8 ms·

We give everyone in the U.S. high school education and we don't make the claims you make above. Why would higher education be different? The purpose of free hi

by bradly 6y ago

We give everyone in the U.S. high school education and we don't make the claims you make above. Why would higher education be different? The purpose of free higher ed for all is not to guarantee everyone a good life–it is to try and give everyone an equal chance at a good life. If higher ed is highly correlated to escaping poverty and upward economic mobility, then college costs raising at a rate 11 times faster than average income is a form of classism.

AlgorithmicTime 6y ago
High School education was considered an actual achievement perhaps 70 years ago. Not everyone graduated. But we noticed that people who graduated high school did better, on average. So we decided to encourage people to graduate high school. Partially by force, partially by lowering standards. Now, practically everyone graduates high school, so a high school diploma is useless as a signal of quality. And so, we plan to do the same to the Bachelor's degree, except that we aren't making that free at the point of education.
ryanmarsh 6y ago
We give everyone in the U.S. high school education and we don't make the claims you make above. We used too. A high school education meant something to my grandparents.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- cptnapalm 6y ago
  I once picked up a hundred year old Latin schoolbook meant for grade schoolers (fifth grade, I think). It was significantly more information dense than the college course Latin textbook I had.
  - rbanffy 6y ago
    Latin was much more important a hundred years ago than it is today. Also, a college education was not a given back then. OTOH, I can imagine the HS-level Physics books were very different from the ones we studied with, with different subjects given different depths.
    - ryanmarsh 6y ago
      Latin is a good subject to learn as the foundation of many modern languages, and subsequently other subjects such as logic and philosophy.
  - ryanmarsh 6y ago
    You should see the books I was taught to read with. Written in the 1800's. They'd be considered 8th grade reading level these days.
- bradly 6y ago
  > We used too. A high school education meant something to my grandparents. Do you have a high school education? The education I got in H.S. had a big impact on my life. I couldn't imagine being done with school at 14 and thinking that was equivalent to 4 years of High School.
hackinthebochs 6y ago
>We give everyone in the U.S. high school education and we don't make the claims you make above. Probably because a high school diploma has been so normalized that it is seen as the baseline. But that underscores the problem. Of course everyone having a high school diploma devalues it. That's part of why its seen as the default. If we make undergraduate education a similar default, it will just devalue that too. Not to mention what happens to the people who can't complete an undergraduate degree. They become even further marginalized in society. It is faulty reasoning to notice that a bachelors degree correlates with good outcomes and then conclude that more bachelors degrees means more good outcomes. Good jobs are zero-sum. If there are more people who satisfy the requirements for good jobs, the requirements just increase. It's not like most office jobs require a bachelors degree, the fact that so many people have them makes them an effective zero-effort filter.
- bradly 6y ago
  I don't understand this. The U.S. would be much worse without free, universal High School, regardless of whether you think it has devalued over time. I believe that if I didn't have a H.S. education, my life would be more difficult, but I get the feeling from these replies that people view a u.s. high school education as throw-away.
  - umanwizard 6y ago
    Many developed countries in e.g. Europe don't actually have universal academic high school like the US does - they have perhaps 1/3 of people go to academic high school, where it is more difficult than in the US (perhaps comparable to the difficulty of AP classes). The rest go to vocational or semi-vocational school.
    - C1sc0cat 6y ago
      Not sure that is actually a good idea as kids with well of backgrounds tend to get the higher tracks. I remember a native German poster on hn commenting on the subject "funny how the its the brown skinned Germans, who end up in the lower tier schools"
leetcrew 6y ago
> If higher ed is highly correlated to escaping poverty and upward economic mobility, then college costs raising at a rate 11 times faster than average income is a form of classism. this is true if you look at the sticker price, but does the actual cost for a low-income family grow at that rate? I'm having a hard time finding a source that shows by year what a bottom quartile family would have paid for tuition at an in-state public university or an elite institution.
- geodel 6y ago
  I think this is bullshit. Why would institutes put such high sticker price or why wouldn't they put price clearly based on income level. No one likes when hospital do not give clear price for treatments, same applies for university. Would it better if stores listed loaf of bread at $300 and then people can negotiate the price from there?
  - leetcrew 6y ago
    > Why would institutes put such high sticker price or why wouldn't they put price clearly based on income level. they don't put a clear price because they take a lot of different factors into account. take a look at this tuition estimator for vassar: https://studentfinancialservices.vassar.edu/calculator/quick-estimator.html https://studentfinancialservices.vassar.edu/calculator/quick... the grant is calculated based on your family's income, home value, savings, investments, number of children, and a couple other data points. they can't give an exact number until they see your FAFSA. it sucks that this is so complicated, but I argue most of this is necessary to fairly calculate grants. two different households making $60k might have wildly different abilities to pay for tuition.
  - thereisnospork 6y ago
    Because international students (have to) pay sticker. The schools can't (or won't) discriminate on price explicitly so this is what they do.
pragmatic 6y ago
That is exactly what has happened to high school education. Kids are passed along without meeting the standards of the grade or degree so that the institution does not look bad. You may be too young to remember when this was the crises du jour and the No Child Left Behind program, etc. Not everyone can get earn a PhD. Not everyone can pass the rigors of high school. Not everyone can run a 4 minute mile either.
- bradly 6y ago
  I think you are missing my point–I believe free high school education is the U.S. is better than no free high school education, so why would free higher ed not be better as well? What I am not saying is that education hasn't been devalued, or standards haven't changed, or anything else around the quality of education–simply that an education better than not in the u.s..
loco5niner 6y ago
That's because high school education used to be the X, and successful people moved on to college (the new Y), but college is now the old thing and people are moving on to whatever Z is.

by bradly 6y ago

AlgorithmicTime 6y ago

High School education was considered an actual achievement perhaps 70 years ago. Not everyone graduated. But we noticed that people who graduated high school did better, on average. So we decided to encourage people to graduate high school. Partially by force, partially by lowering standards. Now, practically everyone graduates high school, so a high school diploma is useless as a signal of quality. And so, we plan to do the same to the Bachelor's degree, except that we aren't making that free at the point of education.

ryanmarsh 6y ago

We give everyone in the U.S. high school education and we don't make the claims you make above. We used too. A high school education meant something to my grandparents.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
cptnapalm 6y ago
I once picked up a hundred year old Latin schoolbook meant for grade schoolers (fifth grade, I think). It was significantly more information dense than the college course Latin textbook I had.
- rbanffy 6y ago
  Latin was much more important a hundred years ago than it is today. Also, a college education was not a given back then. OTOH, I can imagine the HS-level Physics books were very different from the ones we studied with, with different subjects given different depths.
  - ryanmarsh 6y ago
    Latin is a good subject to learn as the foundation of many modern languages, and subsequently other subjects such as logic and philosophy.
- ryanmarsh 6y ago
  You should see the books I was taught to read with. Written in the 1800's. They'd be considered 8th grade reading level these days.
bradly 6y ago
> We used too. A high school education meant something to my grandparents. Do you have a high school education? The education I got in H.S. had a big impact on my life. I couldn't imagine being done with school at 14 and thinking that was equivalent to 4 years of High School.

hackinthebochs 6y ago

>We give everyone in the U.S. high school education and we don't make the claims you make above. Probably because a high school diploma has been so normalized that it is seen as the baseline. But that underscores the problem. Of course everyone having a high school diploma devalues it. That's part of why its seen as the default. If we make undergraduate education a similar default, it will just devalue that too. Not to mention what happens to the people who can't complete an undergraduate degree. They become even further marginalized in society. It is faulty reasoning to notice that a bachelors degree correlates with good outcomes and then conclude that more bachelors degrees means more good outcomes. Good jobs are zero-sum. If there are more people who satisfy the requirements for good jobs, the requirements just increase. It's not like most office jobs require a bachelors degree, the fact that so many people have them makes them an effective zero-effort filter.

bradly 6y ago
I don't understand this. The U.S. would be much worse without free, universal High School, regardless of whether you think it has devalued over time. I believe that if I didn't have a H.S. education, my life would be more difficult, but I get the feeling from these replies that people view a u.s. high school education as throw-away.
- umanwizard 6y ago
  Many developed countries in e.g. Europe don't actually have universal academic high school like the US does - they have perhaps 1/3 of people go to academic high school, where it is more difficult than in the US (perhaps comparable to the difficulty of AP classes). The rest go to vocational or semi-vocational school.
  - C1sc0cat 6y ago
    Not sure that is actually a good idea as kids with well of backgrounds tend to get the higher tracks. I remember a native German poster on hn commenting on the subject "funny how the its the brown skinned Germans, who end up in the lower tier schools"

leetcrew 6y ago

> If higher ed is highly correlated to escaping poverty and upward economic mobility, then college costs raising at a rate 11 times faster than average income is a form of classism. this is true if you look at the sticker price, but does the actual cost for a low-income family grow at that rate? I'm having a hard time finding a source that shows by year what a bottom quartile family would have paid for tuition at an in-state public university or an elite institution.

geodel 6y ago
I think this is bullshit. Why would institutes put such high sticker price or why wouldn't they put price clearly based on income level. No one likes when hospital do not give clear price for treatments, same applies for university. Would it better if stores listed loaf of bread at $300 and then people can negotiate the price from there?
- leetcrew 6y ago
  > Why would institutes put such high sticker price or why wouldn't they put price clearly based on income level. they don't put a clear price because they take a lot of different factors into account. take a look at this tuition estimator for vassar: https://studentfinancialservices.vassar.edu/calculator/quick-estimator.html https://studentfinancialservices.vassar.edu/calculator/quick... the grant is calculated based on your family's income, home value, savings, investments, number of children, and a couple other data points. they can't give an exact number until they see your FAFSA. it sucks that this is so complicated, but I argue most of this is necessary to fairly calculate grants. two different households making $60k might have wildly different abilities to pay for tuition.
- thereisnospork 6y ago
  Because international students (have to) pay sticker. The schools can't (or won't) discriminate on price explicitly so this is what they do.

pragmatic 6y ago

That is exactly what has happened to high school education. Kids are passed along without meeting the standards of the grade or degree so that the institution does not look bad. You may be too young to remember when this was the crises du jour and the No Child Left Behind program, etc. Not everyone can get earn a PhD. Not everyone can pass the rigors of high school. Not everyone can run a 4 minute mile either.

bradly 6y ago
I think you are missing my point–I believe free high school education is the U.S. is better than no free high school education, so why would free higher ed not be better as well? What I am not saying is that education hasn't been devalued, or standards haven't changed, or anything else around the quality of education–simply that an education better than not in the u.s..

loco5niner 6y ago

That's because high school education used to be the X, and successful people moved on to college (the new Y), but college is now the old thing and people are moving on to whatever Z is.