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Comment by caseydurfee | Hacker News Reader

This is an initiative that will lead to higher earning potential for Americans, leading to higher tax revenues over the long term. Will it pay for itself? Probably not, but it's juvenile to act like all government spending is equal when it comes to the country's long term financial health.

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Yes, potential.

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.

Also raising the price of colleges everywhere because of the influx of additional money into the system.

Subsidizing community college would artificially increase the demand for CC and thus increase the price. This does not mean it will raise the price of traditional, expensive 4-year colleges and universities. CC does tend to feed into 4-year programs so it could cause some increase in demand (it could also decrease demand by acting as a substitute), but we are not talking about increasing our subsidy of 4-year programs.

So your problem is with the paper? Agree that the "system" is "broken", but I think describing college as just a "piece of paper" really over-simplifies the problem. Do we not need some way of certifying skill sets? And I'm unconvinced that what you would see would actually be a devaluing of high school diplomas. Potentially, we'd just view high school how we view elementary school now - something everyone assumes you do. Are we not trying to encourage everyone to do more and become more educated? In what way could we benefit/teach people that doesn't cost anything?

Do we not need some way of certifying skill sets?

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

"What is required by Congress is the removal of artificial, arbitrary, and unnecessary barriers to employment when the barriers operate invidiously to discriminate on the basis of racial or other impermissible classification." Saying that the case "banned degree requirements" is putting it too high.

The decision is more nuanced than that. If a lawsuit is brought against the company in question, they have to prove that their degree requirement is essential to the job in question. If it's not, then it could be said the degree requirement is to discriminate against a class of people.

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.

> 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?).

I can't imagine anyone actually thinking that.

"Who needs good elementary schools? Everyone is going to middle school anyway, right?"

Actually, I live in a place (Quebec) that effectively has free Community Colleges (we call them CEGEPs) and has had them for decades now.

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).

> 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?).

...and therefore making higher education more accessible is a bad thing?

Whether it makes a net difference to earnings on a large scale depends on the degree to which this education will be a positional good vs leading to actual productivity gains.

The positional element just shifts money around, devaluing high school diplomas.

Only the productivity improvement element will increase net earnings.

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