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I’d like to congratulate the brain trust at silicon valley for inventing public education and taxes

MartinAlbertsen 8y ago
I was thinking exactly the same, although a bit less passive agressive in the tone :) In Denmark (where I'm from), there is a system where education is free. There are private schools, but to my knowledge no private universities. Your entry ticket to a university is your grade from high-school. You actually get some money while studying. You can still chose to do a studen loan on top of that, but typically people come out of university with maximum $20k in debt most way less. I have many friends that are absolutely brilliant and successful, who would probably not have been able to afford a university degree. One thing is what that does to the crazy debt many people get in other countries, but think about what it does for low-income areas, immigrant and integration and general inequality of a population. By all means, Denmark is not perfect. But I think we nailed it with access to education. And yes. Our tax pressure is pretty high. But surprisingly not that much higher than for example California and NY. Martin
mac01021 8y ago
Except it's not. "Public education and taxes" (1) means everyone pays into the system and then people can enroll without any additional payment (or maybe with diminished additional payment). You could also have publicly insured student loans (2), where the student pays tuition with a loan and then if they later default on the loan then the public eats the cost. But this system (3) is neither. In this system, you get your degree and then you start paying for it when your income is enough to afford it. Importantly, if you never attain that level of income, the _University_ eats the cost. System 2 can lead to ever-ballooning college costs concurrent with gluts of worthless degrees, because universities are incentivized to enroll as many students as they can at as high a tuition rate as they can - they always get paid. In system 3, the university only gets paid if the student's degree turns out to be marketable. It (hopefully) keeps costs down in a way the (1 & 2) cannot. On the other hand, this could be terrible news for departments that issue degrees in literature, anthropology, etc.

I was thinking exactly the same, although a bit less passive agressive in the tone :) In Denmark (where I'm from), there is a system where education is free. There are private schools, but to my knowledge no private universities. Your entry ticket to a university is your grade from high-school. You actually get some money while studying. You can still chose to do a studen loan on top of that, but typically people come out of university with maximum $20k in debt most way less. I have many friends that are absolutely brilliant and successful, who would probably not have been able to afford a university degree. One thing is what that does to the crazy debt many people get in other countries, but think about what it does for low-income areas, immigrant and integration and general inequality of a population. By all means, Denmark is not perfect. But I think we nailed it with access to education. And yes. Our tax pressure is pretty high. But surprisingly not that much higher than for example California and NY. Martin

mac01021 8y ago

Except it's not. "Public education and taxes" (1) means everyone pays into the system and then people can enroll without any additional payment (or maybe with diminished additional payment). You could also have publicly insured student loans (2), where the student pays tuition with a loan and then if they later default on the loan then the public eats the cost. But this system (3) is neither. In this system, you get your degree and then you start paying for it when your income is enough to afford it. Importantly, if you never attain that level of income, the _University_ eats the cost. System 2 can lead to ever-ballooning college costs concurrent with gluts of worthless degrees, because universities are incentivized to enroll as many students as they can at as high a tuition rate as they can - they always get paid. In system 3, the university only gets paid if the student's degree turns out to be marketable. It (hopefully) keeps costs down in a way the (1 & 2) cannot. On the other hand, this could be terrible news for departments that issue degrees in literature, anthropology, etc.