NBC: Why Americans are increasingly dubious about going to college

[dismalist]

There is no important social objective, just private objectives of earning a higher income. I

Income may be the motivation for the majority of college students and their parents (and better incomes would be a net good for society, I would think) but the benefit to society of an educated populace is much greater than merely the money machine, despite the best intentions of students and parents to minimize education to nothing more than an employment passport.

And no, the current post-COVID decline is greater than the demographic cliff.  Something else is happening as well.

No, a more educated populace is of no benefit to me. An additional plumber or sociologist earns what we value the additional stuff he produces. He receives the extra and we pay him the extra.

Yes, there's more than the demographic cliff going on. Which is what this is all about.

This, I believe, is the core motivation behind the defunding of public (higher) ed. 100 years ago, we decided that education was a public good. 40 years ago, people educated under that system decided that it was a private good. Thus the end of expansion and beginning of decline.

Completely incorrect. Education has always been a private good, for the educated capture the extra benefits of their education. The argument for publicly provided education 100 years ago is that we didn't have capital markets to allow the poor to borrow. Now we do.

He who gets the benefits should pay the costs. Otherwise there's too much of this stuff.

[Wahoo Redux]

There is no important social objective, just private objectives of earning a higher income. I

Income may be the motivation for the majority of college students and their parents (and better incomes would be a net good for society, I would think) but the benefit to society of an educated populace is much greater than merely the money machine, despite the best intentions of students and parents to minimize education to nothing more than an employment passport.

And no, the current post-COVID decline is greater than the demographic cliff.  Something else is happening as well.

No, a more educated populace is of no benefit to me. An additional plumber or sociologist earns what we value the additional stuff he produces. He receives the extra and we pay him the extra.

Yes, there's more than the demographic cliff going on. Which is what this is all about.

This, I believe, is the core motivation behind the defunding of public (higher) ed. 100 years ago, we decided that education was a public good. 40 years ago, people educated under that system decided that it was a private good. Thus the end of expansion and beginning of decline.

Completely incorrect. Education has always been a private good, for the educated capture the extra benefits of their education. The argument for publicly provided education 100 years ago is that we didn't have capital markets to allow the poor to borrow. Now we do.

He who gets the benefits should pay the costs. Otherwise there's too much of this stuff.

Gotta agree with pgher.

Gotta disagree with dismalist.

Look at any society without education.

No reason we can't have an educated plumber.

[dismalist]

There is no important social objective, just private objectives of earning a higher income. I

Income may be the motivation for the majority of college students and their parents (and better incomes would be a net good for society, I would think) but the benefit to society of an educated populace is much greater than merely the money machine, despite the best intentions of students and parents to minimize education to nothing more than an employment passport.

And no, the current post-COVID decline is greater than the demographic cliff.  Something else is happening as well.

No, a more educated populace is of no benefit to me. An additional plumber or sociologist earns what we value the additional stuff he produces. He receives the extra and we pay him the extra.

Yes, there's more than the demographic cliff going on. Which is what this is all about.

This, I believe, is the core motivation behind the defunding of public (higher) ed. 100 years ago, we decided that education was a public good. 40 years ago, people educated under that system decided that it was a private good. Thus the end of expansion and beginning of decline.

Completely incorrect. Education has always been a private good, for the educated capture the extra benefits of their education. The argument for publicly provided education 100 years ago is that we didn't have capital markets to allow the poor to borrow. Now we do.

He who gets the benefits should pay the costs. Otherwise there's too much of this stuff.

Gotta agree with pgher.

Gotta disagree with dismalist.

Look at any society without education.

No reason we can't have an educated plumber.

Correlation is not causation.

But one must not miss the point. It is not that educations are not good. The question is who decides which education, how much for whom, and who pays for it.

Individuals know best, and if they can borrow there is no problem.

[N.B.: Plumbers are educated. :-)]

[Anon1787]

U.S. government spending on tertiary education is at the OECD average (.9% of GDP in 2018), which is much more than the UK, Japan, and South Korea (.5-.6%), somewhat less than Germany (1.04%), less than Canada (1.22%), and much less than Norway (1.8%). So there is still a long way to go to reach libertarian nirvana. (Of course U.S. private spending is highest at 1.6%).

[ciao_yall]

Completely incorrect. Education has always been a private good, for the educated capture the extra benefits of their education.

Society can do just fine without doctors, lawyers, engineers, or scientists? Cities can attract tourists and dollars without museums full of art, theaters filled with singers and dancers, not to mention hotels and restaurants with trained management to keep them running?

The argument for publicly provided education 100 years ago is that we didn't have capital markets to allow the poor to borrow. Now we do.

People have been apprenticing and indebting themselves to gain an education and enter a profession since we started walking upright and grasping with thumbs. And capital markets have been around since the Roman era at least, when they invented double-entry bookkeeping to keep up with all their loans and collateral.

He who gets the benefits should pay the costs. Otherwise there's too much of this stuff.

Back to my first example. Who benefits from having doctors, lawyers, plumbers and electricians who can read manuals and do math...

[dismalist]

Completely incorrect. Education has always been a private good, for the educated capture the extra benefits of their education.

Society can do just fine without doctors, lawyers, engineers, or scientists? Cities can attract tourists and dollars without museums full of art, theaters filled with singers and dancers, not to mention hotels and restaurants with trained management to keep them running?

The argument for publicly provided education 100 years ago is that we didn't have capital markets to allow the poor to borrow. Now we do.

People have been apprenticing and indebting themselves to gain an education and enter a profession since we started walking upright and grasping with thumbs. And capital markets have been around since the Roman era at least, when they invented double-entry bookkeeping to keep up with all their loans and collateral.

He who gets the benefits should pay the costs. Otherwise there's too much of this stuff.

Back to my first example. Who benefits from having doctors, lawyers, plumbers and electricians who can read manuals and do math...

Double entry came from Italy around 1300, a tad later than the Roman era. The Roman era did not have credit scores, either. :-)

The point of apprenticeship is as a substitute for non existing capital markets. There is nothing wrong wrong with apprentice sociologists. Yet, we see that students thereof borrow. Must be better than apprenticeship.

Who benefits from having doctors, lawyers, plumbers and electricians who can read manuals and do math...

Once again, they benefit by our valuation of their additional contribution. The rest of us pay that extra value-- to them.

[ciao_yall]

Who benefits from having doctors, lawyers, plumbers and electricians who can read manuals and do math...

Once again, they benefit by our valuation of their additional contribution. The rest of us pay that extra value-- to them.

We all don't benefit by living longer, healthier, more productive lives? By having a fair society governed by the rule of law? By having safely installed pipes and electricity that don't explode?

[dismalist]

Who benefits from having doctors, lawyers, plumbers and electricians who can read manuals and do math...

Once again, they benefit by our valuation of their additional contribution. The rest of us pay that extra value-- to them.

We all don't benefit by living longer, healthier, more productive lives? By having a fair society governed by the rule of law? By having safely installed pipes and electricity that don't explode?

The value to us of the extra life, the extra health is paid to the producers of such. Safety is produced first and foremost by competition. Regulation is often, shall we say, uneducated.

Rule of law is a necessity. It's hard to see what its prevalence has to do with education, though.

Those who invent certain public things, such as ideas, things that make us more productive do get a share of their extra benefits. Could be larger. More for Bill Gates and the pharma inventors!

[kaysixteen]

But, of course, Gates and the pharma bros rely very heavily on taxpayer funded primary research, and, of course, massive taxpayer outlays for infrastructure.

And everyone benefits from the public good nature of college education, at least to the extent that such a public good conception still exists.   There was a time when ending the paid by the taxpayer for the public good ed at k12 made sense.   It certainly does not today.

Of course, I am also fully in support of not paying for the leisure preferences of adolescents, and, like it or not, there are students in college who are not prepared to be there, many of which are, ahem, not bright enough to ever be there.    We should do other stuff for them.

[dismalist]

But, of course, Gates and the pharma bros rely very heavily on taxpayer funded primary research, and, of course, massive taxpayer outlays for infrastructure.

And everyone benefits from the public good nature of college education, at least to the extent that such a public good conception still exists.   There was a time when ending the paid by the taxpayer for the public good ed at k12 made sense.   It certainly does not today.

Of course, I am also fully in support of not paying for the leisure preferences of adolescents, and, like it or not, there are students in college who are not prepared to be there, many of which are, ahem, not bright enough to ever be there.    We should do other stuff for them.

Taxpayer funded basic research? Well, yeah. That's why we have a progressive tax system, to pay for that expensive stuff.

Massive taxpayer outlays for infrastructure? That's why we have crumbling infrastructure.

There is nothing wrong with redistribution to the poor, but money, not education bennies or any other specific bennies, is what's efficient.

[mamselle]

Some incipient rug research may be tax-funded through NSFNIH/other grants to schools, but that's small potatoes where drug development, production, delivery, and marketing are concerned.

Those are all commercial functions.

I've worked at 5 pharmas and none had any grant income, nor, as financial stand-alones, would they have been eligible to apply for any.

They were all reporting to shareholders--not a taxpayer's penny in sight.

Where DO people get these ideas?

M.

[pgher]

Circling back to the issue of public vs. private good, what I was trying to say earlier was that society as a whole had once decided one way and later on decided another way. The truth is that there are both public and private benefits to education.

I chose 100 years ago to put us in the Progressive Era. Prior to that era, elementary education was approaching universality. During the Progressive Era, there was a huge expansion of secondary education, which ultimately became compulsory in every state. That was an era when the emphasis was on public goods. Anti-trust laws are a good example: shifting the emphasis from the rights of businesses (to charge what they want and make whatever deals they wanted) to the rights of society (to have competition that leads to wider improvements).

The progressive ethos carried on through the expansion of higher ed through the 1950's and 1960's. If elementary education isn't enough, then perhaps secondary education isn't enough either. Community colleges sprang up, etc.

But at some point, the progressive era ethos petered out. I think a big factor in its ending was the Civil Rights movement's success. "Sure, I'll pay to educate other white kids, but not all those Blacks." Whatever the reason, we, as a society, decided that education, especially post-secondary, is no longer a public good.

[marshwiggle]

Of course, I am also fully in support of not paying for the leisure preferences of adolescents, and, like it or not, there are students in college who are not prepared to be there, many of which are, ahem, not bright enough to ever be there.    We should do other stuff for them.

So does "education" itself ever count as "leisure preferences", such as when people choose to study Harry Potter, or the music of <insert artist of the moment>, or whatever? Or does the fact that some "school" offers a course or program in something automatically anoint it with legitimacy as something the public should fund?

[marshwiggle]

I chose 100 years ago to put us in the Progressive Era. Prior to that era, elementary education was approaching universality. During the Progressive Era, there was a huge expansion of secondary education, which ultimately became compulsory in every state.

The important word here is "approaching". 100 years ago there were still significant numbers of students who were allowed to fail out of school. If students are allowed to fail, then the standards can be maintained. As the expectation developed that everyone (or nearly so) should pass, the standards inevitably had to come down. So secondary education had to pick up the slack from primary education. Then post-secondary had to pick up from secondary, as passing secondary became expected.

Requiring equality of outcome introduces unsustainable increases in costs. This leads to waning support for public funding.

[Hibush]

My school gets quite a lot of taxpayer money for education and other things explicitly because of the public-good benefits. Lately the terminology has been "economic development" for a region where talent and industry would otherwise leave. We need skilled workers, local technological innovation and a cultural climate where educated people want to live. The state, and even Federal representatives are fully on board with the public good as the reason for spending the money.

To be clear, there is also money intended to provide the private good for students. The public good is not the exclusive rationale, but is is a substantial one.

Somewhat related is that there is a lot of government spending with the motivation of providing substantial private good to those who have supported politicians. It's important not to mistake those programs for either of the two above even if there is some superficial similarity.