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> That may fix prices, but doesn't fix the problem of giving a wide swath of a nation's population the opportunity to attend college. No country has really fig
by chimeracoder 8y ago
> That may fix prices, but doesn't fix the problem of giving a wide swath of a nation's population the opportunity to attend college.
No country has really figured out how to solve both of those problems simultaneously on a large scale.
The US has high prices, but also one of the highest rates of higher education in the developed world. In addition, it also has provided people from all racial and ethnic backgrounds not just with the theoretical opportunity to earn a degree, but with the tools needed to actually deliver on that in practice. For all the faults of the US educational system (especially at the primary and secondary level), it performs much better than its European counterparts on this criterion if you look at the actual rates of degrees granted.
- dv_dt 8y agoYou blithely say that no country has it figured out, but I'd note estimates of covering all tuition for a year to be $58-$75B[1]. The cost of the defense budget increase alone this year was $60B - the total budget is some $700B. So even with the inefficient (nonexistent?) cost controls of our current student loan system, it seems quite feasible in the US to rebalance budget priorities. If one were to start putting more serious cost control strings (e.g. no more than x% in admin budget) on a direct funding stream to public universities, I suspect the cost could get even lower. https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/07/28/487794394/hillary-s-free-tuition-promise-what-would-it-cost-how-would-it-work https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/07/28/487794394/hillary...
- drngdds 8y agoYeah. To add insult to injury, Trump's useless tax cut actually could have paid for free college for everyone instead: http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/12/05/the-tax-bill-compared-to-other-very-expensive-things/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/12/05/the-tax-bill-compared-t...