Just to clarify, it seemed like Romney was talking specifically about the debt forgiveness plan Obama has been gunning for. I could be wrong, but thats sure what the quote seemed like.

That's kind of the point, isn't it? Do you think he's wrong when he suggests that people should consider both the benefits AND the costs when deciding whether the degree is worth it? Krugman's article seems to be handwaving away any examination of costs and basically appealing to that "it's always worth it" mentality that fueled the real estate bubble (because everyone knows real estate always goes up, right so who cares how much it costs?).

No, he is suggesting the cost is no longer worth it, that budget cuts and fee increases have made the bad deal that was student loans worse. I think a fairer reading would be that more affordable, quality education become a priority again, and saner financing and repayment methods be instituted. What other countries burden their graduates with so much debt?

I think that's bull****. The number of people getting university degrees was under 20% well into the 1970s. Access to higher education is a very nice thing for a society to have, but you're wildly overstating the actual impact across the society. The rise in high-school level educations and the participation of women in the workforce meant way more to economic growth post-1950 than the relatively small increase in the number of people with university degrees.

OK the booze is already hitting me but I think we're basically saying the same thing from different angles.

Artificially-inflated education prices are bad, agree?

People need to think before they spend money on an important thing like education, agree?

You're pretending that exercising "rational choice" is going to make it all work out, somehow. Education pricing needs to fall, and be subsidized so that it is affordable. I'm all for making education more efficient to the students and removing the pursuit of publication, writing, and "fundraising" that dominates public universities. But, how is America served by saddling young people with crushing debtloads for a lifetime because they made a poor education choice, or life blows up on them in the midst of college?

Yeah, a high school diplomas and mom in the typing pool really increased productivity, competitiveness, and output. Educating the lion's share of the world's postwar scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs wasn't ****. You're right. Home economics and drafting class FTW.

The subsidy is what's driving prices up. That's the super clever thing. The subsidy is constructed such that the students are ultimately the ones paying it! The universities win because they can basically keep jacking up tuition, the politicians win because it doesn't actually cost them very much. But they gotta keep convincing people no matter what the education costs, ITS WORTH IT and anyone who says anything contrary is probably some sort of anti-intellectual college hater.

YES WE AGREE. The current system is built around CRUSHING STUDENTS. That is an obvious and unavoidable result of how it's designed.

What drives prices up is the insane pay structures at universities. Retooling how public universities deliver near-Ivy educations at the top and serviceable ones at the second tiers is a different question. The subsidy a lot of states pay is the only thing in the past that kept the price down. Rising costs to students and lower subsidies are foisting more students on to the max Staffords.

Do some worthless degrees need to not qualify for government loans? Maybe, or just make highly beneficial or technical ones free. I may despise certain fields, but the value of an educated person, even transgender french monkey psychology, is enough to qualify as a public good. Moral hazard costs a lot less than forgoing investment in affordable education.

If you don't go to college you dont get this sort of handout. A public university is the welfare state misfiring and completely missing its target of needy people. Why not just give everyone under 18 5k in cash if were handing things out. This is like government backed mortgages.

Incorrect. If the entire country had phDs, some of those phDs would still be janitors. And those janitors would probably have something close to a transgender french monkey psych degree. Having society pay for this would be a waste.

You don't get the best outcomes without some failures.

I think you're looking at this ideologically and not rationally. The growth in university educated scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs was very small relative to the other demographic trends in the workforce/economy over the same period (especially when you remember how many university graduates don't become research scientists, engineers, or entrepreneurs). For your assertion to be true you would have to attribute enormous amounts of economic growth and productivity to a tiny slice of the people participating in the economy, and I just don't see that as being in any way reasonable.

What do you call success? A world with 0 janitors? There needs to be janitors. The only question is do they need to be burdened with student loan payments for a waste of a degree that society pushed them to get.

I didn't see if anyone else posted this:



This makes me laugh everytime I see it.

Bonus points if anyone can decipher the equation humor...lol.

Where's the caddyshack.jpg? I'm on the phone so I can't poast it.

Yeah, go vote for Santorum. Education and growth aren't related. You obviously have no grasp of how the growth of higher education and access to it changed the entire economy. Bachelors or better was under five percent in 1947. The GI bill and the growth of state supported schools had that to thirty percent by 2000. Small sliver my ass. Cognitive ability is required in most jobs of value, and while all college grads don't have it, US high schools do not teach it.

Success is a world where even janitors Consume more and better things during longer healthier lives. That requires more efficient allocation of resources and advances in technology. Education is the building block of that success. Commodious living, that thing we've been pursuing since The Enlightenment.

How do you know that creating incentives for the janitor to get a transgendered monkeypsychology degree is am efficient allocation of resources that will increase technology? Won't the loan payments hurt his ability to consume more and better things? What about the value of the time he wasted?

What if he doesn't have to repay the loan? What if he develops monkey training techniques to replace human janitors? What if some poor, disadvantaged genius gets pregnant at 14, gets her GED after three kids, goes to the Army, and uses the GI Bill for a degree that leads to research enabling immortality? Reductio ad absurdism works both ways.

Lol. That's not what I said. You're dug in on this one, obviously.

You know what else happened? About 1 million other gigantic factors. There are also significant chicken/egg issues here - you can just as easily argue that economic growth spurred investments in higher education. You can pretend that you're not making a gigantic leap of faith if you want, but you're making enormous assumptions here.

This is speculative. I say just give them the money and let the 14 year old pregnant genius make an objective decision about whether she wants diapers or a psych degree. Money is money hand outs should be even and people should make their own decisions.

A sevenfold increase in education levels is just one small factor, you're right. Even if, looking back, labor force participation accounted as much, then going forward growth requires technological change and productivity growth in a population barely above replacement. Low education levels do not lend to making those leaps or workers who do more with less inputs.

I agree with you not just here, but elsewhre as well. My only point is this: isn't a college degree just an appeal to authority?

I'm an autodidact and a college dropout. I made a great living and in fact left school to pursue better opportunities. I have never regretted that decision.

In many ways, college's restrictive structure and constant need to coerce people into "well rounded" educational models was harmful. It fights market forces based on division of labor (specialization). It's more important to learn at your own pace and be specialized than to be well rounded and move at the pace of the average student in your class.

So, in that way, I find education HIGHLY impoertant...but not so much institutional education.

Of course, for those who are not autodidacts this will not apply entirely. I still think the specialization aspect does apply...but learning at your own pace may be less important when you can't learn without instruction.

EDit: I don't agree in subsidizing education as you do however, to be clear. I think that's what caused the inflated costs to begin with. Anyone familiar with Medicare and a senior using it should know what I mean. My elderly mother has to get her prescriptions once every 2 weeks so her doctors can charge Medicare for an office visit every 2 weeks instead ofj ust issuing one refillable prescription monthly, bi-monthly, etc. This drives up the cost through fraud, obviously. She has turned in several doctors...not one has been prosecuted or changed their methods. It costs her more in gas to go to these appointments than it does for some of the prescriptions. This type of price driving occurs when loans are available without credit, when institutions can charge almost maximum for attendance to their institutions, etc.

Ever notice how you buy a book for a 101 class, then need a whole other book for 102 (or 1010, 1020) class even though you never read even a third of the 101 class' book to begin with? It's a way to gouge students. The same is done with credit hour pricing.

You can get to a point where the population is overeducted for the tasks available in the economy. If you over-subsidize it you can hit that tipping point and waste resources massively. In many regards, we have reached that point. Many kids who are not of the achievement level necessary are going to college on loans they can't afford. This degrades the value of the degrees and inflates the price through artificial demand. It'd be a good idea to at least make the system allocate funds by achievement level more (less loans based on simple heartbeat, and more based on a scholarship-type system). Not everyone should go to college, for sure...but even if most should, we shouldn't allow the institutions involved to overinflate demand.

But your points on education and how capital is allocated efficiently is right on, imho. (As are several other points you're making.)

Medicare is a scam because cost is how remuneration is allocated, not outcomes.
The structure of universities has changed to build in cost and acquire budget, to an extent. But, public schools are still cheaper than private ones of the same tier. Without that subsidy from taxpayers, even the publics would be out of reach, not to mention privates are no where as large. You can attack the lack of teaching done by top tenured professors and cut the salaries of deans and admins. But, you cannot slash and burn curriculum. I guess I am an elitist snob, and I believe in an educated class. The only way to have enough education is to have too much.