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> each course credit ... should all be subject to review on a periodic basis ... needs of the country This sounds horrifying. You want every change of a course

by iguy 8y ago

> each course credit ... should all be subject to review on a periodic basis ... needs of the country This sounds horrifying. You want every change of a course to go via some central bureaucracy for approval? This bureaucracy will be staffed by ideologically neutral disinterested angels, regardless of which party is in power? I think there's a much more free-market solution here. Cap student loan payments at 15% of taxable income, written off after 20 years. Then they can never be a crushing burden, and lenders will become very picky about who (and for what course, and where) they make loans to. And 17-year-olds will be presented with highly relevant individualised information about the likely outcomes of different options. And it'll also create some jobs for the coming glut of machine-learning people, to make these predictions...

TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
The predictable outcome will be a glut of professionals with high-prospect degrees which will actually drive wages down in those fields, while useful-but-low-prospect careers - nursing, the arts, teaching - will continue to be underfunded and underpaid. There's already more than enough "ideologically neutral disinterested" distortion of social value created by so-called free markets everywhere else in the economy. If free markets were going to solve university education they'd have done it by now - just as they've been promising to for decades now.
- iguy 8y ago
  Nurses might be a good benchmark for setting this up -- google says "Registered Nurses made a median salary of $70,000" which sounds to me like they'd be a decent bet. Training lots of people in currently high-wage jobs would be precisely the point -- those high wages are the signal that the economy could use more of them. If there are professions which can't be funded this way (which means that right now, those employed in them never pay off their debt) which we would like to subsidise, then let's do that directly, give out music scholarships etc. The "so-called free market" in education is responding to incentives we are providing it, which are really terrible.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 8y ago
  > If free markets were going to solve university education they'd have done it by now - just as they've been promising to for decades now. The market in university education is not free, though. There are significant distortions induced by the various loan and scholarship policies enforced at both the federal and state level. Has "the free market" been promising to solve university education? Is such a thing even an entity capable of making a promise? As far as I can tell, it's totally uninterested in doing so. Most reputable educational institutions are not for profit. The for profit ones seem almost entirely taken with the problem of bilking students and taxpayers by providing shoddy goods at outrageous prices and exploiting the student loan regime and ignorant customers. The university education system and the free market are, as far as I can tell, basically uninvolved with one another. FWIW, I don't think the free market would solve university education either, for entirely foreseeable reasons. In a completely free market, universities and lenders would bet on the affluent, and the poor would be left out in the cold to an even greater extent than they currently are. But on the other hand, it's hard to blame the free market for the current state of affairs.

by iguy 8y ago

TheOtherHobbes 8y ago

The predictable outcome will be a glut of professionals with high-prospect degrees which will actually drive wages down in those fields, while useful-but-low-prospect careers - nursing, the arts, teaching - will continue to be underfunded and underpaid. There's already more than enough "ideologically neutral disinterested" distortion of social value created by so-called free markets everywhere else in the economy. If free markets were going to solve university education they'd have done it by now - just as they've been promising to for decades now.

iguy 8y ago
Nurses might be a good benchmark for setting this up -- google says "Registered Nurses made a median salary of $70,000" which sounds to me like they'd be a decent bet. Training lots of people in currently high-wage jobs would be precisely the point -- those high wages are the signal that the economy could use more of them. If there are professions which can't be funded this way (which means that right now, those employed in them never pay off their debt) which we would like to subsidise, then let's do that directly, give out music scholarships etc. The "so-called free market" in education is responding to incentives we are providing it, which are really terrible.
asdfasgasdgasdg 8y ago
> If free markets were going to solve university education they'd have done it by now - just as they've been promising to for decades now. The market in university education is not free, though. There are significant distortions induced by the various loan and scholarship policies enforced at both the federal and state level. Has "the free market" been promising to solve university education? Is such a thing even an entity capable of making a promise? As far as I can tell, it's totally uninterested in doing so. Most reputable educational institutions are not for profit. The for profit ones seem almost entirely taken with the problem of bilking students and taxpayers by providing shoddy goods at outrageous prices and exploiting the student loan regime and ignorant customers. The university education system and the free market are, as far as I can tell, basically uninvolved with one another. FWIW, I don't think the free market would solve university education either, for entirely foreseeable reasons. In a completely free market, universities and lenders would bet on the affluent, and the poor would be left out in the cold to an even greater extent than they currently are. But on the other hand, it's hard to blame the free market for the current state of affairs.