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Has there been any extensive research done on relationship between university fees and social mobility? On one hand it seems obvious that if you reduce costs o

by jiggy2011 12y ago

Has there been any extensive research done on relationship between university fees and social mobility? On one hand it seems obvious that if you reduce costs of attending university you remove a barrier that would prevent economically disadvantaged people from attending. But on the other hand, university students, especially those at the best universities disproportionately come from better economic backgrounds and this seems to be true everywhere. In this case it doesn't seem fair to tax people who are poor to pay for something that is mainly of benefit to the rich. In the UK we have a student loan system where students do not have to pay back loans unless they earn over a threshold amount, so in theory there is nothing to prevent a poor person going to university regardless of how high the fees are.

Retric 12y ago
The economy is not zero sum and educated people on average make more. So, the net cost over time for subsidizing education is probably a small fraction of the sticker price. Or possibly it ends up paying for it's self.
- jiggy2011 12y ago
  But if they do make more, does it not make sense for the university grad to pay that cost after they have graduated?
  - Cthulhu_ 12y ago
    Well they do, but indirectly, via higher income taxes (because higher pay). The Dutch school system uses what you're suggesting actually; the government offers scholarships to all students, which is effectively a (low-interest) loan; if you finish your education, that loan or part thereof (depending on whether you took an extra loan, it's complicated) is forfeited, i.e. you don't have to pay it back. The remainder can be paid off in monthly terms, but the amount you have to pay off is determined based on how much money you earn. If you are unable to get a good enough job to pay back that loan, it's forfeited after 15 or 25 years (I think it used to be 15 and they upped it recently). It's kinda complicated though, and they had some heavy cuts in the system a while ago due to the economy - which IMHO is a huge shame, since a lot of students won't choose a higher education now, causing university studies to only be in reach of the rich once again.
    - jiggy2011 12y ago
      But could that not also be extended to any other programme which benefits the more wealthy disproportionately? If you have two people who earn the same amount of money and one receives a service (university education) and the other does not. Does it make sense to split the costs of that service if the one who received it can afford to pay on their own?
      - maemilius 12y ago
        When put on small terms, like this, subsidized education always starts to look bad. Scaling it up makes it seem much more fair. As an American, I understand the concept of doing it yourself and not paying for things that don't benefit you. That said, I also understand that paying extra taxes to get more kids in better schools has more benefit to society than letting me keep that money. Personally, I'd be happy to subsidize it in that way. The overall cost to me is low and the overall benefit to society is quite high. It seems to me that most of the resistance comes from this "I had to do it, so you should too" mindset and it's really not beneficial to anyone. As Retic mentioned, this isn't a zero-sum game and thinking about it like it is doesn't help anyone. A better use of your example would be to point out that both of those people may have been able to pay for a third person that couldn't have afforded it otherwise. The fact that one of them could have is irrelevant.
        jiggy2011 12y ago
        But if you allow the tuition payments to be deferred, as is the case in the UK then the question of who can "afford" tuition changes from being predicated on their economic position before they go to university to their expected economic position after university. If student loan repayments are capped at X% of income and you do not believe that getting a university degree will raise your earnings by at least X% then it probably is not in your best interest to attend university. The same math applies regardless of how much money you have before you start university.
        alphydan 12y ago
  - Retric 12y ago
    This get's into some really complex cost benefit analysis. They directly pay more in taxes with that extra earnings. However, something like smoking has negative externalities so a specific tax on smoking is justifiable. But, education has positive externalities so subsidizing it is justified. Consider, a doctor might make more money but the value of the lives they save is greater than their income. So, it's really a question of how much should the state subsidize education. Anyway, the direct costs of education might be paid for by the state. But, the opportunity costs are paid for by the students who could be working and getting paid vs going to school. So, even at 100% tuition reimbursement students still cover a significant fraction of the cost of a collage degree.
    - shkkmo 12y ago
      Actually, calculations on the social cost of smoking are complicated. We pay more for their healthcare initially, but they die younger so we pay their social security for less time. Depending on how you calculate it, smoking can be seen to be cost neutral, or even to save the country money. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/08/how-much-does-smoking-cos_n_184554.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/08/how-much-does-smoki...
      - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
        Ignores the value of a healthy productive member of society. What was that essay about burning Hobos for fuel?
        zhte415 12y ago
        Do you have a reference to your reference?
      - Retric 12y ago
        I have seen that argument but it ignores second hand smoke. As well as adverse health effects reducing productivity in the working population. Not to mention "Smoking cigarettes is probably the No. 1 cause of adverse outcomes for babies" http://www.babycenter.com/0_how-smoking-during-pregnancy-affects-you-and-your-baby_1405720.bc http://www.babycenter.com/0_how-smoking-during-pregnancy-aff...
  - zmmmmm 12y ago
    You could turn that around; if they contribute more to society through their own sacrifice (years studying and learning, probably on low income), shouldn't they be rewarded for that? Does it not make sense for society to contribute something to the tremendous benefit they get from this person's sacrifice?
watwut 12y ago
"university students especially those at the best universities disproportionately come from better economic backgrounds and this seems to be true everywhere. In this case it doesn't seem fair to tax people who are poor to pay for something that is mainly of benefit to the rich." That is the argument used to introduce the fees. Once they are introduced, poor person chance to get into university gets even lower. Expensive University basically constitutes huge advantage for kids of the rich, it makes competition for well paid jobs lower. Moreover, rich in Germany pay more in taxes, so they really pay more.
- jiggy2011 12y ago
  This is the core of my question. Is there evidence that lowering fees does increase participation in university from poorer people and does this still hold true if the fee paying can be deferred? More to the point, does it increase participation of poor people in the best universities and the best (as reflected in higher salaries) degree programmes?
  - toyg 12y ago
    > Is there evidence that lowering fees does increase participation in university from poorer people The Italian experience is that free universities were (are) routinely oversubscribed. They opened loads of new universities in poorer areas, and still were eventually forced to introduce limits with entrance exams. The most in-demand institutions eventually reintroduced fees, although much lower than UK or US rates (we are talking 100/200 euro per month, tops). So I'd say the answer is yes. In fact, Italy has now the opposite problem: there are too many graduates and not enough jobs, so highly-educated people (especially from poorer backgrounds, i.e. lacking long-standing social connections) are now moving abroad in very high numbers.
    - Kurtz79 12y ago
      I think it also depends on the degree. How many graduates in Political Sciences and Literature are there ? How many job openings that require this specific knowledge ? Most of my collegues graduating with me in Electronics were working in Italy within weeks/months of graduation. But I generally agree that being available to everybody the degree in Italy is somewhat devalued.
nhaehnle 12y ago
Social mobility in Germany is very low, doing consistently worse than e.g. the Scandinavian countries (I remember seeing sources claim that it is even worse than the US, but there seems to be no agreement on that). However, as far as education is concerned, it would be wrong to blame universities. The German school system is very stratified, "locking in" a child's destiny at a young age. Via parents who understand this and fight tooth and nail to get their child into the highest tier of the school system, it leads to high correlation between parents' and children's academic achievements.
- yodsanklai 12y ago
  Social mobility is very low in France as well and education is pretty much free.
  - levosmetalo 12y ago
    Social mobility is low everywhere in the world, and education is just one small factor so it's not easy to find a correlation there without looking at the bigger picture.
    - sprash 12y ago
      Maybe social mobility is low everywhere because smart parents breed smart kids. But considering genetics is deemed to be politically incorrect.
      - istjohn 12y ago
        It's only politically incorrect when it's used as an excuse to ignore legitimate social issues as you've done here.
      - bitkrieg 12y ago
        Because it's not the genes but the social environment which shapes the individual's progress in a society.
brianmcc 12y ago
In some parts of the UK, you mean :-) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-23279868 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-23279868
- awfycooper 12y ago
  This is why it's a god send if you have a Scottish relative of some sort when you grow up poor in England. A couple of friends of mine used this exact loophole in order to further their education when they had to leave high school.
- sambeau 12y ago
  This isn't such a simple story. The current Scottish Government has been widely criticised by opponents for using cuts in the College budgets to fund their free tuition policy for Universities. As colleges and universities are, sadly, still stratified by class in the UK this could have a detrimental on effect for social mobility in Scotland. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-23871169 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-2387...
  - brianmcc 12y ago
    Interesting point. Genuine question: you don't feel that basically free degree courses are, with some individual cases to the contrary, sure, still a massive net benefit to social mobility?
    - sambeau 12y ago
      Opponents argue that it is of a small net benefit to the middle classes and those who do well at school first time round. They suggest that those who require to use college to gain entrance to university and those who cannot afford to be supported through four years of higher education (grants and loans being unable to cover living costs) are left out (along with young people who simply want to learn a trade) in favour of those that can afford it. I, however, was very careful to not bring personal politics into this ;-)
samuli 12y ago
IIRC Finland has never had university tuition fees and it is the 3rd most equal country in the world. http://www.goodcountry.org/country/FIN http://www.goodcountry.org/country/FIN Finnish students get allowance from the government for the duration of their studies (max ~60 months) and get government backed cheap loans which they start paying back after their studies. My own experience is that there are people from very varying backgrounds in the Finnish universities.
- eqdw 12y ago
  > Finnish students get allowance from the government for the duration of their studies (max ~60 months) and get government backed cheap loans which they start paying back after their studies. Thought experiment: American students also get government backed cheap loans. Further, since these government-backed cheap loans are often used to cover cost of living as well as tuition, they are a de-facto allowance from the government (albeit one you need to pay back after you are graduated). And yet the american education system seems to have a bunch of dysfunctions that the Finnish one does not. There has to be other differences that cause this, it can't be the presence of cheap loans. The conventional wisdom in America is that cheap loans incentivize universities to raise tuition, because they know the money is still coming in. Why does this effect not take place in Finland?
  - cdash 12y ago
    He just said there is no tuition cost in Finland so that is why it does not take place in Finland.
  - akerl_ 12y ago
    I expect it's because of who does the bargaining. In the US, where students take out loans and then pay educational institutions with that money, the student is the one bargaining. The student has very little leverage, comparatively, and they are not incentivized in the short term to drive a hard bargain because they're going to turn around and get the money via a loan. When the government is directly covering the cost of education, they are the ones bargaining with educational institutions. If the institution tries to bump prices, the government can pull funding for that institution and basically eliminate their revenue. As such, the institutions and government are required to negotiate much more rationally.
Shivetya 12y ago
I am more concerned with good seats going to students who will never complete their degree, or the degree is not needed in the market and you end up with hobby and not a job. While the idea of removing costs sounds good there are just so many negatives. Means testing should still be done, raise the bar so that the truly well off are the only ones paying and not the lower income levels. The second "means" testing would be, is their object an effective degree. I see no reason to pay for someone's hobby, paying for a degree to benefit society is another. which redirects my thinking too, its free if your going to be a teacher, public defender, or similar, provided you complete the course and server for a set number of years, no less than ten.
- VLM 12y ago
  "or the degree is not needed in the market and you end up with hobby and not a job." There are more destructive forms of welfare than academic credentialism. Its an interesting idea to think about... if you can't get a job, go to school for free collecting degrees and certifications until you get a job. I've checked the numbers and in terms of accounting overhead and criminal justice system overhead it is somewhat cheaper, even with hyperinflated .edu costs, to send a kid to school than to jail. Even if only 1 in 3 kids gets caught and enters the criminal justice system (we do approach that ratio with some minorities) the numbers still work out that its cheaper to send all 3 of them to a community college than sending just 1 to prison.
  - DasIch 12y ago
    Universities are not just factories that produce workers. Having a well educated society and people studying is desireable no matter how employable the people are afterwards. A well educated society is essential to an effective and efficient democracy and I would argue beneficial to culture and quality of life overall. The US is actually a very good example for what happens, if a significant part of your population is not well educated.
  - smm2000 12y ago
    It's useless to send most criminals (especially minorities with 1/3 jail ratio) to community colleges. Majority of them could not even finish high school and still read at fifth grade level after graduation. It's a noble idea but unfortunately education is not for everyone. The only result of sending unprepared people college, will be making college less safe and destroying quality of education for kids who are prepared for college.
thro1237 12y ago
I can only provide anecdotal evidence. I come from a poor family and studied in India in a government university by paying $20/year. The cost of providing that education was estimated at $1000/year and private universities used to charge as much. If the government had not provided that subsidy, I would not have taken a loan to the tune of $1000/year because that would have been too risky. I would have opted for the less risky option of herding cows. Fast forward 15 years, I worked in a research lab and in 2009 I paid more than $12000 in income tax alone. I also created more employment by spending the money I earned. The government got a great return on its investment and it can now fund the education of more people -- a virtuous cycle. Almost half my class was in a similar situation and most of them are doing good.
- xixixao 12y ago
  It's not so much anecdotal as circumstantial. If everyone was taking the loan, you probably would too. It is the same in England, were students took loans for 3,5k pounds a year and now even 9k a year. Now I am not saying that the British system is the ideal (pros and cons) but I can certainly provide some more anecdotal evidence of many people who study for free (in the Czech Republic) and are basically wasting the system resources (both in terms of taking up spaces in classes and having the tax status of a student). But possibly even better argument for tuition is the level of funding for universities. It certainly seems greater in tuition based systems (I know the US and UK one) vs government sponsored one (like the Czech one).
  - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
    Maybe a free education, but add a screening process to measure the psychology of the student, help choose a profession or trade that will not be a waste of their time.
    - warfangle 12y ago
      University should not be trade or professional school.
giveuptheghost 12y ago
Most of the evidence[1] I've seen tends to suggest that whether or not you'll attend university is determined at a very young age. If credit and scholarships are available, then the fees themselves are unlikely to be a deterrent, hence no fees is a subsidy on the rich. This strand of research doesn't really talk about the differences in performance once admitted, though (piling up debt might be extra motivation to do well). What I'd like to read more about is research on progressive fee systems (e.g. based on family income) and the consequences on admissions and subsequent performance. [1] e.g. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-0297.00075/abstract http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-0297.00075/a...
tokenadult 12y ago
Has there been any extensive research done on relationship between university fees and social mobility? Thank you for asking for data to inform our discussion here. Yes. There are a number of scholars of the economics of education who work full-time researching this issue. You are correct that university admission generally takes in young people from more prosperous families all over the world--because young people from such families don't have to enter the labor force immediately after completing compulsory schooling to support themselves or to support other family members. The best evidence from international studies suggests the policy announced by Germany is not the best policy for ensuring access to higher education. An Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) international study reports, "Student financial support systems that offer loans with income-contingent repayment to all students combined with means-tested grants can be an effective way to promote access and equity while sharing the costs of higher education between the state and students."[1] Reading this study will provide more background information. My recollection of the international research studies I have read is that the best mix of quality of higher education and access to higher education by students of all economic backgrounds is to have a mixed system (nonsystem) of higher education in a country, with some public universities with very heavy tax subsidies so that list price is low (but admission is hard to gain), some private universities that accept students with more money (or more willingness to take out loans on the idea that investing in higher education has return on investment), and some privately funded scholarships specific to students rather than specific to what institutions the students enroll in. Examples of countries with such nonsystems that produce a lot of access to higher education of good quality for a lot of students include the United States (where black people, who are often poor, attend college at a higher rate than French people in France do, as I recall reading), and more recently Japan (which now also has such a mixed nonsystem, parallel to its national universities), and Taiwan. I have also read the Norway and other Nordic countries do well in providing a lot of access to reasonably good higher education, with perhaps a different mix of providers. A 2013 article from the Times Higher Education Supplement[2] has an interesting discussion of international trends in financing higher education. [1] http://www.oecd.org/education/skills-beyond-school/49729932.pdf http://www.oecd.org/education/skills-beyond-school/49729932.... [2] http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/features/a-different-world/2001128.article http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/features/a-different-w...
bane 12y ago
American here, after age 10, I grew up fairly poor and very rural. Within a half hour drive (on highways) from the home I grew up in, all the jobs were either in farming/agriculture, similar industrial (quarries or steel factory), grocery stores or gas stations. The notion of going to college was virtually inconceivable to me and I was pretty sure I'd end up out in a field or a factory someplace. For a while I did odd manual labor jobs, sanding decks, cleaning gutters, digging drainage trenches, that sort of thing. My parents were simply unable to pay for any amount of college for me and I was barely making enough money to cover the gas and meals to get to and from and work at the various job sites. Coming out of that kind of environment, with no hope of ever getting to college, I didn't even bother taking the SATs in high school and barely graduated at all, nobody hiring farm work cares about your GPA. Through a friend I managed to land a low-end tech job, but it provided me with just enough to pay for community college with lots of financial aid (I couldn't take loans because I wasn't sure if I could even pay them back). Eventually, just because I was currently in college in a desirable field, I landed a paid internship that paid 3x what I was then currently making. I graduated, transferred to the local state school, converted the internship into a part-time job that paid even more. At the local state school, I didn't make enough to pay for college and live, so I qualified for a number of grants which provided 100% of my tuition (I still had to pay for books and various other fees). Today the grants are about the same amount of money, but the state school fees back then were about 1/3 less than they are today thanks to generous subsidies, so I definitely benefited from that subsidy program. I couldn't have gone to my final two years of my undergrad in today's environment. Because I was nearing the end of my undergrad, I was able to land another, higher paying internship with a performance-based conversion to full-time employment. When I graduated college, I converted to full-time and immediately doubled my income and started on a long and interesting career path. Eventually I went back to grad school and got a Masters, which has again accelerated my career development. So did I experience social mobility from cheap education fees? Absolutely. I think the most important thing is that had I not gone to college and ended up in dead-end farm work, the amount of taxes I would have payed back into the state would have been a tiny tiny fraction of what I've paid back since then. I've easily bought back the subsidies and grants used for my education several times over just in the tax difference that I've paid personally, and the additional economic benefits I'm able to provide working in my field far outstrip even that. For example, I've been able to hire people from out of state and out of the country and bring them into my state where they're now paying taxes back into the system. It seems like such a virtuous cycle that I can't imagine why at least the levels of subsidies that I enjoyed haven't been maintained. It seems like such an obvious investment.
vlunkr 12y ago
You will also be paying for students who are getting degrees that end up making them no money. When I was in school there were so many people getting fine art degrees focusing on ceramics, oil painting, etc. who are now working at grocery stores or getting some sort of education in new field. Their debts are now on everyone else.
- ajmurmann 12y ago
  Tuition in Germany was limited to 300 Euro/ semester anyways. That never really paid for the education fully.
usrusr 12y ago
> In this case it doesn't seem fair to tax people who are poor to pay for something that is mainly of benefit to the rich. Even the uneducated tend to be better off in a country with a high education average than in a country where everybody is on their level. I'd rather be an illiterate in the Sweden, Switzerland or the USA (to take a few samples from all over the spectrum between welfare and market) than in any of the many countries that never succeeded in building a true culture of education. You may question the causality of this (does education cause wealth or does wealth cause education?) but i doubt that it would even be possible to bootstrap high education with a market-only approach even under the most beneficial circumstances otherwise. I'm no expert in the history of American education institutions, but i'd be surprised if they were not founded with intentions more along the lines of the greater good of the colony or whatever local scope the founders were thinking of, than along the lines of offering even better opportunities for the rich. At the time, most of the truly rich were probably quite happy sending their offspring back to England anyway.
pbhjpbhj 12y ago
>In the UK we have a student loan system where students do not have to pay back loans unless they earn over a threshold amount, so in theory there is nothing to prevent a poor person going to university regardless of how high the fees are. // You still need to live. The maximum loans don't appear to take in to account the cost of rent and food/transportation. When+where I went to Uni there were no fees and there was a loan system but the loan didn't cover living expenses at all, IIRC it didn't even cover my rent (which was as high at the time as London rents; London students had a higher loan rate however to accommodate the high rent). Without relatively well off parents I couldn't have attended the high-class institution that I did. The usual answer is to have a part time job - but with lectures starting at 9am every day, finishing labs by about 6pm some days and evenings spent at the library the only time for a job was weekends, which would mean no sport and/or no social life. Anyway, I digress, the UK model seems only really good in theory. Many, many people appear to be at "university" only to avoid work or having been convinced that they "need a Uni education to function as part of society" by political parties who seemingly only wanted to reduce the unemployment figures. Perhaps that's a little too cynical but I think there's much truth in it too. >In this case it doesn't seem fair to tax people who are poor to pay for something that is mainly of benefit to the rich. // Educated workers benefit society. They often pay larger tax bills but they also fill roles in fields like medicine, education, engineering, and such that serve society. We need educated people to work and bolster our economy if we want to live in the way we've become accustomed to. We don't have to pay but we'd be foolish IMO not to. Like begrudging doctors their high pay when we as a society en masse appear not to blink at paying footballers, bankers, pop-stars and such many order of magnitude more [I know the economics aren't so simple]. The UK is looking to immigration to solve the crisis of lack of skilled workers and at the same time placing financial blocks in front of those that might be able to be home-grown to fill those positions in the future. Maybe that's not a bad thing but it seems like one, not least because of the skills drain we place on other countries.
thejdude 12y ago
Not research, but in Sociology 101 I picked up that the US have a traditionally high upward social mobility and even poor kids can go to college (if only through student credit) and have a good career afterwards. I've heard that recent financial crises, and the bad job market prospects of liberal arts graduates have changed this somewhat. In Germany, tuition is almost non-existent (usually some fees of maybe 150€/semester, although a few years back there was a phase of actual student fees of - still laughable - 500€/semester), and if your parents don't make much money, or if you have many siblings, you can even get a half-credit/half-scholarship from the government (AFAIK even without interest, called "Bafög"), so especially for poor kids it's as easy as nowhere else in the world to go study. In smaller towns you can also get a student dorm room for under 200€, and overall living (esp. groceries) in Germany is quite cheap. Yet Germany has a very low number of working-class students, for whatever reasons. Usually I think it's the parents' influence (but don't ask me why). We also now have student credit now, in case you don't qualify for Bafög money, but unlike consumer credit which has become quite common, student credit doesn't seem to find many friends. People don't want to go borrow 10-30k for a college degree, but they'll happily finance their 25k cars or their 300k+ condos/houses.
- dubbel 12y ago
  > Yet Germany has a very low number of working-class students, for whatever reasons. Usually I think it's the parents' influence (but don't ask me why). I think there are two reasons: 1. Three-tiered school system: German children are separated after the fourth grade and go to three different schools (Hauptschule, Realschule, Gymnasium) and only if Gymnasium graduates can go to universities. In theory this should happen depending on their academic abilities, but in practice it depends on the ability of your parents to support you in school and their interest in your academic career, too. Parents who went to the Hauptschule may think that this is the best way for their child, too. 2. For many jobs you don't need a degree or better you cannot even get a college degree. Nurses, craftsmen and many more professions are trained in vocational schools (which are counted as secondary education in OECD studies). While a US nurse attends a college (as far as I know) and therefore is counted as tertiary educated.
  - 12y ago
tobltobs 12y ago
"In this case it doesn't seem fair to tax people who are poor to pay for something that is mainly of benefit to the rich." The idea is that people with better eductation will earn more and pay more taxes and this way they will give back the support the did get. Of course this does not work if rich people do pay less taxes than the poor. But we are not there yet in europe.

Retric 12y ago

The economy is not zero sum and educated people on average make more. So, the net cost over time for subsidizing education is probably a small fraction of the sticker price. Or possibly it ends up paying for it's self.

jiggy2011 12y ago
But if they do make more, does it not make sense for the university grad to pay that cost after they have graduated?
- Cthulhu_ 12y ago
  Well they do, but indirectly, via higher income taxes (because higher pay). The Dutch school system uses what you're suggesting actually; the government offers scholarships to all students, which is effectively a (low-interest) loan; if you finish your education, that loan or part thereof (depending on whether you took an extra loan, it's complicated) is forfeited, i.e. you don't have to pay it back. The remainder can be paid off in monthly terms, but the amount you have to pay off is determined based on how much money you earn. If you are unable to get a good enough job to pay back that loan, it's forfeited after 15 or 25 years (I think it used to be 15 and they upped it recently). It's kinda complicated though, and they had some heavy cuts in the system a while ago due to the economy - which IMHO is a huge shame, since a lot of students won't choose a higher education now, causing university studies to only be in reach of the rich once again.
  - jiggy2011 12y ago
    But could that not also be extended to any other programme which benefits the more wealthy disproportionately? If you have two people who earn the same amount of money and one receives a service (university education) and the other does not. Does it make sense to split the costs of that service if the one who received it can afford to pay on their own?
    - maemilius 12y ago
      When put on small terms, like this, subsidized education always starts to look bad. Scaling it up makes it seem much more fair. As an American, I understand the concept of doing it yourself and not paying for things that don't benefit you. That said, I also understand that paying extra taxes to get more kids in better schools has more benefit to society than letting me keep that money. Personally, I'd be happy to subsidize it in that way. The overall cost to me is low and the overall benefit to society is quite high. It seems to me that most of the resistance comes from this "I had to do it, so you should too" mindset and it's really not beneficial to anyone. As Retic mentioned, this isn't a zero-sum game and thinking about it like it is doesn't help anyone. A better use of your example would be to point out that both of those people may have been able to pay for a third person that couldn't have afforded it otherwise. The fact that one of them could have is irrelevant.
      - jiggy2011 12y ago
        But if you allow the tuition payments to be deferred, as is the case in the UK then the question of who can "afford" tuition changes from being predicated on their economic position before they go to university to their expected economic position after university. If student loan repayments are capped at X% of income and you do not believe that getting a university degree will raise your earnings by at least X% then it probably is not in your best interest to attend university. The same math applies regardless of how much money you have before you start university.
        alphydan 12y ago
- Retric 12y ago
  This get's into some really complex cost benefit analysis. They directly pay more in taxes with that extra earnings. However, something like smoking has negative externalities so a specific tax on smoking is justifiable. But, education has positive externalities so subsidizing it is justified. Consider, a doctor might make more money but the value of the lives they save is greater than their income. So, it's really a question of how much should the state subsidize education. Anyway, the direct costs of education might be paid for by the state. But, the opportunity costs are paid for by the students who could be working and getting paid vs going to school. So, even at 100% tuition reimbursement students still cover a significant fraction of the cost of a collage degree.
  - shkkmo 12y ago
    Actually, calculations on the social cost of smoking are complicated. We pay more for their healthcare initially, but they die younger so we pay their social security for less time. Depending on how you calculate it, smoking can be seen to be cost neutral, or even to save the country money. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/08/how-much-does-smoking-cos_n_184554.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/08/how-much-does-smoki...
    - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
      Ignores the value of a healthy productive member of society. What was that essay about burning Hobos for fuel?
      - zhte415 12y ago
        Do you have a reference to your reference?
    - Retric 12y ago
      I have seen that argument but it ignores second hand smoke. As well as adverse health effects reducing productivity in the working population. Not to mention "Smoking cigarettes is probably the No. 1 cause of adverse outcomes for babies" http://www.babycenter.com/0_how-smoking-during-pregnancy-affects-you-and-your-baby_1405720.bc http://www.babycenter.com/0_how-smoking-during-pregnancy-aff...
- zmmmmm 12y ago
  You could turn that around; if they contribute more to society through their own sacrifice (years studying and learning, probably on low income), shouldn't they be rewarded for that? Does it not make sense for society to contribute something to the tremendous benefit they get from this person's sacrifice?

watwut 12y ago

"university students especially those at the best universities disproportionately come from better economic backgrounds and this seems to be true everywhere. In this case it doesn't seem fair to tax people who are poor to pay for something that is mainly of benefit to the rich." That is the argument used to introduce the fees. Once they are introduced, poor person chance to get into university gets even lower. Expensive University basically constitutes huge advantage for kids of the rich, it makes competition for well paid jobs lower. Moreover, rich in Germany pay more in taxes, so they really pay more.

jiggy2011 12y ago
This is the core of my question. Is there evidence that lowering fees does increase participation in university from poorer people and does this still hold true if the fee paying can be deferred? More to the point, does it increase participation of poor people in the best universities and the best (as reflected in higher salaries) degree programmes?
- toyg 12y ago
  > Is there evidence that lowering fees does increase participation in university from poorer people The Italian experience is that free universities were (are) routinely oversubscribed. They opened loads of new universities in poorer areas, and still were eventually forced to introduce limits with entrance exams. The most in-demand institutions eventually reintroduced fees, although much lower than UK or US rates (we are talking 100/200 euro per month, tops). So I'd say the answer is yes. In fact, Italy has now the opposite problem: there are too many graduates and not enough jobs, so highly-educated people (especially from poorer backgrounds, i.e. lacking long-standing social connections) are now moving abroad in very high numbers.
  - Kurtz79 12y ago
    I think it also depends on the degree. How many graduates in Political Sciences and Literature are there ? How many job openings that require this specific knowledge ? Most of my collegues graduating with me in Electronics were working in Italy within weeks/months of graduation. But I generally agree that being available to everybody the degree in Italy is somewhat devalued.

nhaehnle 12y ago

Social mobility in Germany is very low, doing consistently worse than e.g. the Scandinavian countries (I remember seeing sources claim that it is even worse than the US, but there seems to be no agreement on that). However, as far as education is concerned, it would be wrong to blame universities. The German school system is very stratified, "locking in" a child's destiny at a young age. Via parents who understand this and fight tooth and nail to get their child into the highest tier of the school system, it leads to high correlation between parents' and children's academic achievements.

yodsanklai 12y ago
Social mobility is very low in France as well and education is pretty much free.
- levosmetalo 12y ago
  Social mobility is low everywhere in the world, and education is just one small factor so it's not easy to find a correlation there without looking at the bigger picture.
  - sprash 12y ago
    Maybe social mobility is low everywhere because smart parents breed smart kids. But considering genetics is deemed to be politically incorrect.
    - istjohn 12y ago
      It's only politically incorrect when it's used as an excuse to ignore legitimate social issues as you've done here.
    - bitkrieg 12y ago
      Because it's not the genes but the social environment which shapes the individual's progress in a society.

brianmcc 12y ago

In some parts of the UK, you mean :-) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-23279868 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-23279868

awfycooper 12y ago
This is why it's a god send if you have a Scottish relative of some sort when you grow up poor in England. A couple of friends of mine used this exact loophole in order to further their education when they had to leave high school.
sambeau 12y ago
This isn't such a simple story. The current Scottish Government has been widely criticised by opponents for using cuts in the College budgets to fund their free tuition policy for Universities. As colleges and universities are, sadly, still stratified by class in the UK this could have a detrimental on effect for social mobility in Scotland. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-23871169 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-2387...
- brianmcc 12y ago
  Interesting point. Genuine question: you don't feel that basically free degree courses are, with some individual cases to the contrary, sure, still a massive net benefit to social mobility?
  - sambeau 12y ago
    Opponents argue that it is of a small net benefit to the middle classes and those who do well at school first time round. They suggest that those who require to use college to gain entrance to university and those who cannot afford to be supported through four years of higher education (grants and loans being unable to cover living costs) are left out (along with young people who simply want to learn a trade) in favour of those that can afford it. I, however, was very careful to not bring personal politics into this ;-)

samuli 12y ago

IIRC Finland has never had university tuition fees and it is the 3rd most equal country in the world. http://www.goodcountry.org/country/FIN http://www.goodcountry.org/country/FIN Finnish students get allowance from the government for the duration of their studies (max ~60 months) and get government backed cheap loans which they start paying back after their studies. My own experience is that there are people from very varying backgrounds in the Finnish universities.

eqdw 12y ago
> Finnish students get allowance from the government for the duration of their studies (max ~60 months) and get government backed cheap loans which they start paying back after their studies. Thought experiment: American students also get government backed cheap loans. Further, since these government-backed cheap loans are often used to cover cost of living as well as tuition, they are a de-facto allowance from the government (albeit one you need to pay back after you are graduated). And yet the american education system seems to have a bunch of dysfunctions that the Finnish one does not. There has to be other differences that cause this, it can't be the presence of cheap loans. The conventional wisdom in America is that cheap loans incentivize universities to raise tuition, because they know the money is still coming in. Why does this effect not take place in Finland?
- cdash 12y ago
  He just said there is no tuition cost in Finland so that is why it does not take place in Finland.
- akerl_ 12y ago
  I expect it's because of who does the bargaining. In the US, where students take out loans and then pay educational institutions with that money, the student is the one bargaining. The student has very little leverage, comparatively, and they are not incentivized in the short term to drive a hard bargain because they're going to turn around and get the money via a loan. When the government is directly covering the cost of education, they are the ones bargaining with educational institutions. If the institution tries to bump prices, the government can pull funding for that institution and basically eliminate their revenue. As such, the institutions and government are required to negotiate much more rationally.

Shivetya 12y ago

I am more concerned with good seats going to students who will never complete their degree, or the degree is not needed in the market and you end up with hobby and not a job. While the idea of removing costs sounds good there are just so many negatives. Means testing should still be done, raise the bar so that the truly well off are the only ones paying and not the lower income levels. The second "means" testing would be, is their object an effective degree. I see no reason to pay for someone's hobby, paying for a degree to benefit society is another. which redirects my thinking too, its free if your going to be a teacher, public defender, or similar, provided you complete the course and server for a set number of years, no less than ten.

VLM 12y ago
"or the degree is not needed in the market and you end up with hobby and not a job." There are more destructive forms of welfare than academic credentialism. Its an interesting idea to think about... if you can't get a job, go to school for free collecting degrees and certifications until you get a job. I've checked the numbers and in terms of accounting overhead and criminal justice system overhead it is somewhat cheaper, even with hyperinflated .edu costs, to send a kid to school than to jail. Even if only 1 in 3 kids gets caught and enters the criminal justice system (we do approach that ratio with some minorities) the numbers still work out that its cheaper to send all 3 of them to a community college than sending just 1 to prison.
- DasIch 12y ago
  Universities are not just factories that produce workers. Having a well educated society and people studying is desireable no matter how employable the people are afterwards. A well educated society is essential to an effective and efficient democracy and I would argue beneficial to culture and quality of life overall. The US is actually a very good example for what happens, if a significant part of your population is not well educated.
- smm2000 12y ago
  It's useless to send most criminals (especially minorities with 1/3 jail ratio) to community colleges. Majority of them could not even finish high school and still read at fifth grade level after graduation. It's a noble idea but unfortunately education is not for everyone. The only result of sending unprepared people college, will be making college less safe and destroying quality of education for kids who are prepared for college.

thro1237 12y ago

I can only provide anecdotal evidence. I come from a poor family and studied in India in a government university by paying $20/year. The cost of providing that education was estimated at $1000/year and private universities used to charge as much. If the government had not provided that subsidy, I would not have taken a loan to the tune of $1000/year because that would have been too risky. I would have opted for the less risky option of herding cows. Fast forward 15 years, I worked in a research lab and in 2009 I paid more than $12000 in income tax alone. I also created more employment by spending the money I earned. The government got a great return on its investment and it can now fund the education of more people -- a virtuous cycle. Almost half my class was in a similar situation and most of them are doing good.

xixixao 12y ago
It's not so much anecdotal as circumstantial. If everyone was taking the loan, you probably would too. It is the same in England, were students took loans for 3,5k pounds a year and now even 9k a year. Now I am not saying that the British system is the ideal (pros and cons) but I can certainly provide some more anecdotal evidence of many people who study for free (in the Czech Republic) and are basically wasting the system resources (both in terms of taking up spaces in classes and having the tax status of a student). But possibly even better argument for tuition is the level of funding for universities. It certainly seems greater in tuition based systems (I know the US and UK one) vs government sponsored one (like the Czech one).
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  Maybe a free education, but add a screening process to measure the psychology of the student, help choose a profession or trade that will not be a waste of their time.
  - warfangle 12y ago
    University should not be trade or professional school.

giveuptheghost 12y ago

Most of the evidence[1] I've seen tends to suggest that whether or not you'll attend university is determined at a very young age. If credit and scholarships are available, then the fees themselves are unlikely to be a deterrent, hence no fees is a subsidy on the rich. This strand of research doesn't really talk about the differences in performance once admitted, though (piling up debt might be extra motivation to do well). What I'd like to read more about is research on progressive fee systems (e.g. based on family income) and the consequences on admissions and subsequent performance. [1] e.g. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-0297.00075/abstract http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-0297.00075/a...

tokenadult 12y ago

Has there been any extensive research done on relationship between university fees and social mobility? Thank you for asking for data to inform our discussion here. Yes. There are a number of scholars of the economics of education who work full-time researching this issue. You are correct that university admission generally takes in young people from more prosperous families all over the world--because young people from such families don't have to enter the labor force immediately after completing compulsory schooling to support themselves or to support other family members. The best evidence from international studies suggests the policy announced by Germany is not the best policy for ensuring access to higher education. An Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) international study reports, "Student financial support systems that offer loans with income-contingent repayment to all students combined with means-tested grants can be an effective way to promote access and equity while sharing the costs of higher education between the state and students."[1] Reading this study will provide more background information. My recollection of the international research studies I have read is that the best mix of quality of higher education and access to higher education by students of all economic backgrounds is to have a mixed system (nonsystem) of higher education in a country, with some public universities with very heavy tax subsidies so that list price is low (but admission is hard to gain), some private universities that accept students with more money (or more willingness to take out loans on the idea that investing in higher education has return on investment), and some privately funded scholarships specific to students rather than specific to what institutions the students enroll in. Examples of countries with such nonsystems that produce a lot of access to higher education of good quality for a lot of students include the United States (where black people, who are often poor, attend college at a higher rate than French people in France do, as I recall reading), and more recently Japan (which now also has such a mixed nonsystem, parallel to its national universities), and Taiwan. I have also read the Norway and other Nordic countries do well in providing a lot of access to reasonably good higher education, with perhaps a different mix of providers. A 2013 article from the Times Higher Education Supplement[2] has an interesting discussion of international trends in financing higher education. [1] http://www.oecd.org/education/skills-beyond-school/49729932.pdf http://www.oecd.org/education/skills-beyond-school/49729932.... [2] http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/features/a-different-world/2001128.article http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/features/a-different-w...

bane 12y ago

American here, after age 10, I grew up fairly poor and very rural. Within a half hour drive (on highways) from the home I grew up in, all the jobs were either in farming/agriculture, similar industrial (quarries or steel factory), grocery stores or gas stations. The notion of going to college was virtually inconceivable to me and I was pretty sure I'd end up out in a field or a factory someplace. For a while I did odd manual labor jobs, sanding decks, cleaning gutters, digging drainage trenches, that sort of thing. My parents were simply unable to pay for any amount of college for me and I was barely making enough money to cover the gas and meals to get to and from and work at the various job sites. Coming out of that kind of environment, with no hope of ever getting to college, I didn't even bother taking the SATs in high school and barely graduated at all, nobody hiring farm work cares about your GPA. Through a friend I managed to land a low-end tech job, but it provided me with just enough to pay for community college with lots of financial aid (I couldn't take loans because I wasn't sure if I could even pay them back). Eventually, just because I was currently in college in a desirable field, I landed a paid internship that paid 3x what I was then currently making. I graduated, transferred to the local state school, converted the internship into a part-time job that paid even more. At the local state school, I didn't make enough to pay for college and live, so I qualified for a number of grants which provided 100% of my tuition (I still had to pay for books and various other fees). Today the grants are about the same amount of money, but the state school fees back then were about 1/3 less than they are today thanks to generous subsidies, so I definitely benefited from that subsidy program. I couldn't have gone to my final two years of my undergrad in today's environment. Because I was nearing the end of my undergrad, I was able to land another, higher paying internship with a performance-based conversion to full-time employment. When I graduated college, I converted to full-time and immediately doubled my income and started on a long and interesting career path. Eventually I went back to grad school and got a Masters, which has again accelerated my career development. So did I experience social mobility from cheap education fees? Absolutely. I think the most important thing is that had I not gone to college and ended up in dead-end farm work, the amount of taxes I would have payed back into the state would have been a tiny tiny fraction of what I've paid back since then. I've easily bought back the subsidies and grants used for my education several times over just in the tax difference that I've paid personally, and the additional economic benefits I'm able to provide working in my field far outstrip even that. For example, I've been able to hire people from out of state and out of the country and bring them into my state where they're now paying taxes back into the system. It seems like such a virtuous cycle that I can't imagine why at least the levels of subsidies that I enjoyed haven't been maintained. It seems like such an obvious investment.

vlunkr 12y ago

You will also be paying for students who are getting degrees that end up making them no money. When I was in school there were so many people getting fine art degrees focusing on ceramics, oil painting, etc. who are now working at grocery stores or getting some sort of education in new field. Their debts are now on everyone else.

ajmurmann 12y ago
Tuition in Germany was limited to 300 Euro/ semester anyways. That never really paid for the education fully.

usrusr 12y ago

> In this case it doesn't seem fair to tax people who are poor to pay for something that is mainly of benefit to the rich. Even the uneducated tend to be better off in a country with a high education average than in a country where everybody is on their level. I'd rather be an illiterate in the Sweden, Switzerland or the USA (to take a few samples from all over the spectrum between welfare and market) than in any of the many countries that never succeeded in building a true culture of education. You may question the causality of this (does education cause wealth or does wealth cause education?) but i doubt that it would even be possible to bootstrap high education with a market-only approach even under the most beneficial circumstances otherwise. I'm no expert in the history of American education institutions, but i'd be surprised if they were not founded with intentions more along the lines of the greater good of the colony or whatever local scope the founders were thinking of, than along the lines of offering even better opportunities for the rich. At the time, most of the truly rich were probably quite happy sending their offspring back to England anyway.

pbhjpbhj 12y ago

>In the UK we have a student loan system where students do not have to pay back loans unless they earn over a threshold amount, so in theory there is nothing to prevent a poor person going to university regardless of how high the fees are. // You still need to live. The maximum loans don't appear to take in to account the cost of rent and food/transportation. When+where I went to Uni there were no fees and there was a loan system but the loan didn't cover living expenses at all, IIRC it didn't even cover my rent (which was as high at the time as London rents; London students had a higher loan rate however to accommodate the high rent). Without relatively well off parents I couldn't have attended the high-class institution that I did. The usual answer is to have a part time job - but with lectures starting at 9am every day, finishing labs by about 6pm some days and evenings spent at the library the only time for a job was weekends, which would mean no sport and/or no social life. Anyway, I digress, the UK model seems only really good in theory. Many, many people appear to be at "university" only to avoid work or having been convinced that they "need a Uni education to function as part of society" by political parties who seemingly only wanted to reduce the unemployment figures. Perhaps that's a little too cynical but I think there's much truth in it too. >In this case it doesn't seem fair to tax people who are poor to pay for something that is mainly of benefit to the rich. // Educated workers benefit society. They often pay larger tax bills but they also fill roles in fields like medicine, education, engineering, and such that serve society. We need educated people to work and bolster our economy if we want to live in the way we've become accustomed to. We don't have to pay but we'd be foolish IMO not to. Like begrudging doctors their high pay when we as a society en masse appear not to blink at paying footballers, bankers, pop-stars and such many order of magnitude more [I know the economics aren't so simple]. The UK is looking to immigration to solve the crisis of lack of skilled workers and at the same time placing financial blocks in front of those that might be able to be home-grown to fill those positions in the future. Maybe that's not a bad thing but it seems like one, not least because of the skills drain we place on other countries.

thejdude 12y ago

Not research, but in Sociology 101 I picked up that the US have a traditionally high upward social mobility and even poor kids can go to college (if only through student credit) and have a good career afterwards. I've heard that recent financial crises, and the bad job market prospects of liberal arts graduates have changed this somewhat. In Germany, tuition is almost non-existent (usually some fees of maybe 150€/semester, although a few years back there was a phase of actual student fees of - still laughable - 500€/semester), and if your parents don't make much money, or if you have many siblings, you can even get a half-credit/half-scholarship from the government (AFAIK even without interest, called "Bafög"), so especially for poor kids it's as easy as nowhere else in the world to go study. In smaller towns you can also get a student dorm room for under 200€, and overall living (esp. groceries) in Germany is quite cheap. Yet Germany has a very low number of working-class students, for whatever reasons. Usually I think it's the parents' influence (but don't ask me why). We also now have student credit now, in case you don't qualify for Bafög money, but unlike consumer credit which has become quite common, student credit doesn't seem to find many friends. People don't want to go borrow 10-30k for a college degree, but they'll happily finance their 25k cars or their 300k+ condos/houses.

dubbel 12y ago
> Yet Germany has a very low number of working-class students, for whatever reasons. Usually I think it's the parents' influence (but don't ask me why). I think there are two reasons: 1. Three-tiered school system: German children are separated after the fourth grade and go to three different schools (Hauptschule, Realschule, Gymnasium) and only if Gymnasium graduates can go to universities. In theory this should happen depending on their academic abilities, but in practice it depends on the ability of your parents to support you in school and their interest in your academic career, too. Parents who went to the Hauptschule may think that this is the best way for their child, too. 2. For many jobs you don't need a degree or better you cannot even get a college degree. Nurses, craftsmen and many more professions are trained in vocational schools (which are counted as secondary education in OECD studies). While a US nurse attends a college (as far as I know) and therefore is counted as tertiary educated.
- 12y ago

tobltobs 12y ago

"In this case it doesn't seem fair to tax people who are poor to pay for something that is mainly of benefit to the rich." The idea is that people with better eductation will earn more and pay more taxes and this way they will give back the support the did get. Of course this does not work if rich people do pay less taxes than the poor. But we are not there yet in europe.