No, it would not eliminate it. It would bring it back to what it was prior to this restriction, which would be about 1976 IIRC from my googling earlier on the subject. That would be what I would want. Generally, I want the government to treat all transactions as equally valid and let the market sort out how many such transactions we need.
You lament the level of coercion. Then you advocate reducing it by using coercion. Funny.
I agree, fully. But I suspect that’s not what the guy to whom I responding wants.
Why screw around then? Why not just make education completely free for all (and if you are going to respond ‘well, just “the poor” should have free education’ I’ll say that any system you can come up with to ensure that only ‘the poor’ get it can and will be gamed so that more folks than you think will end up getting it…and that’s assuming you could even come up with a consensus on what and who ‘the poor’ even are)? You don’t care that the reason costs have gone up is due in part to the current student loan system, you don’t want to try and understand the mechanism as it works in the real world, you just want results…so, again, why screw around? Why not just make education free?
The thing is, understanding WHY prices have gone up so much on education is key to understanding a fundamental concept of market distortion…and is also part of the key as to why making education free wouldn’t work and would in fact make things worse than they are. And it might also be key to explaining why and how other markets can be distorted by large scale government involvement, and how such distortions can have wide ranging impacts in unexpected ways.
-XT
That’s what government does. If my neighbor is coercing me to “give” him my TV set, it coerces him not to do so with a monopoly of force. Sounds like a pretty good role for central authority to me.
Aren’t there any number of countries that offer something equal or very close to such “free education”? Perhaps you could outline for us the disastrous effects this has had, and how quickly they repented. For my two bits, I find it hard to imagine how such an investment in our citizenry is wasted.
As far as “distortions” in the market, and “wide ranging impacts in unexpected ways”… I hope you are not advancing the notion that the recent hysteria and debacle was a result of too much regulation and government interference. That’s likely to be a pretty tough case to make.
For the record, I think it would be great if every college student who doesn’t have a scholarship just refused to go until paid to do so. A sort of student strike.
We already do free secondary education. We already do scholarships. And the government is entirely responsible for the one and heavily involved in the other.
So the argument that free education doesn’t work is oddly detached from reality.
Entirely separate? Really? When?
“Capitalism” can’t benefit from anything; it is an economic system. Some capitalists benefited from segregation, but only to the extent that the free market was prevented from operating.
Both incorrect, clearly. White-dominated unions benefited from segregation by being protected from blacks who were willing to work for lower wages, thus they got higher wages than they would otherwise have done. And segregation prevented employers from hiring blacks for certain positions. Thus the employers received no benefit - just the opposite.
Possibly.
I can imagine a democratic, capitalist society where things were unfair, but in general, capitalism and democracy will work against unfairness. Jim Crow and segregation were un-democratic, obviously, and anti-free market as well. The economically unfair part (segregation) was brought about by political actions (disenfranchisement and marginalization of blacks). To a large extent, it was market pressure during WWII that began and encouraged the liberation of blacks in America. There was so much labor demand during WWII that blacks were employed in some industries (although segregation continued, especially in the Jim Crow states) and that continued with the desegregation of the armed forces, and then the economic advances of the 1950s and the political, civil rights movement of the 1960s.
Obviously there was feedback where economics pushed politics and politics pushed economics, but both political and economic factors were pro-democracy and pro-free market.
Is that any clearer?
Regards,
Shodan
I think the CEO wages are more a crisis of capitalists than capitalism. In the old days, investors were rich people who had some sort of vision or strategy for their investments and if the company was doing badly, they would certainly accept no CEO boni. These people are still there and richer than ever, but a lot of the money is actually middle class savings. That money has no strategy, it just wants to extort all it can out of the company in the next weeks or months. That money should challenge the CEO pay (which IMO are too high in general ), but it doesn’t. Of course, the system works as long as the CEOs keep the companies profitable in general.
Well, it’s certainly arbitrary to some extent that we offer “free” eduction up to 12 grade and then stop. It’s an historical accident more than a purposeful decision made in light of the demands of a 21st century world. And there are countries, like Sweden, that do extend state financed eduction through college.
However… We should note that the US educational system run mainly by the government (K-12) is one of the worst in the industrialized world, yet our higher education (mainly a privately financed system) is the envy of the industrialized world.
So, I guess I would agree with you that XT has offered some predictions that don’t mesh with what we see happening in the world today, but I would say that the burden of proof that things would be better in the US with “free” college education is on those who are suggesting we change the current system. A system that is, by almost any measure, one of the the best, if not the best, in the world today.
Further, if we look at the top 20 schools in the world, none is in countries that offer “free” college.
So, all I have to do to prove my point is to change the entire system and then present you with the positive results? Can I break for lunch then, or will there be something else?
I don’t understand the question. Someone is suggesting that we make a major change to one of the things this country does better than any other country in the world, and you don’t think they need to make an argument as to why things will be better?
This is a debate, not a wish factory.
We are not OBLIGATED to use the skill, but do we get BETTER results by wasting it? Maybe our sociologist has ideas or skills that will make our society more just, more livable, more responsive to human needs. But no, let’s dump that and have him flip burgers. Great idea. You keep advocating that, John, I’m sure you’ll impress everyone with your wisdom.
And of course, it’s not just the young sociologists we are wasting now. In the present economy, LOTS of skills are going to waste. But hey, so long as we do whatever Wall Street tells us, everything will turn out all right … right?
Seriously, you really believe that the USA has the best college system in the world? A system where, even to go to a fairly poor college, and even with really, really good grades, you will often be saddled with debt for most of your adult life? Yeah, it works real well– for the obscenely rich. Those who can afford to go to a great college.
I have two friends going to college right now. The first is going to film school, and he got incredibly lucky and inherited a small fortune from his great-aunt for his college fund, and this is next to being a straight-A student… He got around $50,000, and is still going to end up about that much in the hole by the end of his college training. There is no guarantee that he will get a job at all, let alone in his field. The second is going to Wentworth, and he has no massive inheritance; he will be, IIRC, around $260,000 in debt by the time he finishes his degree. If he wasn’t one of the most precocious computer hackers I have ever met (I don’t just throw that term around, either – his senior project was creating a weather GPS system from scratch), who is essentially confirmed to get a job working for the FBI if he doesn’t get arrested beforehand. If, for some odd reason, he can’t find one of those high-paying jobs in his field, something which is seeming more and more likely, he will be spending virtually his entire life paying off his student debt. He’s kind of a special case for a variety of reasons, but if it was anyone less bright? Probably gonna be saddled with student debt for their entire lives.
Tell me again… Who, exactly, does this system work for? If you’re rich, then great! You get access to some of the most famous schools in the world! If you’re poor, then you can still go to them, but don’t expect to get out of debt for virtually the entire rest of your life.
Meanwhile, let’s compare to the German system. Fair enough, we don’t have any schools that anyone in the west could name like Harvard, Yale, or MIT. What we do have is an incredibly good selection of public high schools, many of which with a very strong pedigree (degrees from Munich Technical can really get you places), and most of which have, at the moment, a tuition fee of somewhere between 1000€ per semester and free.
I’d say that the German system is working a liiiittle better than the American for all but the ultra-rich, wouldn’t you?
A beautiful example of the definition of the difference between a liberal and a conservative. All you want to do is look over the edge of the cliff and point and laugh at all the corpses piled up down there. I’d like to not waste so many people’s lives, have them be happy and productive. I believe we would be a richer and more productive society if we weren’t so wasteful.
Oh, you wanna go snark? Can do! Your call.
Your “cite” is really little more than an opinion piece. As it happens, I tend to agree with its thesis, but would not pretend that this bit of academic boosterism proves anything. We are the richest, most powerful country in human history, is it a surprise that we have excellent institutions? No, of course not.
But the best medical care in the history is of little value to someone who cannot access that care. Similiarly, the best education in the world is of little value to someone who cannot afford it.
Would you say, just off the top of your head, that the G.I. Bill was a success? I certainly would, without hesitation. And wasn’t the main thrust of that effort to make college education accessible to those who otherwise could not have done it? Is there some reason we should think that such value is limited to military veterans? And if so, why?
Hence, we can fairly say that we have solid evidence that making higher education more accessible is a good thing, no? Did our education system crumble and collapse as a result of this effort? Why, no, we have rock solid citation showing otherwise!
Could we fuck it up? Sure, we’re the Americans, we could fuck up a free meal. But is that an inevitable result? Given the success of the GI Bill, I would suggest no. First and foremost, we don’t necessarily do any damage to the education system simply by improving access to it. Why would that be the case? A student takes his check to the Bursar’s Office, is his check somehow tainted if it is funded by the government?
If a thing is perfect, you can fairly say that any change must be detrimental. Otherwise, no.
Do you have any cites for that, or is it just because U-S-A is number one?
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Who compiled that list?
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What universities and colleges were considered? It looks as if only english-speaking unis are on the list.
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What criteria were used to establish “best”? % of students who graduate? Number of papers published by the faculty? (In English? That’s often used and one reason why German-speaking unis are at the bottom of “international” lists compiled by American foundations). Evaluations by the students about the faculty? (Not all unis offer those). Was a questionaire sent to the students? The faculty? Amount of third-party funding? Number of sports teams?
It says at the bottom “Rankings are based on a variety of different factors, including academic quality, student life, student/faculty ratios, diversity of the student body, financial resources, student retention, faculty resources and career placement.”, but no weightings, no explanation of how those factors were measured, or what the other factors were. Is student life the amount of tutors for freshman and good counseling, or how many parties are thrown each week? Is academic quality the atmosphere for faculty to research, or the number of papers published?
Without knowing who selected how from what starting list, this list doesn’t say anything about quality.
And as for no “free” colleges on the list: There’s one Swiss, several UK, one Australian and one Canadian. Do you know for sure that these aren’t free for the students?
There’s a good example of the difference between a Liberal and a Conservative. A Conservative suggests that maybe, what you think is “wasting someone’s life” is the way they choose to live, and you can very well stop trying to force him to live how you want.
Or, to put it more poetically:
A Liberal says people may live any way they please, then forces them to live according to his opinion.
A Conservative says people should live accoring to his opinion, but lets them live any way they please.
There are ten “elite” unis choosen among the German unis. And inside academic circles, certain Unis do have a reputation for certain specialities.
But the main advantage of the German system is that “all unis are equal”. Once you get your Dr. (or BA or Masters), it doesn’t matter if you got it at Podunk (that is, a small town in the East) or Munich with 45 000 students. Because all unis have the same standard, so a degree shows you learned your stuff. Just as the Abitur from each state is valid enough to attend the uni.
So finishing with a degree means that you aren’t worth second class because you went to community college instead of Harvard. A degree is a degree.
Well, obviously the US is always Nr. 1. That’s somewhere among the laws of the Universe, according to the Yanks, isn’t it? / sarcasm.