>Those careers still have to pay enough to compensate for the effort involved in acquiring the relevant skills. Do they? The effort in acquiring those skills g

>Those careers still have to pay enough to compensate for the effort involved in acquiring the relevant skills. Do they? The effort in acquiring those skills goes to the desire to be proficient and do a job well, which is independent of compensation when needs have been previously fulfilled. You might speak about the material costs of training, but that's more of an institutional issue; the instructors, who likewise already have their needs met, aren't an added cost. Anecdotally, I can speak to the willingness I would have to train for a tehnical profession, without compensation, assuming that my basic needs were met. Like everyone else, I'd be spending 4ish hours fulfilling some social or business need, so it's not a free ride. After training, if the institution hasn't covered the cost of materials/facilities/etc, then that becomes an issue for which extra compensation might be required, but the ballooning administrative and personnel costs that drive the rising price of post-secondary education in this country are rendered moot. I want to push back a bit, also: the limiting factor to supply in many professional fields are often artificially narrow pipelines that wash out a number of candidates who would be competent. The ones who get through face the issue of there being a shortage of credentialed practitioners, which drives up compensation but also workplace stress, abuse, and error. These aren't open markets to begin with.