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Simpler isn’t always preferable: note that the key feature from the consumer perspective in that system is > you pay no matter what Meaning if it’s assumed “d

by fardo 2y ago

Simpler isn’t always preferable: note that the key feature from the consumer perspective in that system is > you pay no matter what Meaning if it’s assumed “despite learning little, you still will be able to pay for it”, there’s no longer any motive force towards quality, as your payment is assured. Incentives on taxpayers thereafter who want to minimize their tax burden would therefore be optimizing primarily toward cheapness of the educational process, rather than efficacy and quality of the education which outbound students received. A vigorous market for education, would suggest you would likely get a variety of nodes along a “costliness to quality” options frontier.

eesmith 2y ago
> there’s no longer any motive force towards quality, as your payment is assured There are many excellent European universities, including ones which have been around for centuries, telling me there are ways to handle your concerns. > A vigorous market for education How's that Corinthian Colleges degree working out? Costly and no quality. And exactly the life-crippling outcome we should expect in a 'vigorous market'.
- fardo 2y ago
  This is non-responsive to my point. Pointing out that paid universities like Corinthian in a grossly distorted market predictably are not very competitive offerings, or that good offerings can nevertheless still exist in heavily distorted markets, both fail to address that > Current educational incentives caused by how payment is handled in these all-pay systems mean there is very little or no pressure exerted towards promoting an educational arms race towards quality, rather than minimizing cost to service that education. In a more competitive market, yes, I believe you'd both likely see better European offerings, as well as substantially more compelling American paid offerings than the current batch of cash grab for-profit universities. They exist in their current form almost exclusively because financial lenders in the US have no incentive not to issue loans to students - even if the program is bogus, they are guaranteed re-payment. This is a commonality shared between both current European offerings (via taxation guaranteeing repayment), and American alternatives (via guaranteed load repayment).
  - eesmith 2y ago
    'In a more competitive market' sounds like an article of faith, akin to the No True Scotsman, where there's no definition of what is competitive enough until it meets the proponents' sniff test. What would a sufficiently competitive market entail? Has it ever existed? Would it look like modern US K-12 systems where commercial schools prioritize the most profitable students and leave the others to the public schools? Where good marketing beats good education? How would it not be "heavily distorted" by impositions like Title 9 and other civil rights requirements? By government requirements on the school in order to receive state and federal money? By accreditation requirements?
    - fardo 2y ago
      >has it ever existed? This question being written as singular suggests to me you’re conflating some combination of education as a concept, education in America, and education in Europe. I see this as muddled thinking, they each have their own issues and their own timetables over which issues can and do exist. Education history in Europe is actually decently hyperlocal and pretty path dependent for each country during the 19th and 20th century. Talking about it as a monolith is challenging, but there’s a pretty consistent pattern in societies with all-pay taxation-paid schooling that it has clear incentive structures that a school, having been “paid up front“, is not incentivized to put in the work to provide a high quality education, and as the financier of that education is the taxpayer, the pressure is primarily to keep costs low. As for America, you don’t need much faith to believe that in the US instituting dischargeability would dramatically improve competition and quality in these spaces and the market for education - so yes, this market used to be substantially more competitive and used to exist. Since the 1970s when these laws were passed, student debt and tuition costs have skyrocketed, low quality for-profit university creation skyrocketed, and people have been hobbled with debt for degrees many are never going to pay back. Dischargeability reduces this greatly - it causes financiers to create motive pressure on education to not be a fiscal vampire preying on its students and equip them with meaningful trades and socially useful knowledge. As for standards and regulations on schools, assuming the public sees fit to fund higher education through government spending, having requirements for a school to receive that government funding seems reasonable, so long as they reflect the desires of the local populace. Ultimately, all this is a discussion of tradeoffs - I think someone can happily prefer > everyone gets a free tertiary education paid for by their taxes I think that it being free and paid-by-all means it’ll have low motive pressure towards quality and therefore be comparably mediocre to free elementary and secondary compulsory education, which even based on your own reckoning seems to be a two-tier system where the public institutions get short shrift - but you seem to care about it being free or less focused on fiscal student outcomes as its own value. It’s a tradeoff.

by fardo 2y ago

eesmith 2y ago

> there’s no longer any motive force towards quality, as your payment is assured There are many excellent European universities, including ones which have been around for centuries, telling me there are ways to handle your concerns. > A vigorous market for education How's that Corinthian Colleges degree working out? Costly and no quality. And exactly the life-crippling outcome we should expect in a 'vigorous market'.

fardo 2y ago
This is non-responsive to my point. Pointing out that paid universities like Corinthian in a grossly distorted market predictably are not very competitive offerings, or that good offerings can nevertheless still exist in heavily distorted markets, both fail to address that > Current educational incentives caused by how payment is handled in these all-pay systems mean there is very little or no pressure exerted towards promoting an educational arms race towards quality, rather than minimizing cost to service that education. In a more competitive market, yes, I believe you'd both likely see better European offerings, as well as substantially more compelling American paid offerings than the current batch of cash grab for-profit universities. They exist in their current form almost exclusively because financial lenders in the US have no incentive not to issue loans to students - even if the program is bogus, they are guaranteed re-payment. This is a commonality shared between both current European offerings (via taxation guaranteeing repayment), and American alternatives (via guaranteed load repayment).
- eesmith 2y ago
  'In a more competitive market' sounds like an article of faith, akin to the No True Scotsman, where there's no definition of what is competitive enough until it meets the proponents' sniff test. What would a sufficiently competitive market entail? Has it ever existed? Would it look like modern US K-12 systems where commercial schools prioritize the most profitable students and leave the others to the public schools? Where good marketing beats good education? How would it not be "heavily distorted" by impositions like Title 9 and other civil rights requirements? By government requirements on the school in order to receive state and federal money? By accreditation requirements?
  - fardo 2y ago
    >has it ever existed? This question being written as singular suggests to me you’re conflating some combination of education as a concept, education in America, and education in Europe. I see this as muddled thinking, they each have their own issues and their own timetables over which issues can and do exist. Education history in Europe is actually decently hyperlocal and pretty path dependent for each country during the 19th and 20th century. Talking about it as a monolith is challenging, but there’s a pretty consistent pattern in societies with all-pay taxation-paid schooling that it has clear incentive structures that a school, having been “paid up front“, is not incentivized to put in the work to provide a high quality education, and as the financier of that education is the taxpayer, the pressure is primarily to keep costs low. As for America, you don’t need much faith to believe that in the US instituting dischargeability would dramatically improve competition and quality in these spaces and the market for education - so yes, this market used to be substantially more competitive and used to exist. Since the 1970s when these laws were passed, student debt and tuition costs have skyrocketed, low quality for-profit university creation skyrocketed, and people have been hobbled with debt for degrees many are never going to pay back. Dischargeability reduces this greatly - it causes financiers to create motive pressure on education to not be a fiscal vampire preying on its students and equip them with meaningful trades and socially useful knowledge. As for standards and regulations on schools, assuming the public sees fit to fund higher education through government spending, having requirements for a school to receive that government funding seems reasonable, so long as they reflect the desires of the local populace. Ultimately, all this is a discussion of tradeoffs - I think someone can happily prefer > everyone gets a free tertiary education paid for by their taxes I think that it being free and paid-by-all means it’ll have low motive pressure towards quality and therefore be comparably mediocre to free elementary and secondary compulsory education, which even based on your own reckoning seems to be a two-tier system where the public institutions get short shrift - but you seem to care about it being free or less focused on fiscal student outcomes as its own value. It’s a tradeoff.