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> No they don't. Where do you even come up with such obvious nonsense? The numbers are right there on Wikipedia. Maybe look them up before you call it "obvious

> No they don't. Where do you even come up with such obvious nonsense? The numbers are right there on Wikipedia. Maybe look them up before you call it "obvious nonsense".

dnomad 8y ago
It's obvious nonsense to anybody who's taken even a moment to understand what those numbers mean. Here's a very, very simple chart that shows population with tertiary education [1]. The US is not significantly above other countries where education is paid for by the government. What's more is that those numbers are very generous to the US because, as everybody knows, most private colleges in the US are shit. So called "non-selective schools" as well as the straight up for-profits and the religious schools will take anybody that applies and hand them a degree in 2-4 years. Like much of the nonsense about free markets etc in this thread there's little understanding of actual facts. The American education situation exactly parallels healthcare: other OECD countries are able to provide better service for less cost by having the government direct the resources. But, yes, somehow we need to get the government out of education. That will surely fix everything. (Though serious people know full well what will happen if the government stops funding higher education. Graduation rates will plummet and within a generation advanced education will abandon middle America. The rich, highly educated coasts will do just fine. The real question is, as always, whether the ideologues are committed enough to cut their children throats in the name of their god, the free market. Then again we already see rapidly decreasing graduation rates in America [2] and the increasing prevalence for worthless degrees from shitty schools so I guess we already know the answer that one.) [1] https://data.oecd.org/eduatt/population-with-tertiary-education.htm https://data.oecd.org/eduatt/population-with-tertiary-educat... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decreasing_graduation_completion_rates_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decreasing_graduation_completi...
- fzeroracer 8y ago
  Of course the 'free market' solution to education I've seen peddled for education often involves taking away options for poor students in hopes that somehow the market will correct itself. Never mind that they're playing with people's lives. That's the thing I always find so appalling about many of these solutions is that lives are viewed as statistics to be experimented with. It's gotten worse as I've seen the same nonsense peddled for lower education as we see arguments made for school vouchers and directing funding away from public schools into private ones. Which the end result should be fairly obvious as the more affluent neighborhoods move to private schools while funding is sucked away from public ones.
- chimeracoder 8y ago
  > Here's a very, very simple chart that shows population with tertiary education [1]. The US is not significantly above other countries where education is paid for by the government. As you can plainly see in the data, the US has significantly more graduates than each of the counties I listed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_education_attainment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_... > What's more is that those numbers are very generous to the US because, as everybody knows, most colleges in the US are shit. It's appalling that people can drop this kind of drivel on an HN thread and let it stand. Most colleges in the US are not "shit", by any measure. And while non-selective schools and for-profit schools make for good headlines, they form a minuscule proportion of the college-educated population. > But, yes, somehow we need to get the government out of education. That will surely fix everything. You're responding to claims I never made, which reveals that you're less interested in having an actual conversation than you are in pushing an ideological stance. That's not going to be productive, so I have no interest in continuing this further.
  - detaro 8y ago
    Could it be that one of you is looking at the young age bracket (=people who likely finished university in the past few years) and the other at all ages?
    - dnomad 8y ago
      The data on Wikipedia is out of date though it cites oecd.org. Go straight to oecd.org for the correct data. (It's not good that Wikipedia copies data like that. If only we had decent transclusion capabilities on the web.)
  - dnomad 8y ago
    > It's appalling that people can drop this kind of drivel on an HN thread and let it stand. It's not drivel if it's backed by actual data [1][2]. This always seems to come as a complete surprise because it's difficult for many people to grasp how profoundly unequal America is. America has most of the best colleges in the world and they produce probably the most dynamic minds out there... but on average the system is comparable to Poland. [1] http://www.oecd.org/skills/piaac/Country%20note%20-%20United%20States.pdf http://www.oecd.org/skills/piaac/Country%20note%20-%20United... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/29/upshot/americans-think-we-have-the-worlds-best-colleges-we-dont.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/29/upshot/americans-think-we...

> No they don't. Where do you even come up with such obvious nonsense? The numbers are right there on Wikipedia. Maybe look them up before you call it "obvious nonsense".

dnomad 8y ago

It's obvious nonsense to anybody who's taken even a moment to understand what those numbers mean. Here's a very, very simple chart that shows population with tertiary education [1]. The US is not significantly above other countries where education is paid for by the government. What's more is that those numbers are very generous to the US because, as everybody knows, most private colleges in the US are shit. So called "non-selective schools" as well as the straight up for-profits and the religious schools will take anybody that applies and hand them a degree in 2-4 years. Like much of the nonsense about free markets etc in this thread there's little understanding of actual facts. The American education situation exactly parallels healthcare: other OECD countries are able to provide better service for less cost by having the government direct the resources. But, yes, somehow we need to get the government out of education. That will surely fix everything. (Though serious people know full well what will happen if the government stops funding higher education. Graduation rates will plummet and within a generation advanced education will abandon middle America. The rich, highly educated coasts will do just fine. The real question is, as always, whether the ideologues are committed enough to cut their children throats in the name of their god, the free market. Then again we already see rapidly decreasing graduation rates in America [2] and the increasing prevalence for worthless degrees from shitty schools so I guess we already know the answer that one.) [1] https://data.oecd.org/eduatt/population-with-tertiary-education.htm https://data.oecd.org/eduatt/population-with-tertiary-educat... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decreasing_graduation_completion_rates_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decreasing_graduation_completi...

fzeroracer 8y ago
Of course the 'free market' solution to education I've seen peddled for education often involves taking away options for poor students in hopes that somehow the market will correct itself. Never mind that they're playing with people's lives. That's the thing I always find so appalling about many of these solutions is that lives are viewed as statistics to be experimented with. It's gotten worse as I've seen the same nonsense peddled for lower education as we see arguments made for school vouchers and directing funding away from public schools into private ones. Which the end result should be fairly obvious as the more affluent neighborhoods move to private schools while funding is sucked away from public ones.
chimeracoder 8y ago
> Here's a very, very simple chart that shows population with tertiary education [1]. The US is not significantly above other countries where education is paid for by the government. As you can plainly see in the data, the US has significantly more graduates than each of the counties I listed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_education_attainment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_... > What's more is that those numbers are very generous to the US because, as everybody knows, most colleges in the US are shit. It's appalling that people can drop this kind of drivel on an HN thread and let it stand. Most colleges in the US are not "shit", by any measure. And while non-selective schools and for-profit schools make for good headlines, they form a minuscule proportion of the college-educated population. > But, yes, somehow we need to get the government out of education. That will surely fix everything. You're responding to claims I never made, which reveals that you're less interested in having an actual conversation than you are in pushing an ideological stance. That's not going to be productive, so I have no interest in continuing this further.
- detaro 8y ago
  Could it be that one of you is looking at the young age bracket (=people who likely finished university in the past few years) and the other at all ages?
  - dnomad 8y ago
    The data on Wikipedia is out of date though it cites oecd.org. Go straight to oecd.org for the correct data. (It's not good that Wikipedia copies data like that. If only we had decent transclusion capabilities on the web.)
- dnomad 8y ago
  > It's appalling that people can drop this kind of drivel on an HN thread and let it stand. It's not drivel if it's backed by actual data [1][2]. This always seems to come as a complete surprise because it's difficult for many people to grasp how profoundly unequal America is. America has most of the best colleges in the world and they produce probably the most dynamic minds out there... but on average the system is comparable to Poland. [1] http://www.oecd.org/skills/piaac/Country%20note%20-%20United%20States.pdf http://www.oecd.org/skills/piaac/Country%20note%20-%20United... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/29/upshot/americans-think-we-have-the-worlds-best-colleges-we-dont.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/29/upshot/americans-think-we...