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Yeah, but as with healthcare, there are both economies of scale and opportunities for systemic cost reduction when it's paid for by taxes. Paying colleges with

Yeah, but as with healthcare, there are both economies of scale and opportunities for systemic cost reduction when it's paid for by taxes. Paying colleges with loan-leverage represents a massive inefficiency, and one that they have undeniably milked in ways written about extensively elsewhere (the enormous growth of the administration corps and non-academic expenditure at the expense of instruction and tenure-track positions).

Goladus 9y ago
> Yeah, but as with healthcare, there are both economies of scale and opportunities for systemic cost reduction when it's paid for by taxes. How much systemic cost reduction is there, really? Are economies of scale balanced by the systemic waste that comes along with taking revenue for granted? With healthcare, at least, it's hard to argue the utility of the product. The individual demand for healthcare is trivially explained by the universal desire for people to be healthy. The public benefit of healthcare is similarly self-evident. And while the line can be blurry at times, there's a recognition between essential and vanity services, even when the difference is only context. Having your personal genome sequenced as part of an attempt to diagnose a rare illness is not the same as having your personal genome sequenced because you're curious about who your ancestors are. And where the line is blurry we have resources invested in trying to distinguish one from the other. We recognize the problem and are at least trying to solve it. One cannot say the same thing about higher education. There is no self-evident utility a degree. While we understand there is a distinction between a useful education that provides knowledge, critical thinking, and practical skills, versus a detrimental education involving mere ideological indoctrination, we have no commonly accepted way to distinguish between the two. Sometimes people draw that line between STEM and everything else, but that line is not generally accepted nor is it particularly accurate. If public money is going to be spent on education, we should have a reasonable degree of confidence that money is funding education, not ideological indoctrination. It's one thing to have some waste around the margins. No system can be perfect. But that's not the situation right now with higher ed. Until universities sort themselves out and ensure an orientation towards truth and knowledge rather than political activism, there's absolutely no way I would support a general increase in taxpayer funding. For more on this topic, check out Heterodox Academy: https://heterodoxacademy.org/ https://heterodoxacademy.org/

Goladus 9y ago

> Yeah, but as with healthcare, there are both economies of scale and opportunities for systemic cost reduction when it's paid for by taxes. How much systemic cost reduction is there, really? Are economies of scale balanced by the systemic waste that comes along with taking revenue for granted? With healthcare, at least, it's hard to argue the utility of the product. The individual demand for healthcare is trivially explained by the universal desire for people to be healthy. The public benefit of healthcare is similarly self-evident. And while the line can be blurry at times, there's a recognition between essential and vanity services, even when the difference is only context. Having your personal genome sequenced as part of an attempt to diagnose a rare illness is not the same as having your personal genome sequenced because you're curious about who your ancestors are. And where the line is blurry we have resources invested in trying to distinguish one from the other. We recognize the problem and are at least trying to solve it. One cannot say the same thing about higher education. There is no self-evident utility a degree. While we understand there is a distinction between a useful education that provides knowledge, critical thinking, and practical skills, versus a detrimental education involving mere ideological indoctrination, we have no commonly accepted way to distinguish between the two. Sometimes people draw that line between STEM and everything else, but that line is not generally accepted nor is it particularly accurate. If public money is going to be spent on education, we should have a reasonable degree of confidence that money is funding education, not ideological indoctrination. It's one thing to have some waste around the margins. No system can be perfect. But that's not the situation right now with higher ed. Until universities sort themselves out and ensure an orientation towards truth and knowledge rather than political activism, there's absolutely no way I would support a general increase in taxpayer funding. For more on this topic, check out Heterodox Academy: https://heterodoxacademy.org/ https://heterodoxacademy.org/