Should education be free?

[Ken Fabian]

I expect that most people who don't want to pay taxes for taxpayer funded community education still like being part of a community that gets educated - they just want businesses and people other than themselves to pay for it, ie they want to get the benefits without paying for it. Businesses are advantaged by the availability of educated employees - as they benefit from healthy employees. Similarly they also benefit from employees of other companies being well paid, via strong consumer demand - but not want to pay their own well.

I suspect the wealthy get more overall benefits from the services governments support through taxes than any other demographic - law and order to protect their wealth, infrastructure to support their business activities, educated workers, healthy workers. Programs that reduce inequality don't only divert money from the successful (deserving) to the unsuccessful (undeserving) they also reduce the risks of crime and social disruptions that, if allowed to grow can lead to riots, terrorism and militant uprisings. Education is a key pathway to sustainably reducing poverty across generations and that not only benefits the individuals and their families directly but benefits their neighbors and businesses and their owners and the State and Nation.

I think the illusion that governments are like companies and running them like businesses would do it better is widely promoted and feeds popular opposition to taxpayer funded education and other "social" programs - but governments are not companies; where companies fire unproductive employees and costs are avoided they stay on the government's books whether they are productive or not and those kinds of costs resist being avoided.

[Sensei]

1 hour ago, studiot said:

Should all higher studies be free...

Yes.

Paid studies create many pathologies, such as poor students taking out loans and/or having a second parallel job to even attend college. A full-time job reduces the time by 8hrs a day that they can devote to their studies, increasing the chance of failure. If a student fails, the loan does not disappear. An exceptionally bad start in life with long-term consequences.

It would be interesting to see the statistics of failed studies per country, the cost of those studies, and the percentage of students who took out loans for them and how quickly they paid them back. And similar data.

From your personal experience: what was the initial number of students in your major and how many of them "made it" to the end and graduated?

Free studies can also create patologies. e.g. carelessly choosing a course of study for oneself and easily dropping out at no cost at any time without serious consequences, which, with limited seats in the class, means that someone more suitable was rejected and had no chance to participate.

There are people who do not value what they got for free and/or take it for granted.

1 hour ago, studiot said:

...and how do we persuade folks to take up other more useful studies?

The number of seats in a class each year is limited. This is a natural barrier to too many students in one subject of study. The best ones pass through. They have a chance to successfully complete.

Edited September 15, 2021 by Sensei

[CharonY]

55 minutes ago, studiot said:

I'm sure you understand the point.

My examples are just that.

Let us just suppose that every Scot applied to do Higher Pictish Studies and the Scottish Government funded this.

Where would Scotland get its future teachers, doctors, engineers, lawyers, and so on from ?

And who would employ all the those with a Batchelors or Masters of Pictishness ?

Let me contrast that with a situation that is already happening. As in NA higher education is seen mostly through a financial lens, degrees that presumably lead to better jobs (folks actually often misjudge which degrees have higher salaries or higher employment rate, but that is probably another matter). As a consequence we have classes full of pre-meds and other pre-professionals who have zero interest in the subject matter, and do poorly as a result. Basically the only question we get are not about the subject or questions of understanding but "what will be asked in the exam?". Certain ways of teaching do not work any more for these reasons. It is not an either or question, there always be plenty of folks trying to get a more vocational style degree. However, it is detrimental to teaching and learning if the only reason to take them is because they are seen as "useful". 

As a consequence not only does the degree (should they get one) not necessarily pay off career-wise, they also have likely learned little as the topic was not in their interest in the first place. As faculty we are not well-equipped to weed those folks out, either. The university administration has a vested interest to keep enrolment high. That then leads to a drop in quality of graduates and industry is more hesitant to take fresh graduates in.

I would much more prefer a stricter weeding process and have folks succeed in areas where they are actually willing to put time and interest in. If they are good in a given degree, their chance of employment even in what folks may claim to be useless, increases dramatically, as they will have a broad intellectual and soft skill set that can be beneficial in many roles. Conversely, if you are just scraping by in a "popular" degree, you will be quickly outcompeted. Similarly, even having stellar grades does not mean much nowadays, it may just be that you are great in memorizing without really learning (and in the pandemic time cheating has been more rampant than usually). So once it gets to the interview process where one needs to show problem solving skills things fall apart, based on what we hear from industry.

 

  

[Peterkin]

1 hour ago, studiot said:

Well no one seems to care what constitutes higher education but I see that the expected lines have been drawn so let me ask the question in thelight of the following hypothetical situation.

The specifics have not yet been considered, since the question at the moment is only a general principle. 

1 hour ago, studiot said:

Higher Education in Scotland is free to Scots. (not hypothetical).

Suppose everyone only wanted to study higher Pictish studies.

Has that happened very often? If it ever did, the tuition would still be waived for the number of qualified applicants for the courses being offered. When each class is filled, the rest remaining applicants would be counselled to seek other fields of study for which their previous testing shows an aptitude. 

34 minutes ago, studiot said:

Let us just suppose that every Scot applied to do Higher Pictish Studies and the Scottish Government funded this.

Why should/would we suppose such an absurd situation?

35 minutes ago, studiot said:

Where would Scotland get its future teachers, doctors, engineers, lawyers, and so on from ?

From the overflow that was turned away from full courses. The fact that medical schools and law schools the world over limit their intake to the number of places available  in any given year is not a function of the funding mechanism. 

They also, BTW, have pretty good vocational programs, as well as academic ones. https://www.techacademyscot.com/ 

https://www.edumaritime.net/uk/scotland

https://www.topuniversities.com/universities/scottish-agricultural-college-sac

Just not seeing the problem.

[inbreeding]

13 hours ago, Hans de Vries said:

With US having lots of problems with student debt and such, do you think the free model of higher education like in Europe should be implemented/

No it shouldn't be free...There is always a price to pay for free what needs change is the structure of how education is taught and provide more incentives to students so it makes university more enjoyable. Maybe even change the people who teach it.

9 hours ago, dimreepr said:

We are all free to learn, debt is a means to suppress that freedom.

It's mocking your intelligence...

No we are not free to learn. Everything is rigidly planned a schedule that you can't stick to and we end up getting law of diminishing return.

Edited September 15, 2021 by inbreeding

[iNow]

2 hours ago, studiot said:

I'm sure you understand the point.

Of course. You’re suggesting some areas of study are more valuable than others.

I’m asking you who you think should get to decide which to direct student traffic into and which to cull. 

[CharonY]

1 hour ago, Peterkin said:

They also, BTW, have pretty good vocational programs, as well as academic ones. https://www.techacademyscot.com/ 

https://www.edumaritime.net/uk/scotland

https://www.topuniversities.com/universities/scottish-agricultural-college-sac

Just not seeing the problem.

There is an interesting side point here. Vocational schools should be boosted more. The training for specific professions has a different philosophy and approach than that of basic higher education. And quite a few folks getting into uni are really looking for more vocational-type training.

[TheVat]

There are a lot of subjects that many twenty year olds aren't looking for,  but which would make them more well-rounded,  smarter,  and with better tools for critical thinking.   Which is why I believe undergraduate education shouldn't be driven by a consumerist philosophy, i. e.  by market demand.   For that reason,  I resist the notion of purely vocational tracks -- I think lack of cultural literacy and intellectual tools evident in diploma mill grads is what got us the abyss of the Trump years and the continuing fallout.   The "liberal arts" education that was honored when I was young should be available to everyone and actively promoted as a public good. 

 

[Peterkin]

That's one advantage of the Scottish system. The core curriculum is for all students 5-16, before they begin streaming into specialty subjects.  And there is no reason to abandon the humanities and arts when taking a more intensive trade-directed practical course - just as we could have geometry, home economics, literature, origami and airplane mechanics in some of the experimental vocational schools of the 60's and 70'S. What went wrong there is complicated, with a whole lot of people at fault, but mostly simple underestimation by idealistic educators of the existing caste system. That would continue to dog a government funded college level program, but I think we're more accustomed to meeting the challenges now. 

[CharonY]

2 minutes ago, TheVat said:

The "liberal arts" education that was honored when I was young should be available to everyone and actively promoted as a public good. 

I think so, too. However, you cannot force someone to get a rounded education, it is something you want to have and work for in the first place. Rather unfortunately many students now do not really relish the critical thinking part but are hyperfocussed on grades and optimizing what to learn (i.e. the minimum needed to get the most time efficient grade). They won't even read book chapters on their own anymore as they think it is too inefficient. 

[Peterkin]

Yeah, but all that striving and competing is another byproduct of money - or more to the point, the tragedy of not having it, the fear of not getting enough, the constant anxiety over how to repay a half again what you borrowed, if you can meet hefty payments regularly over a decade. That's assuming you finished high enough, with a degree that's in demand and got a pretty good job right away.

Taking the crippling student loan out of the mix could change the whole picture. It would mean that young persons interested in liberal arts, social sciences and philosophy could afford to indulge their true interests, rather than race to the job-scrum with the MBA's (a bachelor's is just waste paper anymore) and BEc's . They might even be enabled to take lower paying service and arts positions. 

Edited September 16, 2021 by Peterkin

[iNow]

Most of the best engineers and experts I’ve known over the decades have been those best familiar with history and the humanities. 

[Area54]

11 hours ago, Peterkin said:

That's one advantage of the Scottish system. The core curriculum is for all students 5-16, before they begin streaming into specialty subjects.  And there is no reason to abandon the humanities and arts when taking a more intensive trade-directed practical course - just as we could have geometry, home economics, literature, origami and airplane mechanics in some of the experimental vocational schools of the 60's and 70'S. What went wrong there is complicated, with a whole lot of people at fault, but mostly simple underestimation by idealistic educators of the existing caste system. That would continue to dog a government funded college level program, but I think we're more accustomed to meeting the challenges now. 

You mention origami. There was an Institute of Origami in my home town, back in the 70s, but it folded.

[Peterkin]

How long has that been incubating?

[dimreepr]

Education is always free, much like protection is always a racket...

It's how we stear the education/racket, that's valuable...