8 ms·

Why all of this? If K-12 is paid for by the government, why not have the government pay for college education too?

by kiba 5y ago

vkou 5y ago
Firstly, I am supportive of heavily subsidized/free post-secondary education. However, there is a substantial difference between K-12 and post-secondary. K-12 is considered a baseline for society. Everyone is expected to have it. It absolutely makes sense for the government to pay for it. Post-secondary is a different beast. It is not a baseline for society (Even if it is a baseline for white collar-work). Not everyone is expected to have it. People who end up in, on average, better-paying jobs are the primary beneficiaries of cheap/free post-secondary education. There are two ways out of this situation. 1. You can make post-secondary the baseline. Everyone could be expected to have it. This... Is probably a good idea for building better citizens (and, by proxy, a better society), but it is not economically cost-optimal. 2. You can keep post-secondary as a special privilege for the a select few, citing that society, as a whole, benefits from educating its most capable members. In that case, you'd need hard admissions testing/filtering/etc, it should be easy to drop out if you can't perform once you've been admitted, and universities should primarily focus on education, rather than being a four-year, three-star resort for middle-class young people. Neither of these two options would look anything like "College, as it is currently practiced in the United States, but paid for by the government."
- swiley 5y ago
  College as is practiced in the United states is a front to move money from the people paying for tuition into the pockets of administrators and little more. That needs to stop
- mullingitover 5y ago
  > People who end up in, on average, better-paying jobs are the primary beneficiaries of cheap/free post-secondary education. Those people also end up paying far more taxes. There's a perfectly selfish reason for government to make college free - it more than pays for itself over the lifetime of the taxpayer. It doesn't make sense for government to pay for ridiculous university overhead (e.g. expensive new buildings, armies of worthless administrators, wildly overpaid athletic coaches, etc) but it's a no-brainer deal for government to pay fully for the real costs college degree. The key is to avoid paying for the non-education expenses.
  - betwixthewires 5y ago
    I'm guessing you deduced that those people end up paying more taxes because they end up making more money? If that were the case you wouldn't have the student debt crisis right now; if the payoff was worth it people would be able to afford to pay their loans. If we can make a college degree only cost what it actually costs and not pay for all the cruft why does the government have to start paying it? You've solved the problem at that point.
    - mullingitover 5y ago
      > If we can make a college degree only cost what it actually costs and not pay for all the cruft why does the government have to start paying it? You've solved the problem at that point. Only a single payer system has the leverage to force the universities to decouple their cruft from their core educational expenses. And you're right! College tuition would probably be near-negligible if the cruft was removed, but my take at that point is why not just make it free, then? The irony is we essentially already have this single payer system. Every college and university is dependent on federal financing for tuition. The federal government simply needs to use the power it already possesses. It's a lot like the federal government's refusal to negotiate drug prices, a wasted opportunity.
      - betwixthewires 5y ago
        > Only a single payer system has the leverage to force the universities to decouple their cruft from their core educational expenses That's a pretty steadfast assertion. It's untrue, and we know that because higher education used to be affordable without a single payer system. > The irony is we essentially already have this single payer system. I'm not sure this is ironic so much as symptomatic. Blank checks lead to waste. Students on the hook for blank checks lead to what we have now. > why not just make it free, then? I can think of a couple of reasons. Nothing is free in this world, for one, and beyond that, I don't want to live in a world where I have to spend another 4 years of my life in school just to get a job because it's free and therefore expected of everyone. Those are pretty big reasons why not.
- KingMachiavelli 5y ago
  Agreed. Everyone is advocating for option #1 because it doesn't tell anyone that they shouldn't go to college. Option #2 is what we need but it's basically impossible to do directly. The middle ground is the federal government starts admitting that it is footing the bill for higher education (it already is paying via loans). If the government's only option for recouping the money is via future tax revenue than there should be pressure to keep the cost per student low and expected future earnings high. Hopefully this would result in colleges offering cheap online classes, credit via exams, etc.
- jraph 5y ago
  > 1. You can make post-secondary the baseline. Everyone could be expected to have it. This... Is probably a good idea for building better citizens (and, by proxy, a better society), but it is not economically cost-optimal. Not everybody needs / is fit for long studies so I don't think it should become the baseline. I still think it should be free to avoid preventing people who are but could not otherwise afford it from attending it.
ericmay 5y ago
A better question in my mind is whether or not going to college is a good use of time. If people are just doing it to get a job, well, why not set up and support trade schools instead?
- rbanffy 5y ago
  > why not set up and support trade schools instead? If you do that, you severely limit social/economical mobility. Is that what you want?
  - ericmay 5y ago
    I hate these kinds of presumptive one-liners that are like a big Trojan horse filled with red herrings and straw men... Anyway: Why would this limit social and economic mobility? If it does limit social and economic mobility, does that mean our process for mobility is flawed? Does there need to be a reassessment of what is valuable in society? Are plumbers or mechanics "less valuable" than a business analyst or marketing professional? What about a hospice care worker or a grocer? Are we focusing on college degrees because of historical baggage? Should we have more courses in computer science or agriculture, or more courses in literature? More of all? Less of all? Recall that social and economic mobility don't just go up, they go down too. Can we look to countries like Germany that have healthy vocational and technical training programs? And why would you think that I would want to severely limit social and economic mobility? What are you implying here? I don't get it.
  - majormajor 5y ago
    How so? One major problem today is that most bachelor's degrees are required but not sufficient for many not-particularly-socially-upward jobs. So go in debt to still not have mobility.
simmonmt 5y ago
I think that translates to "why not have the taxpayer pay for college education too?" Which means that the person who doesn't need/get a college education (think your electrician) is now stuck paying for those who choose to get one and is seeing none of the benefits. Better to have the people who get the benefits pay for the privilege.
- hobs 5y ago
  That argument only makes sense when education is frightenly expensive - reducing this cost makes it on the level of paying for roads you dont use - it helps you even though you dont get a direct benefit because your entire society works.
  - gameman144 5y ago
    But education is frighteningly expensive. Reducing the cost makes sense, but subsidizing the cost of something overpriced doesn't do anything to incentivize lowering the actual cost of that thing. Likewise, there are loads of things which help society in general which we still hold individuals accountable for. Law-school and Med-school cost loads, but students take on loans for those; small businesses provide a huge portion of employment, but by-and-large the burden of debt (even small-business-advantaged loans) is taken on by owners and not society-at-large (COVID notwithstanding); having a huge selection of television, music, literature, and other media produced in the US is great for society (and is a huge reason for American soft-power worldwide), but the cost of funding nearly all this work is borne by businesses and not the taxpayer. This isn't to say that certain things shouldn't be funded by the taxpayer. However, saying "This thing is good for all of society, and therefore should be subsidized by the taxpayer" doesn't really necessarily follow.
    - hobs 5y ago
      Becoming a doctor is subsidized by many societies, there's no reason to choose to burden students with exorbitant debt. The burden of these things have exploded in recent years, there's no clear reason why anyone should pay for that immense increase.
jacob2484 5y ago
Why should tax payers have to pay for many degrees that are worthless (undergraduate + graduate)?
- ghaff 5y ago
  So who is going to sit in judgement of which degrees are worthwhile and which are worthless?
  - qwytw 5y ago
    Ideally the market should.
    - jraph 5y ago
      The market does not know what is virtuous. It knows what individuals demand among what is offered.
      - betwixthewires 5y ago
        So who's going to sit in judgment of what is virtuous?
        jraph 5y ago
        Hopefully, informed people. Unfortunately I don't have a definite answer to your question but that does not make "the market" a valid one (maybe it is, though I don't think so because I don't trust people for making decision virtuous for the community through individual ones, there needs to be something more clever and functional).
        betwixthewires 5y ago
        Well I ask because in my mind it is simple: individuals decide for themselves what is virtuous. Of course as a side effect this is reflected in the market, as individuals engaging in things they find virtuous are reflected in the market. If you don't trust people to make decisions for the community, why not just let them all make decisions for themselves and nobody else? That would solve that problem, no?
keewee7 5y ago
Government funds university education here in Denmark. But you have to be responsible with tax payers money so the number of seats per program is determined by market demand. I think many Americans would be offended if they woke up one day and their universities had stopped offering useless gender studies degrees.
- alpha_squared 5y ago
  > useless gender studies degrees. I don't know why this is such a pervasive perspective, but it's really sad. This same logic extends to philosophy, theater, arts, psychology, sociology, and so many other disciplines. At which point, you're really just left with STEM, which seems to hint the preference is for trade schools (which do exist, but aren't favored). The loss of arts and social sciences would be a catastrophe for the academic world.
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    > The loss of arts and social sciences would be a catastrophe for the academic world. But we need poor people to operate the machinery. They shouldn't be allowed to dream, write poetry, or do anything that we consider frivolous. The frivolous things are for the privileged to do. Sorry. My sarcasm couldn't be contained.
    - newfriend 5y ago
      They are free to do what they want. Forcing me to pay for them to do it is another matter.
      - genewitch 5y ago
        >let them eat cake
      - LocalH 5y ago
        You're already forced to pay for many things that you may not even know about. Do you know where every single dollar of your tax money goes?
bcrosby95 5y ago
20 years ago, if you lived in California you almost had this. I attended a CSU for around $750/semester. Price now is almost $4k/semester. I guess we can barely pay for the present nowadays, nevermind the future.
- vxNsr 5y ago
  $4k/semester is a bargain in most states.
KorematsuFred 5y ago
There are some very good arguments as to why government should not be paying for college education: - Loosely speaking K-12 can be seen as a public good because of which it may make sense for the society to pay for other people's education. College education is not a public good in the same way because at any rate only few folks will go to college and it is immoral for the other people being forced to pay for college education of those kids. If college educated kids earn even more then it is even more immoral for poor people to pay for rich. - Unlike K-12, college education involves specialization. A gender studies degree is worthless compared to say a nurse. But because education is free a lot of students might enroll in more and more worthless degrees. This will have great negative impact on productivity of US society. A lot of folks who do not have any productive skills, a lot of folks staying out of labour market in their crucial years. I will work at a local farm for a year rather than pursue some of the college degrees any days. - When government pays for education it distorts the market. You can see it as a subsidy. But then it also means more and more worthless colleges which have more and more worthless degree programs that focus on "good life" for kids. I always watch this video from time to time : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3-_r_t7AZU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3-_r_t7AZU
- CobrastanJorji 5y ago
  That argument would've had a lot of weight in 1940, when only 5% or so of folks went to college, but today nearly 2/3 of high school graduates immediately enroll in some form of college. It seems reasonable to assume that, if college were free, that figure would substantially rise. The opposite of your specialization argument also applies. It costs $20,000-$40,000 to go through nursing school. It's hugely beneficial for society to have nurses, and we have a nursing shortage. Paying for nursing school means more nurses. On the other side, personally I'm in favor of there being a lot more people who have expertise in advanced non-STEM topics. The benefits are less obvious, but a well educated populace is far more desirable than a pile of folks educated just well enough to be useful as well. Distorting the market is a problem, but just as high schools are public, I think increasing the number of public universities and public community colleges helps that problem. If there is enough high quality public education available, there's no need to subsidize private education.
paulddraper 5y ago
> If K-12 is paid for by the government, why not have the government pay for college education too? Because K-12 is paid for by the government.
Consultant32452 5y ago
It's hard to get a job if you don't have a high school diploma. We feel bad for people who can't get jobs, so we make it easier to get a high school diploma. Employers are not completely stupid, they notice the high school diploma is no longer signaling competency and start demanding university degrees for pretty basic jobs. We feel bad for people who can't get jobs, so we make it easier to get a university degree. You can see where this is headed.
ChrisLomont 5y ago
K-12 is paid for by local taxpayers, at an annual per student rate around $12k, about the highest rate in the world. If you can get taxpayers to pay an even higher rate for college education, then college would be covered too. Of course, this means you'll still be paying for college, as a taxpayer instead of as an attendee.

Why all of this? If K-12 is paid for by the government, why not have the government pay for college education too?

by kiba 5y ago

Why all of this? If K-12 is paid for by the government, why not have the government pay for college education too?

vkou 5y ago

Firstly, I am supportive of heavily subsidized/free post-secondary education. However, there is a substantial difference between K-12 and post-secondary. K-12 is considered a baseline for society. Everyone is expected to have it. It absolutely makes sense for the government to pay for it. Post-secondary is a different beast. It is not a baseline for society (Even if it is a baseline for white collar-work). Not everyone is expected to have it. People who end up in, on average, better-paying jobs are the primary beneficiaries of cheap/free post-secondary education. There are two ways out of this situation. 1. You can make post-secondary the baseline. Everyone could be expected to have it. This... Is probably a good idea for building better citizens (and, by proxy, a better society), but it is not economically cost-optimal. 2. You can keep post-secondary as a special privilege for the a select few, citing that society, as a whole, benefits from educating its most capable members. In that case, you'd need hard admissions testing/filtering/etc, it should be easy to drop out if you can't perform once you've been admitted, and universities should primarily focus on education, rather than being a four-year, three-star resort for middle-class young people. Neither of these two options would look anything like "College, as it is currently practiced in the United States, but paid for by the government."

swiley 5y ago
College as is practiced in the United states is a front to move money from the people paying for tuition into the pockets of administrators and little more. That needs to stop
mullingitover 5y ago
> People who end up in, on average, better-paying jobs are the primary beneficiaries of cheap/free post-secondary education. Those people also end up paying far more taxes. There's a perfectly selfish reason for government to make college free - it more than pays for itself over the lifetime of the taxpayer. It doesn't make sense for government to pay for ridiculous university overhead (e.g. expensive new buildings, armies of worthless administrators, wildly overpaid athletic coaches, etc) but it's a no-brainer deal for government to pay fully for the real costs college degree. The key is to avoid paying for the non-education expenses.
- betwixthewires 5y ago
  I'm guessing you deduced that those people end up paying more taxes because they end up making more money? If that were the case you wouldn't have the student debt crisis right now; if the payoff was worth it people would be able to afford to pay their loans. If we can make a college degree only cost what it actually costs and not pay for all the cruft why does the government have to start paying it? You've solved the problem at that point.
  - mullingitover 5y ago
    > If we can make a college degree only cost what it actually costs and not pay for all the cruft why does the government have to start paying it? You've solved the problem at that point. Only a single payer system has the leverage to force the universities to decouple their cruft from their core educational expenses. And you're right! College tuition would probably be near-negligible if the cruft was removed, but my take at that point is why not just make it free, then? The irony is we essentially already have this single payer system. Every college and university is dependent on federal financing for tuition. The federal government simply needs to use the power it already possesses. It's a lot like the federal government's refusal to negotiate drug prices, a wasted opportunity.
    - betwixthewires 5y ago
      > Only a single payer system has the leverage to force the universities to decouple their cruft from their core educational expenses That's a pretty steadfast assertion. It's untrue, and we know that because higher education used to be affordable without a single payer system. > The irony is we essentially already have this single payer system. I'm not sure this is ironic so much as symptomatic. Blank checks lead to waste. Students on the hook for blank checks lead to what we have now. > why not just make it free, then? I can think of a couple of reasons. Nothing is free in this world, for one, and beyond that, I don't want to live in a world where I have to spend another 4 years of my life in school just to get a job because it's free and therefore expected of everyone. Those are pretty big reasons why not.
KingMachiavelli 5y ago
Agreed. Everyone is advocating for option #1 because it doesn't tell anyone that they shouldn't go to college. Option #2 is what we need but it's basically impossible to do directly. The middle ground is the federal government starts admitting that it is footing the bill for higher education (it already is paying via loans). If the government's only option for recouping the money is via future tax revenue than there should be pressure to keep the cost per student low and expected future earnings high. Hopefully this would result in colleges offering cheap online classes, credit via exams, etc.
jraph 5y ago
> 1. You can make post-secondary the baseline. Everyone could be expected to have it. This... Is probably a good idea for building better citizens (and, by proxy, a better society), but it is not economically cost-optimal. Not everybody needs / is fit for long studies so I don't think it should become the baseline. I still think it should be free to avoid preventing people who are but could not otherwise afford it from attending it.

ericmay 5y ago

A better question in my mind is whether or not going to college is a good use of time. If people are just doing it to get a job, well, why not set up and support trade schools instead?

rbanffy 5y ago
> why not set up and support trade schools instead? If you do that, you severely limit social/economical mobility. Is that what you want?
- ericmay 5y ago
  I hate these kinds of presumptive one-liners that are like a big Trojan horse filled with red herrings and straw men... Anyway: Why would this limit social and economic mobility? If it does limit social and economic mobility, does that mean our process for mobility is flawed? Does there need to be a reassessment of what is valuable in society? Are plumbers or mechanics "less valuable" than a business analyst or marketing professional? What about a hospice care worker or a grocer? Are we focusing on college degrees because of historical baggage? Should we have more courses in computer science or agriculture, or more courses in literature? More of all? Less of all? Recall that social and economic mobility don't just go up, they go down too. Can we look to countries like Germany that have healthy vocational and technical training programs? And why would you think that I would want to severely limit social and economic mobility? What are you implying here? I don't get it.
- majormajor 5y ago
  How so? One major problem today is that most bachelor's degrees are required but not sufficient for many not-particularly-socially-upward jobs. So go in debt to still not have mobility.

simmonmt 5y ago

I think that translates to "why not have the taxpayer pay for college education too?" Which means that the person who doesn't need/get a college education (think your electrician) is now stuck paying for those who choose to get one and is seeing none of the benefits. Better to have the people who get the benefits pay for the privilege.

hobs 5y ago
That argument only makes sense when education is frightenly expensive - reducing this cost makes it on the level of paying for roads you dont use - it helps you even though you dont get a direct benefit because your entire society works.
- gameman144 5y ago
  But education is frighteningly expensive. Reducing the cost makes sense, but subsidizing the cost of something overpriced doesn't do anything to incentivize lowering the actual cost of that thing. Likewise, there are loads of things which help society in general which we still hold individuals accountable for. Law-school and Med-school cost loads, but students take on loans for those; small businesses provide a huge portion of employment, but by-and-large the burden of debt (even small-business-advantaged loans) is taken on by owners and not society-at-large (COVID notwithstanding); having a huge selection of television, music, literature, and other media produced in the US is great for society (and is a huge reason for American soft-power worldwide), but the cost of funding nearly all this work is borne by businesses and not the taxpayer. This isn't to say that certain things shouldn't be funded by the taxpayer. However, saying "This thing is good for all of society, and therefore should be subsidized by the taxpayer" doesn't really necessarily follow.
  - hobs 5y ago
    Becoming a doctor is subsidized by many societies, there's no reason to choose to burden students with exorbitant debt. The burden of these things have exploded in recent years, there's no clear reason why anyone should pay for that immense increase.

jacob2484 5y ago

Why should tax payers have to pay for many degrees that are worthless (undergraduate + graduate)?

ghaff 5y ago
So who is going to sit in judgement of which degrees are worthwhile and which are worthless?
- qwytw 5y ago
  Ideally the market should.
  - jraph 5y ago
    The market does not know what is virtuous. It knows what individuals demand among what is offered.
    - betwixthewires 5y ago
      So who's going to sit in judgment of what is virtuous?
      - jraph 5y ago
        Hopefully, informed people. Unfortunately I don't have a definite answer to your question but that does not make "the market" a valid one (maybe it is, though I don't think so because I don't trust people for making decision virtuous for the community through individual ones, there needs to be something more clever and functional).
        betwixthewires 5y ago
        Well I ask because in my mind it is simple: individuals decide for themselves what is virtuous. Of course as a side effect this is reflected in the market, as individuals engaging in things they find virtuous are reflected in the market. If you don't trust people to make decisions for the community, why not just let them all make decisions for themselves and nobody else? That would solve that problem, no?

keewee7 5y ago

Government funds university education here in Denmark. But you have to be responsible with tax payers money so the number of seats per program is determined by market demand. I think many Americans would be offended if they woke up one day and their universities had stopped offering useless gender studies degrees.

alpha_squared 5y ago
> useless gender studies degrees. I don't know why this is such a pervasive perspective, but it's really sad. This same logic extends to philosophy, theater, arts, psychology, sociology, and so many other disciplines. At which point, you're really just left with STEM, which seems to hint the preference is for trade schools (which do exist, but aren't favored). The loss of arts and social sciences would be a catastrophe for the academic world.
- rbanffy 5y ago
  > The loss of arts and social sciences would be a catastrophe for the academic world. But we need poor people to operate the machinery. They shouldn't be allowed to dream, write poetry, or do anything that we consider frivolous. The frivolous things are for the privileged to do. Sorry. My sarcasm couldn't be contained.
  - newfriend 5y ago
    They are free to do what they want. Forcing me to pay for them to do it is another matter.
    - genewitch 5y ago
      >let them eat cake
    - LocalH 5y ago
      You're already forced to pay for many things that you may not even know about. Do you know where every single dollar of your tax money goes?

bcrosby95 5y ago

20 years ago, if you lived in California you almost had this. I attended a CSU for around $750/semester. Price now is almost $4k/semester. I guess we can barely pay for the present nowadays, nevermind the future.

vxNsr 5y ago
$4k/semester is a bargain in most states.

KorematsuFred 5y ago

There are some very good arguments as to why government should not be paying for college education: - Loosely speaking K-12 can be seen as a public good because of which it may make sense for the society to pay for other people's education. College education is not a public good in the same way because at any rate only few folks will go to college and it is immoral for the other people being forced to pay for college education of those kids. If college educated kids earn even more then it is even more immoral for poor people to pay for rich. - Unlike K-12, college education involves specialization. A gender studies degree is worthless compared to say a nurse. But because education is free a lot of students might enroll in more and more worthless degrees. This will have great negative impact on productivity of US society. A lot of folks who do not have any productive skills, a lot of folks staying out of labour market in their crucial years. I will work at a local farm for a year rather than pursue some of the college degrees any days. - When government pays for education it distorts the market. You can see it as a subsidy. But then it also means more and more worthless colleges which have more and more worthless degree programs that focus on "good life" for kids. I always watch this video from time to time : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3-_r_t7AZU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3-_r_t7AZU

CobrastanJorji 5y ago
That argument would've had a lot of weight in 1940, when only 5% or so of folks went to college, but today nearly 2/3 of high school graduates immediately enroll in some form of college. It seems reasonable to assume that, if college were free, that figure would substantially rise. The opposite of your specialization argument also applies. It costs $20,000-$40,000 to go through nursing school. It's hugely beneficial for society to have nurses, and we have a nursing shortage. Paying for nursing school means more nurses. On the other side, personally I'm in favor of there being a lot more people who have expertise in advanced non-STEM topics. The benefits are less obvious, but a well educated populace is far more desirable than a pile of folks educated just well enough to be useful as well. Distorting the market is a problem, but just as high schools are public, I think increasing the number of public universities and public community colleges helps that problem. If there is enough high quality public education available, there's no need to subsidize private education.

paulddraper 5y ago

> If K-12 is paid for by the government, why not have the government pay for college education too? Because K-12 is paid for by the government.

Consultant32452 5y ago

It's hard to get a job if you don't have a high school diploma. We feel bad for people who can't get jobs, so we make it easier to get a high school diploma. Employers are not completely stupid, they notice the high school diploma is no longer signaling competency and start demanding university degrees for pretty basic jobs. We feel bad for people who can't get jobs, so we make it easier to get a university degree. You can see where this is headed.

ChrisLomont 5y ago

K-12 is paid for by local taxpayers, at an annual per student rate around $12k, about the highest rate in the world. If you can get taxpayers to pay an even higher rate for college education, then college would be covered too. Of course, this means you'll still be paying for college, as a taxpayer instead of as an attendee.