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13th Grade. — Still waiting for someone to change my mind. When I was graduating there was no option but to apply to colleges. We carved our time in classes to

13th Grade. — Still waiting for someone to change my mind. When I was graduating there was no option but to apply to colleges. We carved our time in classes to fill out applications. We were sent to guidance counselor to help select schools. I remember the worst kids in class who hated school talking about what college they were going to next year. At least now Trade School isn’t a bad word, and coding boot camps are a step in the right direction (sort of). I shake my head when I see calls for free college. There IS GOING TO BE a barrier of entry SOMEWHERE. We moved it from BA/BS degrees on to Masters, now those are becoming worth less and less as the prices go up. Now people act surprised, but this seems obvious.

TomVDB 7y ago
It’s fine to have some barrier, but the income level of your parents is probably the most unreasonable one. So let’s have free college and figure out some other barrier, please.
- rayiner 7y ago
  If that is the concern, why “free college” rather than “free college for people whose parents make less than 200% of the poverty line?” Free college for everyone wont have a leveling effect. Indeed, it will make degree inflation even worse. For lower income people, living expenses, opportunity costs, and lack of college predatory K-12 still serve as huge barriers. Middle and upper income people will still account for most college attendance, so in the end it’ll be a big handout to the middle and upper middle class.
  - TomVDB 7y ago
    > Indeed, it will make degree inflation even worse. I grew up and went to university in a country where you only paid a nominal tuition (~$500, and when it got raised to $550 students went on the streets to protest the injustice.) If you wanted to go to college, you could. People studied what they were passionate about. And companies didn't mind hiring a language major, because a university degree was seen as sufficient proof that somebody was smart enough to learn complex material quickly. And there was no grade inflation. Because there's the thing: when students don't have to pay an insane amount of tuition, the professors don't have any pressure to not fail a bad student because so much money is at stake. Failing grades for bad students were the norm. This was true from elementary school all the way to university. When I see my daughter graduating with an average score of 92% while hardly breaking a sweat, I'm obviously proud of her, but I also can't shake the feeling that she was never tested. But it has to be like this because GPA is so important for college admission. > Middle and upper income people will still account for most college attendance, so in the end it’ll be a big handout to the middle and upper middle class. Oh, there's a very easy solution to that: a tax system that's even more progressive.
    - rayiner 7y ago
      I mean degree inflation, not grade inflation. More people having degrees hurts those who can’t get a degree even with free college because of other factors. (The US already has some of the highest college attendance rates in the world.) As to the tax system—ours is already more progressive than those of countries that have friee college: https://www.vox.com/2014/10/8/6946565/progressive-taxes-are-not-the-solution-to-inequality https://www.vox.com/2014/10/8/6946565/progressive-taxes-are-.... The problem is that we’re unwilling to tax the middle and upper middle class, which is actually the biggest tax base. AOC’s millionaire’s tax would raise $17 billion a year, even assuming no change in behavior: http://www.aei.org/publication/how-much-revenue-would-the-70-percent-tax-rate-on-millionaires-raise-it-depends http://www.aei.org/publication/how-much-revenue-would-the-70.... A European style VAT could raise a trillion. There is a fundamental political problem in the US, in that nobody will agree to raise taxes on the middle class. The left demands not only a welfare state, but that the rich and corporations pay for it. It’s a package deal. The right won’t agree to raise taxes on the rich and corporations—and they’ve kind of got a point. Our tax burden on capital is already roughly comparable to say Germany, if a bit lower: https://www.chicagofed.org/publications/chicago-fed-letter/2017/382 https://www.chicagofed.org/publications/chicago-fed-letter/2.... Where our tax burden is really low is in middle class taxes: social insurance and consumption. (There is a reason folks like AOC point to how great the welfare state is in say Sweden, but point to US taxes in the 1940s and 1950s, when war-torn Europe was no competition for the US. Or mention Sweden’s top marginal rate, without mentioning that it kicks in at an income level a mid career teacher or police officer might make in the US.) So to raise taxes without making ourselves uncompetitive with Europe from the perspective of capital, the only avenue to raise real revenue is higher taxes in the middle class. Since that’s a political non-starter, we have the status quo that we have.
      - TomVDB 7y ago
        I don't agree that you should restrict the number of people who are capable of attending college just because it overwhelms the market, but for the sake of argument, let's assume that this is the right thing to do. Even then, the way to implement that restriction should not be done the way it is done now: a system that either requires rich parents or saddles new graduates with a lot of debt. I don't see how anyone can make the case that money should determine which kid can go to college or not. As for progressive taxes: the article makes the case that higher progressive taxes result in the rich finding loopholes to avoid them, and that the whole society should contribute to the welfare state. That's fine: I'm not an expert on the subject and I'm very much willing to consider whatever option works best. The low level details are not nearly as important as the end result: one that gives young people to chance to study start their professional life without a debt millstone around their neck. But I have no illusions that this will happen in my lifetime.
seanmcdirmid 7y ago
Germany has (almost) free colleges and it works put well. They make a lot of changes to get there (no campus experience, big classes, little handholding, two exams and no graded homework), and they have trade schools as well (well, apprenticeships). Those are completely orthogonal to college (you can do better financially in the latter). Having a well educated workforce isn’t a bad idea, as long as we don’t think of it as a pissing contest.
T-hawk 7y ago
> There IS GOING TO BE a barrier of entry SOMEWHERE. This is correct. When everyone has a degree, then no one does. There is a limit to how many productive professional jobs can exist. All the necessities for society and life can be produced and distributed by really about 10% of the workforce, working with economies of scale. Everything else is nonessential service jobs or entertainment. Around the 1960s, the 10% that had college degrees happened to match that 10% of skilled jobs. We fooled ourselves into thinking that was causation. It's not. Awarding four times as many college degrees does not mean four times as many productive jobs will somehow exist or the consumptive power to sustain them. Companies don't want to hire a degree, they want to hire from the most able 10% of their applicant field. A degree used to be a proxy with significant signal towards that, but now has little.
- rightbyte 7y ago
  "When everyone has a degree, then no one does." Wait, what? "When everyone can read, no one does"? Your assumption for that statement to be correct is that degrees have no real underlying value except as a discriminatory tool. 10% is probably to low. I'll guess somewhere around 30-40% (of non senior adults).

TomVDB 7y ago

It’s fine to have some barrier, but the income level of your parents is probably the most unreasonable one. So let’s have free college and figure out some other barrier, please.

rayiner 7y ago
If that is the concern, why “free college” rather than “free college for people whose parents make less than 200% of the poverty line?” Free college for everyone wont have a leveling effect. Indeed, it will make degree inflation even worse. For lower income people, living expenses, opportunity costs, and lack of college predatory K-12 still serve as huge barriers. Middle and upper income people will still account for most college attendance, so in the end it’ll be a big handout to the middle and upper middle class.
- TomVDB 7y ago
  > Indeed, it will make degree inflation even worse. I grew up and went to university in a country where you only paid a nominal tuition (~$500, and when it got raised to $550 students went on the streets to protest the injustice.) If you wanted to go to college, you could. People studied what they were passionate about. And companies didn't mind hiring a language major, because a university degree was seen as sufficient proof that somebody was smart enough to learn complex material quickly. And there was no grade inflation. Because there's the thing: when students don't have to pay an insane amount of tuition, the professors don't have any pressure to not fail a bad student because so much money is at stake. Failing grades for bad students were the norm. This was true from elementary school all the way to university. When I see my daughter graduating with an average score of 92% while hardly breaking a sweat, I'm obviously proud of her, but I also can't shake the feeling that she was never tested. But it has to be like this because GPA is so important for college admission. > Middle and upper income people will still account for most college attendance, so in the end it’ll be a big handout to the middle and upper middle class. Oh, there's a very easy solution to that: a tax system that's even more progressive.
  - rayiner 7y ago
    I mean degree inflation, not grade inflation. More people having degrees hurts those who can’t get a degree even with free college because of other factors. (The US already has some of the highest college attendance rates in the world.) As to the tax system—ours is already more progressive than those of countries that have friee college: https://www.vox.com/2014/10/8/6946565/progressive-taxes-are-not-the-solution-to-inequality https://www.vox.com/2014/10/8/6946565/progressive-taxes-are-.... The problem is that we’re unwilling to tax the middle and upper middle class, which is actually the biggest tax base. AOC’s millionaire’s tax would raise $17 billion a year, even assuming no change in behavior: http://www.aei.org/publication/how-much-revenue-would-the-70-percent-tax-rate-on-millionaires-raise-it-depends http://www.aei.org/publication/how-much-revenue-would-the-70.... A European style VAT could raise a trillion. There is a fundamental political problem in the US, in that nobody will agree to raise taxes on the middle class. The left demands not only a welfare state, but that the rich and corporations pay for it. It’s a package deal. The right won’t agree to raise taxes on the rich and corporations—and they’ve kind of got a point. Our tax burden on capital is already roughly comparable to say Germany, if a bit lower: https://www.chicagofed.org/publications/chicago-fed-letter/2017/382 https://www.chicagofed.org/publications/chicago-fed-letter/2.... Where our tax burden is really low is in middle class taxes: social insurance and consumption. (There is a reason folks like AOC point to how great the welfare state is in say Sweden, but point to US taxes in the 1940s and 1950s, when war-torn Europe was no competition for the US. Or mention Sweden’s top marginal rate, without mentioning that it kicks in at an income level a mid career teacher or police officer might make in the US.) So to raise taxes without making ourselves uncompetitive with Europe from the perspective of capital, the only avenue to raise real revenue is higher taxes in the middle class. Since that’s a political non-starter, we have the status quo that we have.
    - TomVDB 7y ago
      I don't agree that you should restrict the number of people who are capable of attending college just because it overwhelms the market, but for the sake of argument, let's assume that this is the right thing to do. Even then, the way to implement that restriction should not be done the way it is done now: a system that either requires rich parents or saddles new graduates with a lot of debt. I don't see how anyone can make the case that money should determine which kid can go to college or not. As for progressive taxes: the article makes the case that higher progressive taxes result in the rich finding loopholes to avoid them, and that the whole society should contribute to the welfare state. That's fine: I'm not an expert on the subject and I'm very much willing to consider whatever option works best. The low level details are not nearly as important as the end result: one that gives young people to chance to study start their professional life without a debt millstone around their neck. But I have no illusions that this will happen in my lifetime.

seanmcdirmid 7y ago

Germany has (almost) free colleges and it works put well. They make a lot of changes to get there (no campus experience, big classes, little handholding, two exams and no graded homework), and they have trade schools as well (well, apprenticeships). Those are completely orthogonal to college (you can do better financially in the latter). Having a well educated workforce isn’t a bad idea, as long as we don’t think of it as a pissing contest.

T-hawk 7y ago

> There IS GOING TO BE a barrier of entry SOMEWHERE. This is correct. When everyone has a degree, then no one does. There is a limit to how many productive professional jobs can exist. All the necessities for society and life can be produced and distributed by really about 10% of the workforce, working with economies of scale. Everything else is nonessential service jobs or entertainment. Around the 1960s, the 10% that had college degrees happened to match that 10% of skilled jobs. We fooled ourselves into thinking that was causation. It's not. Awarding four times as many college degrees does not mean four times as many productive jobs will somehow exist or the consumptive power to sustain them. Companies don't want to hire a degree, they want to hire from the most able 10% of their applicant field. A degree used to be a proxy with significant signal towards that, but now has little.

rightbyte 7y ago
"When everyone has a degree, then no one does." Wait, what? "When everyone can read, no one does"? Your assumption for that statement to be correct is that degrees have no real underlying value except as a discriminatory tool. 10% is probably to low. I'll guess somewhere around 30-40% (of non senior adults).