you thinking to make education free? Or to give everyone 4+ years at the upscale-lifestyle-resorts-with-classes which the US's major universities have evolved into over the past half century?

Middle aged geezer answer:

I don’t think my university experience when I went to grad school several years ago was a “upscale lifestyle resort.” But maybe things are different on the east coast or whatever?

But I’d say, yeah, if you’re young/poor you oughta be able to get room and board covered too?

Fair enough.

FWIW, I live near the Univ. of Michigan. I've talked to a well-to-do stockbroker, who graduated from U-M a couple decades ago - but can't believe just how opulent U-M's latest round of rebuilding their old undergraduate dorms was.

Suffice to say that none of his own ample wealth is going to the U.

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