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>It does not even begin to engage with the idea that knowledge and education can have value in and of itself enriching people's lives, building a shared culture

by yucky 5y ago

>It does not even begin to engage with the idea that knowledge and education can have value in and of itself enriching people's lives, building a shared culture, improving social mobility, decreasing inequality etc There is a difference between an education, which is what you are describing here and anybody can get for free online, and a college degree which is a part of an outdated industry being propped up by government grants and student loans. The administrative waste in higher education is absurd, and anybody in the industry should be embarrassed by it. The entire education industry needs to be stripped for parts and rebuilt from the ground up in a way that doesn't bury young adults in debt, or bleed the middle class taxpayers dry.

seanhunter 5y ago
This is predominantly a problem in the US - in other countries tertiary education is way cheaper per capita and in many countries (predominantly in Europe) it is free. In some countries (eg Norway) it's even free for international students. In the UK (where I live) things have been sadly moving in the US direction over the last 10 years, with tuition fees and student loans now ubiquitous although university education is still nowhere near as cripplingly expensive as in the US. It's a little hard to gain signal from university league tables, but US universities make a strong showing, but do not dominate to the extent one might expect given how much more expensive they are than universities in other countries. See the THES computer science rankings for example https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/2022/subject-ranking/computer-science#!/page/0/length/25/sort_by/rank/sort_order/asc/cols/stats https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankin...
- yucky 5y ago
  >or bleed the middle class taxpayers dry. You may have missed this part. Universities are not free in those countries you speak of, what happens is taxpayers just end up with far less disposable income.
  - seanhunter 5y ago
    You may have missed the part that the cost per capita is higher in the US for a worse outcome. The US is not a low-tax country in spite of the fact that the government provides fewer services than in Europe.
    - yucky 5y ago
      This is the end result though https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_capita_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_c... This is why people come from all over the world to work and study in the US.
      - seanhunter 5y ago
        What I was posting was not intended as a general critique of the US - there's a lot that's fantastic about the US. However the way tertiary education works in the US seems broken relative to other places in the world. In particular, saddling swathes of young people with a lifetime of debt service in exchange for an education seems incredibly unfair and the way the debate is framed in the US is around the pros and cons of debt forgiveness rather than a root cause analysis of whether it needs to be so expensive in the first place. The FA is about the value of education and as I take an Aristotelian view that the value of an education is primarily about the fulfillment of the individual first and foremost and the wider benefits that brings to society secondly and almost not at all about being a productive worker I go back to my point that the article just ignores lots of ways in which education can have value.

by yucky 5y ago

seanhunter 5y ago

This is predominantly a problem in the US - in other countries tertiary education is way cheaper per capita and in many countries (predominantly in Europe) it is free. In some countries (eg Norway) it's even free for international students. In the UK (where I live) things have been sadly moving in the US direction over the last 10 years, with tuition fees and student loans now ubiquitous although university education is still nowhere near as cripplingly expensive as in the US. It's a little hard to gain signal from university league tables, but US universities make a strong showing, but do not dominate to the extent one might expect given how much more expensive they are than universities in other countries. See the THES computer science rankings for example https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/2022/subject-ranking/computer-science#!/page/0/length/25/sort_by/rank/sort_order/asc/cols/stats https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankin...

yucky 5y ago
>or bleed the middle class taxpayers dry. You may have missed this part. Universities are not free in those countries you speak of, what happens is taxpayers just end up with far less disposable income.
- seanhunter 5y ago
  You may have missed the part that the cost per capita is higher in the US for a worse outcome. The US is not a low-tax country in spite of the fact that the government provides fewer services than in Europe.
  - yucky 5y ago
    This is the end result though https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_capita_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_c... This is why people come from all over the world to work and study in the US.
    - seanhunter 5y ago
      What I was posting was not intended as a general critique of the US - there's a lot that's fantastic about the US. However the way tertiary education works in the US seems broken relative to other places in the world. In particular, saddling swathes of young people with a lifetime of debt service in exchange for an education seems incredibly unfair and the way the debate is framed in the US is around the pros and cons of debt forgiveness rather than a root cause analysis of whether it needs to be so expensive in the first place. The FA is about the value of education and as I take an Aristotelian view that the value of an education is primarily about the fulfillment of the individual first and foremost and the wider benefits that brings to society secondly and almost not at all about being a productive worker I go back to my point that the article just ignores lots of ways in which education can have value.