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I think the national obsession with higher education will reach a breaking point eventually. It's just too expensive, the benefits are uncertain for lower-strat

I think the national obsession with higher education will reach a breaking point eventually. It's just too expensive, the benefits are uncertain for lower-strata matriculants, and expecting students to pay the costs themselves is unreasonable. We're going to have to learn to live with a tiered system where the less well-off go to trade schools and well-to-do parents can pay for their kid's general education. The demand is there, the trades have been hemorrhaging talent for years, universities have been monopolizing the "what to do with kids after they graduate high school" market for way too long, and for-profit colleges are a bust. The answer is pay-as-you-go trade school, but it's going to take the nation awhile to warm to the idea. As one of my favorite sayings puts it, America is a nation of temporarily-embarrassed millionaires. We need to change our collective belief that a university education is every American's right. It's simply unmanageable. Perhaps in a few hundred years we'll have amassed enough national wealth to be able to afford the institutional and social investment, right now it's a pipe dream. I did not graduate college. I looked at the cost-benefit structure and decided I'd be better off making my own future as an autodidact. It worked for me, but I do not expect my children to follow in my footsteps, I am prepared to bear the entire cost of my children's education.

rayiner 11y ago
I don't know why your track has to be decided based on how much money your parents have. In Germany, your track is based on grades and tests. And you can still get a meaningful white collar job without going to university. Very few people need more than a high school education plus on the job education and training. Maybe just doctors, engineers, and scientists. It's just that in the U.S. we use education as a red herring to divert attention away from the real issues. E.g. It's unpleasant to talk about the total breakdown in family structure in inner cities? Let's shift the discussion to forcing these kids into mostly useless college education, as if people in other developed countries aren't working good paying respectable jobs after leaving school at 16.
- superuser2 11y ago
  >In Germany, your track is based on grades and tests Germany is also not militantly opposed to the idea of public investment in public welfare. Your track has to be decided based on how much money your parents have because a majority of American voters don't want their money going to help other people's children.
sokoloff 11y ago
I think a skilled trade and good work ethic will yield a better life outcome for most of the "bottom half" (pick your measure) of current college attendees. When did we start looking down our nose at tradespeople in favor of college grads? I'm not sure, but I think it's wrong-headed.
superuser2 11y ago
"We can't afford it" as a rhetorical device in public policy cannot possibly die a slow or painful enough death. Economic "realities" were created by political power and they can (often should) be unmade by political power. We can afford to give every American child a university education, but to do so we'd need to raise taxes or cut other spending, and we aren't willing to do either of those things. Saying that we can't afford it pretends it's out of our collective control, not our responsibility, which is a plain lie. We choose not to. We make a choice that the defense sector getting absolutely everything it can dream of is more important. We make a choice that subsidizing employers' payroll expenses (keeping their minimum wage workers alive on welfare) so that they can sustain their profit margins is more important. I'd argue these are wrong choices, but the politicians saying so don't poll too well. They are simply the choices we've made. You're right though, expecting students to pay for it themselves is unreasonable. But it ought to be a burden shared by society, not restricted to the rich. Elementary education too was once a luxury for the children of aristocrats; that we've expanded it is progress.
- vinceguidry 11y ago
  > "We can't afford it" as a rhetorical device in public policy cannot possibly die a slow or painful enough death. That's what politics is. If you can't understand the concept of a political reality, then your views will forever remain the domain of the idealist, talked about, in the same tenor that one yaks about science fiction premises, but never implemented. Sure, Star Trek has a cool economy. How many Senators watched TNG? Political realities are stronger than actual realities. It takes real people to change things, these people are beholden to other people and not your whims.
  - superuser2 11y ago
    Funny thing, though, it's always the side that shares your values that's being realistic. GP claims equal access to education is impossible, like FTL travel or perpetual motion. The political reality is that it's just something not enough people care enough about. Public opinion is a great deal more malleable than physics. We could care, and then it would stop being impossible. So it is not impossible at all.

rayiner 11y ago

I don't know why your track has to be decided based on how much money your parents have. In Germany, your track is based on grades and tests. And you can still get a meaningful white collar job without going to university. Very few people need more than a high school education plus on the job education and training. Maybe just doctors, engineers, and scientists. It's just that in the U.S. we use education as a red herring to divert attention away from the real issues. E.g. It's unpleasant to talk about the total breakdown in family structure in inner cities? Let's shift the discussion to forcing these kids into mostly useless college education, as if people in other developed countries aren't working good paying respectable jobs after leaving school at 16.

superuser2 11y ago
>In Germany, your track is based on grades and tests Germany is also not militantly opposed to the idea of public investment in public welfare. Your track has to be decided based on how much money your parents have because a majority of American voters don't want their money going to help other people's children.

sokoloff 11y ago

I think a skilled trade and good work ethic will yield a better life outcome for most of the "bottom half" (pick your measure) of current college attendees. When did we start looking down our nose at tradespeople in favor of college grads? I'm not sure, but I think it's wrong-headed.

superuser2 11y ago

"We can't afford it" as a rhetorical device in public policy cannot possibly die a slow or painful enough death. Economic "realities" were created by political power and they can (often should) be unmade by political power. We can afford to give every American child a university education, but to do so we'd need to raise taxes or cut other spending, and we aren't willing to do either of those things. Saying that we can't afford it pretends it's out of our collective control, not our responsibility, which is a plain lie. We choose not to. We make a choice that the defense sector getting absolutely everything it can dream of is more important. We make a choice that subsidizing employers' payroll expenses (keeping their minimum wage workers alive on welfare) so that they can sustain their profit margins is more important. I'd argue these are wrong choices, but the politicians saying so don't poll too well. They are simply the choices we've made. You're right though, expecting students to pay for it themselves is unreasonable. But it ought to be a burden shared by society, not restricted to the rich. Elementary education too was once a luxury for the children of aristocrats; that we've expanded it is progress.

vinceguidry 11y ago
> "We can't afford it" as a rhetorical device in public policy cannot possibly die a slow or painful enough death. That's what politics is. If you can't understand the concept of a political reality, then your views will forever remain the domain of the idealist, talked about, in the same tenor that one yaks about science fiction premises, but never implemented. Sure, Star Trek has a cool economy. How many Senators watched TNG? Political realities are stronger than actual realities. It takes real people to change things, these people are beholden to other people and not your whims.
- superuser2 11y ago
  Funny thing, though, it's always the side that shares your values that's being realistic. GP claims equal access to education is impossible, like FTL travel or perpetual motion. The political reality is that it's just something not enough people care enough about. Public opinion is a great deal more malleable than physics. We could care, and then it would stop being impossible. So it is not impossible at all.