Largest army is generally measured in terms of personnel, but largest navy is customarily measured in terms of ships and largest air force is customarily measured in terms of airframes. The US wins on two of those three. No, it is not obvious that the customary measure for “army” is the appropriate one for the entire military.
So…anyone not educated to collegiate level is stupid?
So…I am merely stating that the more intellectual potential we unlock, the better off we are. It isn’t a simple choice of “Stupid or Genius”-It is more of a sliding scale that can be pushed in one direction, or the other.
Because if you google Largest military then the one with the most guys comes up, so that is what most people consider to be the largest. YMMV
In the US, the first two years of college, at a community college, are close to free to anyone whose family is of moderate means, via education credits on the tax return, although since they are not directly linked to tuition, the amount of help that students get compared to their cost is not all that precise. These credits actually help people of moderate means more than those of the lowest means because some of the tax credit available is not refundable, and those of the lowest means generally do not have any tax liability. Making the entirety of the American Opportunity Credit refundable, and having the amount of the credit reset to be the same with respect to inflation as it was when it first passed, and from there have it track inflation, would go a long way to making sure everyone at least had a chance to go to Super High School for a couple years after they graduate regular High School. The business school I graduated from with a master degree even has their undergraduate programs designed to take in students who had two years of college somewhere else; I’m not sure if this is a common arrangement, or if most business schools are just attached to larger universities where you would start your undergrad at the base school.
What if you are a good student, even an exceptional one, who wants to study Russian literature?
I dunno, I sorta despise the lionization of STEM and business majors and the drive to reduce college to pure job training. Philosophically it sticks in my craw. I’d be willing to do away with the democratization of the university experience and switch to a merit-based exam process to be eligible for college. But I’d never agree to a degree restriction for financial support. Thank God I have universal veto power over all of our meaningless message board debates 
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And I’m not saying this as some hippie former philosophy student. Well, only partially anyway - I was a double major in biology and history and I currently work in the skilled trades. But while I understand the practicality in our current broken system to find a decent-paying job to pay for college, I guess ironically I would be far less in favor of the mindset if the state was footing the bill. But then I believe in major public funding of the arts, so maybe I AM just another dirty hippie 
It’s maybe not democratic in the sense of we (in the sense of “of the people, by the people, for the people”) would be playing favorites between fields of study, but that’s the point. Free or subsidized college is an investment on the part of the government, and it’s good public policy and good stewardship of the public’s money to make sure that money is invested wisely. And not all degrees are good investments when you look at it like that. So maybe they’d be on your own nickel, or partially funded, or something. And the flip side might be that other degrees would have stipends attached to attract more students to that field.
That doesn’t mean that these people can’t go get these other degrees, it’s just an acknowledgement that they might have to foot the bill in whole or part if they’re dead-set on going into those degrees. It’s not good to anyone but the student loan companies to let people take out huge loans for those degrees, and it’s not good use of the public’s money to fund those degrees fully either.
Then do it on your own dime. It makes no sense for society to invest in what is basically an intellectual pursuit on your part.
Are you saying that there is no benefit to society from anything but STEM degrees?
I’m not saying that. I am saying that it is not worth the tens of thousands per person, possibly more than a hundred thousand, for a completely intellectual degree that will not give a person any job skills.
I would argue that data is not the cost we are talking about here. It may be the cost to the student but that is far higher than the actual cost to the college, especially with the increase in using adjuncts to teach. Maybe there is an argument that universities having to pay PhDs to teach and fund their research is expensive but still not as expensive as what students pay. There is no reason this country/these states can’t have free two-year education. In 1990, tuition at any two-year college in California was capped at $50 per semester. Inflation hasn’t been THAT bad in the last 30 years.
I started to double-down hard on this, but it was coming off as a bit more dogmatic than I really am about this topic. Mostly just me reflexively pushing back on the economics aspect 
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Suffice it to say, I’m simply not 100% agreed on the concrete job skills vs. effete intellectuals arguments. Not 100% disagreed, hence me deleting my earlier post. But yes - I do think it is worthwhile for society to invest in some level of economically valueless intellectual/cultural skills at the expense of the national treasury. The problematic aspect for me is where to draw the line on how much some should be.
Whereas I gather for most other folks in this thread it is no problem at - they draw it at zero 
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You and me both. My first degree was in Art History - with a Women’s Studies minor. Yet somehow I managed to spend 30 years being a participating member of the workforce, paid a ton in income taxes.
And a STEM major is no guarantee you are going to work in the field. The number of people I know who have STEM degrees who aren’t programmers and engineers is high (and the number of programmers I know with liberal arts degrees is also high).
And today, more than ever, we need people who are educated in History and Political Science and Philosophy
We can look down the road and see how this comes out. Society decides that a few fields - let’s pick engineering and medicine - are worth funding and others, like Russian literature and music, aren’t. Naturally, everyone rushes to get into engineering and medicine programs. In ten years or so, we have a glut of engineers and nurses, and no one left to teach in elementary schools. Then we pivot and pay full tuition for students who will teach in elementary schools. Ten years after that, we have no lawyers, the court system is more screwed up than ever, so we prioritize lawyers. By now all those engineers and nurses are getting close to retirement, and in all this time, no one has funded training for a new generation of electricians, carpenters, and plumbers, so the engineers are designing things that can’t get built.
Prior to federal funding for liberal arts degrees did we see a paucity of Russian Literature people/scholars/whatevers such that society suffered?
So the alternative is to just pay for anyone to get any degree they damn well please? That doesn’t make a lot of sense either. In a lot of cases the government would be throwing good money after bad- the degree is useless and that person is not likely to make contributions in that field, the school is sub par, the student is sub-par, etc… Why should the taxpayers be expected to fund some C student to go to some third tier state university?
There has to be some kind of middle ground- maybe something like keep the student loan program more or less as-is or even expand it some, and only forgive the debt of people who actually get degrees. Or maybe scale the degree of debt forgiveness with the degree they get and where the country prioritizes those degrees?
In today’s world, I would think it would be useful to have people who understand Russia and its people, culture, and ways of thinking.
How do you judge which degrees are worth paying for? What criteria do you use?
Your suggestions make a lot more sense than simply mandating that only STEM degrees are worthwhile.
Education should never be evaluated on a cost-benefit analysis because if you did you’d find that funding public education loses money. And yes, I have heard people use that argument to justify getting rid of public schools.
This is an important question. Is it just by earnings? According to a Georgetown study, the ten baccalaureate majors with the lowest median earnings include early childhood education, social work, teacher education, theology and religious vocations, and elementary education. Are these useless fields for society?