It's difficult to comprehend how our politicians could have any issues supporting such an initiative.
It will also further devalue high school diplomas as well as make good high schools less of a priority across the nation (everyone is going to CC anyway, right?).
It probably makes bachelor's degrees even more of a requirement for decent jobs, making people more likely to take on student loans and spend their 20 and 30s paying them back for a piece of paper, restricting their mobility and options.
Throwing more money into a broken system does nothing than embed it further. Just about all of us here value learning, but our education system needs to be benefiting people, teaching people, and it is not doing that.
College is a HORRIBLE way to "certify skill sets." It's the most anti-liberal certification I can imagine: it measures how long you can afford to go without an income. One big result of giving college educations to a bunch of people that didn't need them is the credentialism race. Why does an office manager need a college degree when it didn't 40 years ago? Because now there are enough job candidates out there with a college degree that it becomes an easy (and legal[1]) way to filter out people who aren't smart enough for college. If you are one of those who are smart enough for college, this sounds great, but it leaves the people who can't cut college material up a creek.
[1] Griggs banned degree requirements, but no one pays attention to that
This is predicated on one very big thing: filing a lawsuit and winning. Well, and they're certainly not going to hire you now. But you open the doors for other people to get in without a degree.
I can't imagine anyone actually thinking that.
"Who needs good elementary schools? Everyone is going to middle school anyway, right?"
We have one less year of compulsory public education. I guess that devalued high school. However university degrees here are 3 years (4 for out of province students.)
Society hasn't collapsed. For many occupations, the "technical" diplomas (3 years instead of pre-uni 2 years stream) from a CEGEP are the expected level of education. There's an engineering school that specifically serves to convert those technical diploma to B.Ing (http://en.etsmtl.ca).
...and therefore making higher education more accessible is a bad thing?
The positional element just shifts money around, devaluing high school diplomas.
Only the productivity improvement element will increase net earnings.
I'm not sure it could, unless I'm misunderstanding. The US could print up 15 trillion dollar notes tomorrow, and pay off all of it's debt. Of course, this would cripple the economy in a matter of hours, but it would still pay off the debt.
Looks like we have a lot of room for improvement at which it is going to take a very long time to truly devalue higher eduction where a bachelors degree is looked at like high school diploma.
Under Obama's plan, that money could be used to pay for two years of community college for every student willing to do the require work for the next 1000 years!
Of course we shouldn't "buy everything that's cheaper than the Iraq war", but that's not what is being argued. This was just to show a contrast between two ~10-year projects. It doesn't take a lot of work to figure out which investment has a higher return.
I would be curious to see how any war ROI is calculated when not in a conquer and pillage situation (spoils of war and what not).
As a European I am exceedingly glad the US got involved in WWII, since otherwise the Soviets would have won, but how do you put a prize on my freedom and the freedom of future generations?
$6 trillion exceeds that considerably, no idea on the source (I'm not OP), but inclusive of civilian costs to Iraqis it might be a defensible number.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_cost_of_the_Iraq_War
There are two very comparable super-relevant historical precedents: public high school education (yes that was someone's idea too) and the GI Bill. Both of these social programs (as they would be called today) have made this country not only a better place but MONEY.
Oh, good.
What does economics say about who captures the benefit of education?
What's the rate of return on successful graduation from community college? (Hint: check Schenk Matsuyama 2010.)
What is the graduation rate from community college? (And isn't that number a lot lower than you expected?)
Now, given the fraction of benefits that is privately captured, and the fact that some fraction of students are delaying earnings while pursuing a degree, what return do you expect to the government?
Also, do you imagine there being any limit on magically pouring money into "education" and growing an economy? Why is it that no other nation on Earth spends as much money on education as the US does? [1] Why are they all leaving money on the table? In the particular case of post-secondary education, the US is almost 50% ahead of its next closest competitor in terms of spending per student. What is wrong with all those other countries? Have you not told them this is a macroeconomic fact?
[1] The US is at the top, maybe tied with Switzerland, in pure dollars spent per student. http://www.oecd.org/education/skills-beyond-school/48630868....
I don't think chart B1.1 helps you make that case, I think per student numbers are probably a wash to that end unless several other factors are taken into account. Of the countries in that study, we're number 5 for primary school spending per student, number 4 for secondary school spending, and number 1 for tertiary spending (and number 3 for total spending if we include educational "services"? Not sure what that means.) That data isn't painting a clear picture of America overspending on education.
We also attract a large number of international students and they bring some money with them, some of them bring a lot of it.
Are we talking about increasing our annual spending per student? I though we were talking about increasing the number of students by funding the cheapest post-secondary education programs we have. Certainly this would reduce our annual spending per student.
Because the United States insists on taxing and spending money in ridiculously indirect ways that qualify as "small government", but actually cost more, rather than doing what every other country does and just having the national government spend directly on the relevant programs, but which are somehow too "big government" for Americans.
The average European "big government" is actually much slicker and more efficient because it doesn't build large bureaucracies designed to avoid the need for a small bureaucracy.
This just seems like a variant of the sunk cost fallacy. The money blown on the Iraq war is gone. We can't get it back. So why would that have any bearing on the cost benefit analysis of another expense?
(Also efficient wars cost less time, and that one was even against a much more formidable enemy.)