With all due respect, that doesn't really make any sense. What about a democracy should keep people from making important decisions?
I think our education of students on the matter needs work, but they should absolutely be making this decision. For a lot of people it's the first really big decision they get to make, and is a good step to taking on the responsibility that comes with adulthood. That coupled with (hopefully) having a part time job through high school puts them in a pretty good position to transition into becoming a responsible citizen. We just need to teach them more about the costs, expected returns, etc. None of it is that complicated, and could be reasonably taught in a high school algebra course. Probably sooner to be honest.
Even if we didn't have government sponsored education straight up, if any of the money involved were dependent upon a student's career success I believe we'd see a very different educational system.
I also think a system like this would help a lot of the social divide; right now it's much more risky for poor people to go to college (or trade school), so many opt out. I'm obviously biased and could be wrong, it's just a problem that's been eating at me for a long time.
The school would seem to have a strong incentive to only accept applicants who they are pretty sure will make a lot of money. The incentive isn't to teach anyone who shows up.
The school would also seem to have a strong incentive to control the life decisions of students after they leave. i.e. they won't want to let students switch careers after they discover they weren't cut out to be whatever they trained for.
Collecting a percentage of income seems like it might be difficult to enforce. People are eventually going to decide they've paid the school enough and want to stop paying. Is the school going to constantly face legal costs trying to recapture it?
Furthermore, legally, can you sign a contract that permanantly grants a percentage of your income? I'm wondering if that would be declared invalid by the courts.
That's true at first, but at a certain point the incremental cost of each additional student gets really low. Consider existing scholarships and financial aid - you can work in a level of "default" or "higher risk" into the student "portfolio".
> The school would have a strong incentive to control the lives of students
That's true
> Collecting a percentage of income might be difficult to enforce
Not sure how it's more difficult to enforce than any other type of debt, other than if income is misreported. (That's easy: require a W2).
> Legslly, can you sign a contract that permanently grants a percentage of your income?
I don't view it as a "permanently" thing. Just x% for the first y years.
They would also have a big incentive to boot you if you had a bad semester or two, like an underperforming stock or race horse.
How does your system address the reduction in capacity that's going to happen once schools start optimizing for highest paid salaries.
Under your system, the first to go will be low paid degrees like women's studies, sociology, etc. and schools are going to optimize for STEM. It's more than probable that they will boost their STEM enrollment to professor/TA capacity, and axe most programs or cut them to make extremely selective.
I guess it's better than having people running in the real world with no skills, massive debt and a useless degree.
What should drive such an important choice? Pleasure? Fashion? Government quotas?
If someone chooses to pursue a hobby beyond that, which is what the parent seems to be referring to, why shouldn't they have full choice of what they want to study and how they want to study it? Especially in a capitalistic democracy.