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Comment by Shivetya | Hacker News Reader

Libertarian here as well.

I am more of the opinion that the government should set rules on the cost of education for any school accepting government aid or any school who accepts students who pay with government loans.

Want to get the price of education back in line, drop the open checkbook.

The issue I take with taxing to pay for everyone's college is that apparently there is no determination what constitutes a good education or good student. As in, I do not want to see money thrown at majors that can never pay back the investment or require such skill and luck to achieve pay back relative to the cost. Then comes the student, if your just a fail student why should anyone foot your bill to stay in school? You get the same number of years as anyone else. If you don't achieve the diploma you pay back a percentage

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As in, I do not want to see money thrown at majors that can never pay back the investment or require such skill and luck to achieve pay back relative to the cost.

Sounds to me then like you're in favor of "government planning" of the economy, which is essentially what it is when the government is picking and choosing which majors (and which people!) to subsidize. Strange libertarian position.

The government is already picking and choosing - there is already criteria to decide what schools should be accredited and funded. It's not unlibertarian to defend they should have better criteria.

Limiting the number of years is rather inflexible and can lock people out for mistakes or significant changes in the market place (such as graduating into a global recession).

I personally have found that due to rules in my state, that I am prevented from going back and pursuing a computer science degree, because there are such limits in place.

This also doesn't consider that people from worse are backgrounds tend to take longer to get through school. This can range from personal or family sickness (caring for parents is common). We always hear from the proud examples of people who overcame their circumstances, but it creates a survivor bias.

From an economic perspective, we are missing out when people get locked out for life who could contribute more to the economy. That's less wealth being created.

I just point that out because while it's easy for us to come up with seemingly simply solutions, but without any built-in flexibility we're back to the same place.

That seems more likely to create a class structure than anything else. I find that a lot of people with good jobs are not well educated; they have skills but no cultural knowledge. Often, they discount the necessity of that knowledge.

Interestingly enough, that's a totally working class sentiment. If you want to move beyond that, though, and have genuine leadership and thought generated by these government funded programs, you can't limit people to studying only things that have a direct correlation with paying back the investment.

Those are called "price controls."

As in, I do not want to see money thrown at majors that can never pay back the investment or require such skill and luck to achieve pay back relative to the cost.

Good point. Paying for somebody to get a degree in, say, Medieval History, so they only job they can get post-college is "Barista at Starbucks", seems suboptimal to me.

narrow-sighted logic.

Diversity is what makes life. If you attach future earning potential qualifier to the free education, then you'll have a disproportionate amount of people attempting fit their square potential into a round hole.

Over a long period of time, you loose out the natural diversity that would otherwise exist in the general public - of people each dedicated to skill set they are best match for.

Not everything human produces ought to have an economic component.

Painters, Poets, Musicians... ?

Yes, and this is one of the reasons I don't want the government involved in education at all. But, since they choose to be so involved, I find myself feeling that government spending on education should take the value of that education into account. But you're exactly right, in that it's hard to actually do that.

In the end, there are no perfect answers to any of this, it's just a question of "which variables do you optimize for?"

If an education produces a non-libertarian, would you consider that of higher or lower value than an education that produces a libertarian?

I'd say that any education that "produces" a graduate with a specific ideology has failed in a sense. I'd like to think education should be somewhat neutral, presenting a NPOV and that people would make up their own minds what they value most.

Otherwise, you have to ask "is this education, or indoctrination?"

Not everything human produces ought to have an economic component.

This is great. But then we need to stop talking about "investment" in college education. This is instead "consumption," like taking a ski trip to Aspen.

How much should the US pay for people to take ski trips to Aspen? I promise you they'll enjoy it.

Does the study of history have a direct economic impact to communities? In most cases no. I assume you recognize the importance of history for human culture?

So in the context of an environment where we encourage extended education via monetary assistance, we strip away all forms of assistance for the study of history due to some qualifier. Is this wise?

If you just want more people to have a better understanding of history, produce some good history documentaries to show on TV.

They might not watch, but they might not attend college, either. Well, we can get them to attend college if use the college degree as a job credential so they can't get a good job without it, but that seems like a cruel policy, especially cruel to the least smart in society, so I don't think you'd want that.

I think this is still narrow sighted. What we're talking about is collectivism vs individualism.

Sending everyone to community college to learn various things produces a benefit to society that might not translate to economic benefit for that particular person.

An educated populace is good for a democracy.

I agree that diversity of opinions, perspectives, skills and backgrounds is important. That's one reason I oppose the monocultural idea that has crept in over the last few decades, that the one true path for everyone is spending their youth sitting in classrooms.

>>Not everything human produces ought to have an economic component. Painters, Poets, Musicians... ?

Can you explain why someone needs a college education to become a painter, poet or musician?

To be in an environment with like-minded individuals so one can foster ambition, inspiration, and collaboration.

Your sentiment can be applied to any skillset. The same reason why a college degree is not needed for programmers.. One can learn concepts and languages from books outside of college. However the resources available in a community of like-minded individuals provides great benefit for the study of said topic.

>>To be in an environment with like-minded individuals so one can foster ambition, inspiration, and collaboration.

Colleges are not the only such environment. But it is the most expensive.

>>Your sentiment can be applied to any skillset.

Not really, no. Would you let a doctor without w college degree operate on you? Have your city's bridges and buildings designed and built by engineers and architects who learned their trades from books?

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