Done right, educating people should lead to them being more productive and producing a richer society. Done right, it's an investment that produces more wealth than it costs.
Somewhere there's a point where it costs more than it produces, dependent on how much time the person will spend being a more-educated person before they die, and I expect also dependent on the precise education being imparted, but I'd be surprised if that line was where the free education cut-off currently is.
> Done right, educating people should lead to them being more productive and producing a richer society.
Define done right. General education does have positive externalities and we provide that for everyone up to the end of high school. However, college and beyond is about specializing. There are many majors that have way to many students majoring in them only to end up getting a job out of college that does not use any of the skills they learned in college. I do not see how subsidizing those students would be beneficial.
In this particular case, it is a somewhat circular argument. Identify education that would benefit society. Give it away for free. Watch society become more wealthy. Everybody wins. I'm not convinced that the list of "education that would benefit society" is as limited as the current STEM obsessives would have us believe, but it's a starting point; it also doesn't have to be just university education. Nationwide shortage of electricians, for example? No worries. Free electrician education ahoy.
The only problem is that this practical, pragmatic approach violates some people's morals. Similarly to how the US could have a far cheaper, far more effective corrections system, but that be morally objectionable for too many people.
On a personal note, I'm not convinced that the end of high school is the correct cut-off point for free education (particularly given that the US has become a far more technological society and economy over the last century), but I don't have any evidence for that. It would seem something of a suspicious coincidence.
Done right there'd be a quota on professions which have negative ROI, i.e. for English majors and philosophers. Until that's in place, "free" college will not have the results you desire and will be a money sink on a truly staggering scale. Besides, even if college is free, room and board is most certainly not free.
What do you know what's right? To know what is right you need to see the future and I highly doubt anyone can. Let people decide by themselves. If they get in debt to study some "useless" degree it's their fault. The rest of the tax payers shouldn't be forced to pay for their mistakes.
I'd like to see more public spending on education in the US, but I think this explains why college is getting more expensive. 40-50 years ago, investing in education carried huge returns, because cheaper college made people more likely to choose that path than to get a decent job right out of high school. Today, there's not as much need for public investment in education because the work force is already nearly over-educated, at least in terms of the numbers of people available for many jobs that have specific education requirements.
We should make it real cheap to get educated as a doctor or nurse though (and most other medical stuff). Sure, they have great personal returns on their education now, but that's exactly what we want to erode, by flooding the market.
Do you mean we want to erode doctor/nurse pay because that's what's causing high healthcare costs?
It's been awhile since I worked in healthcare but I don't think primary care provider pay is high on the list of most impactful cost cutting improvements
My experience is that doctors are not the primary bottleneck but the system is rather inefficient in many other aspects.
I think if you add more people to a bad system you tend to make things worse. Better to fix the process rather than throw more (poorly managed) resources at it
It seems like a lot of the excess value will be captured by the person who attended college, if that's true aren't they the very person to pay for it? If it isn't why bother with it at all?
Done right, they produce more wealth and some of that wealth goes to society. It's not just that they pay more tax; they also simply produce more wealth, which is not a zero sum game. Over a lifetime, society benefits and the person benefits. Everyone wins. Done right.
Stretching the discussion a little, we could ask the same question about all education. Why is any of it free? But the benefits to the United States (for example) of almost everyone being able to read and write (for example) are incredible. If a large proportion of the US population had dropped out of school before being able to read and write (because of the cost), the US would be extraordinarily less wealthy. Everyone would lose out.
This isn't the kind of value they could use to build a big castle and cut themselves off from society. Education isn't like giving someone money - they still have to go out and use that education to make money. It's the society at large that reaps benefits of an educated person - through more specialized work being done, and through better social interactions.
Name the last time an aircraft carrier won a battle, stopped an attack, etc. Gerald R. Ford class aircraft carriers cost 13~ billion dollars to construct and the bill for operating a carrier group: $2.5 million a day (based on a quick Google query).
13 billion is 325,000 degrees at 40k each or 260,000 at 50k each.
21 B-2 stealth bombers from Northrop Grumman in the 1980s and 1990s at a price of more than $2 billion each. 2 billion in 1990 is equal to 9.8 billion dollars today. That's 4-5 million 4-year degrees for what those 21 aircraft cost!!!
Also if you educate 100 people, the majority of them will provide benefit to the economy via any number of ways. The government already throws tons of money at educational institutions, but as research grants for military/defense research, why not educate the populace? For that matter, why not create government educational institutions that cut out all of the fluff and in upon completion of a program you enter into an income share agreement for 5-10 years at 10-5%.
> Name the last time an aircraft carrier won a battle, stopped an attack, etc.
The primary benefit of a large conventional military is to deter such an event from even happening. That said, the air support provided from carriers definitely helped a great deal to curb and reverse the spread of ISIS.
> Also if you educate 100 people, the majority of them will provide benefit to the economy via any number of ways.
If this were true, then it would be economically advantageous for those 100 people to borrow the money themselves (perhaps with the help of a government subsidy). And they do.
>The primary benefit of a large conventional military is to deter such an event from even happening. That said, the air support provided from carriers definitely helped a great deal to curb and reverse the spread of ISIS.
I'd believe that, a decade or two ago. The Global Hawk drone has a declassified record of 33.1 hours of flight time at 60,000 feet though for surveillance and doesn't have pilot fatigue as swapping out a pilot is as simple as "hey Greg,your shift is about over, stand up whenever you're ready and I'll take over watching the monitors".
UCAVs (unnamed combat aerial vehicles) are possessed by more than 20 confirmed countries. The United States as 2 publcily known variants, the MQ-1 since 1995 and the MQ-9 since 2001. The MQ-9 costs about 16 million dollars, can carry 750lbs of payload to 50,000 feet and fly for 30 hours or carry considerably more (like Hellifre, JDAM, laser guided bombs etc) for much shorter periods. These can take off from any sufficiently long flat surface, can be transported anywhere in the world in C-17s and honestly it wouldn't surprise me if they've devised a way to launch them out of C-17s.
As ISIS doesn't have fighter jets, there's no need to have fighter jets ready to take off to engage them. Aerial combat as a whole is effectively a thing of yesteryear.
Having a giant floating city in the ocean six-thousand persons simply isn't necessary anymore. Yes, we need certain types of ships for guarding ports and trade routes by aircraft carriers are gross overkill and largely the money-giving beast of lobbyists, politicians and defense contractors.
>If this were true, then it would be economically advantageous for those 100 people to borrow the money themselves
Except for the part where college tuition is outrageous, many many people do not qualify for government subsidized loans and interest rates on private loans can be outrageous and you could easily be servicing the loans for DECADES unless you want to live in a van with 3 other people.
> Having a giant floating city in the ocean six-thousand persons simply isn't necessary anymore. Yes, we need certain types of ships for guarding ports and trade routes by aircraft carriers are gross overkill and largely the money-giving beast of lobbyists, politicians and defense contractors.
The same could be said about traditional universities, especially now that, as you point out, they're so expensive that the cost is ruinous on a per-capita basis. I see no reason that this would change if the cost was borne by the federal government any more than the cost of the Navy would change.
