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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: koan who wrote (466544)	1/28/2021 6:55:07 PM
From: yard_man	1 Recommendation Recommended By abuelita Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 540683

>> So free public education from pre school through college will help income inequality greatly. << For me there is a disconnect here -- if free education from K-12 doesn't ensure outcomes that we want -- how will extending -- "free" to college do the same? I think if "free" is extended to college -- there will be an impact on the quality and marketability of the skills obtained? How can there not be? But I put free in quotes for a reason. Somebody always bears the cost. Now I will admit with you -- something is broken -- in that all children who come out of k-12 qualified for college -- have a financial hurdle to overcome -- some to get an education seem to have to take on enormous debt. But is this about public policy -- or is it rooted in interest rate policy -- that makes everything you borrow for have such terribly low carrying costs -- that bankers can load up folks with so much debt. If interest rates tended to the natural level and were much higher -- you might say -- that'd be worse as the hurdle would be even higher -- but would it? I would posit that if interest rates had been at natural levels for years -- there is no way that schools could be so heavy with high paying administrattive jobs that do very little toward getting students educated. College is not for every one. We know that folks who go into trades can, in fact, do very well financially. Some of this is not a matter of earnings, but basic financial education -- re saving, budgeting and the like. The last thing we need to do as a society is socialize the cost of all college education so we can produce scads of graduates with skills that may or may not be marketable. That is -- there must be a market for education -- that is tied economically to perceived or expected outcomes. What is lifetime worth of a liberal arts degree? What is the lifetime worth of a music degree? What is the lifetime worth of a degree in engineering or other hard sciences? What is the worth of a medical degree or a degree in counseling or psychiatry? A degree in education? Society doesn't value these the same -- how can we socialize the cost of all of them and foolishly act like they are all just as vital? There is no way the outcome can be good. It should cost more to get some degrees and a lot less to get others. And there needs to be a means for those making the decision as to what to major in -- whether to go for a 2-year program, a 4- year program -- or graduate study to assess -- how well they might be expected to do in a particular line of study. Only markets can tell that -- and markets need to work in education like every other thing. But is the problem access to college -- or is the problem further back in K-12 -- or even in the assumption that some given opportunity is somehow deserved??