In my case, graduating without debt was mostly due to the low tuition of New York state (SUNY) schools in the 80s. My tuition was $675/semester, and the minimum wage at the time was $3.35. That means in roughly 10 40 hour weeks over the summer, I could save enough for the year's tuition. Combine that with a 12hr/week job working in the computer labs and sysadmin'ing, and I could pay for my share of the rent & my car.
People talk about free tuition. But maybe we just need to get back to the middle ground of affordable tuition as measured by the minimum wage. Eg, put a cap on tuition so that it can't be more than X hours of work at a state's minimum wage.
It's also good for laundering privilege ("we can't make my buddy's kid partner unless he went to a good school - otherwise it looks like nepotism!")
Remove the endless supply of money for relatively useless degrees and you’ll end the issue.
This is the best idea I've heard when it comes to the debate on education costs.
By comparison, New York state spend $21,000 per pupil in public school (new york city this was $27k). This is higher than the national average of $11,000.
The cheapest state, Utah, still spent $6500 per pupil.
Your $3200 isn't going to touch it, so who picks up the rest of the bill?
To your last point, Society is going to pay in one way or another. We can subsidize tuition and benefit from an educated population, with greater innovation and culture that results; or we can have less growth, innovation, and poverty.
1) Students pay the full cost 2) The taxpayer pays the full cost 3) The cost is shared
You're arguing for the latter. The trouble is the latter goes from everything from 1 cent a semester to $full_tutition - 1cent per semester, it's an option that can appeal to everyone.
How much should the taxpayer pay? How much should the student?
Personally I like the UK system, where the student pays if they make it big (get a job for netflix earning $500k a year you repay your entire loan), but you don't repay if you get a job in the local nursing home wiping someone's arse.
It's not a popular position, with both the right wing and left wing parties arguing against it (the left wing parties saying that taxes should rise to pay for stockbrokers' tuition, the right wing parties saying that taxes should rise to pay for stockbrokers' tuition)
I mean, sure, if it's likely you are going to spend your life making very little money, then sure, avoiding debt at the outset should be paramount. But getting some education, for most people, is probably the strongest thing they can do to decrease the chances that they will spend their life making very little money. I would argue that the next biggest thing you can do is to surround yourself with people who are going the direction you want to go.
I think the social and personal development sides of a metropolis are also pretty great. If I want to, (and I do) I can spend all day around people who are smarter than I am. I mean, substitute in your own figure of merit; no matter what you value, if you are in a dense area, chances are, you can find a group of people you can surround yourself with who have a lot of it.
This isn't just because of the migration of people who are financially able into the cities... this is also because there are more people of any type that are within your reach; there's a much larger and more diverse pool of people from which to pick your friends. If you are the average of the three people you spend the most time with? you want to be in a dense area where you can choose three really amazing people.
My own impresison, as someone who makes a good living without a degree, is that where you live actually matters a lot more if you don't have a degree; the difference in sysadmin jobs between silicon valley and less dense places is absolutely huge; much greater than the difference, say, in doctor jobs or even software engineer jobs.
But they're too damned expensive, and that's a manufactured situation. We intentionally decided that home prices rising faster than inflation is a good thing, and now we get the occasional lip service to "let's make housing more affordable" but _nobody_ has the guts to say "let's make housing CHEAP. Because basic shelter free of indentured servitude is good for humanity". Instead you get "well this building will have 100 market-rate units and 10 affordable ones so we get the odd token normie to assuage the guilt of everyone else living there. But you still get to vote against any meaningful increase in housing supply that addresses the core problem of 1000 people trying to fit in 100 homes."
So, if you make a lot of money, the city is great. If you don't make a lot of money, the city _would_ be great if you could actually afford to live there.
I do think that there is a chicken and egg problem here, and it's part of why we think it's so important to keep poor people in their houses as the place gentrifies; A poor person growing up in a rich city has massively more economic mobility than they'd have growing up in a small town.
Of course, you are right that it's hard to be poor in a big city; but if you can snag a rent controlled room, or your aunt's couch or whatever, it can be a good leg up.
My personal opinion is that if you want to get approval to build an office building, part of that approval would be talking someone into building a similar number of housing units nearby. I mean, not that they should be owned by the same entity; most of us don't want our housing directly contingent on our employment, but you need to build offices and housing in sync, otherwise you get crazy traffic problems.
I mean, I personally think education is a great investment opportunity for the government; it's like those schools that give you an education and then take a bit of your income for a while, right? it seems like good free education would more than pay for itself.
But most people (or, at least most voting power) seem to disagree with me.
I have no idea what people are thinking, if they are at all. Work primarily matters when there are no opportunities. Zuckerberg isn't the hardest worker of his generation. He found one of the best opportunities.
And I can only speak from my own experience, but people here do seem to do more of the things I noted. With a month off a year and, frankly, knowing you won't die in a gutter if you lose your job, you can spend more time on music, writing, whatever. But that's pure anecdata.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/personal-banking/mortgages/swede...
The theory is, if your mortgage interest rate was X% but some other investment like the stock market had much higher returns, a sophisticated investor might want to take the money they would have spent on repaying the principal and instead put it into that better-performing investment, then after 20 years pay off the mortgage principal with said investment.
Post-financial-crisis rules were put in place that mean banks actually have to ensure you're _making_ that higher-performing investment.
That softens the issue, but doesn't make class mobility easier.
What does this mean? Asking as a European that might be missing something (compared to Canada for example) but doesn't realize it.
From what I understand, you can get out without debt here (norway). No tuition, low fees for books and things. Government stipend doens't need repaid, but you can take out a loan above that (common). Then move up north and work for some time. 10 years, I think? And I'm awfully sure that some countries won't have as much debt in that time simply because living expenses are lower and some folks are able to live with family while going to school for the 5-6 years it takes to get a masters.
It hardly matters on the distinction, though. It isn't like tuition in the US covers living expenses. Even if you are able to live in student housing, you don't get housing all year in many places - you might need to move yourself and your stuff out for anywhere between 2 weeks and 2 months. Whatever your loans for living costs are, at least they aren't higher due to tuition.
> I think a lot of people would actually be better off starting life with nothing and living somewhere cheap
The question is how to do this while working in your preferred sector. It's not just the tech industry that seems tied to the sort of agglomeration economies you only get in big urbanized areas; large parts of the service sector are like this, too.
Here's a nice example of where the Scandinavian countries clearly seem to have something in common: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Nobel_lau...
I'm seeing a lot of "born in" (~100) next to the laureates in the US category. That doesn't diminish the achievements for US as a country.
It's a sports term. In sports, when you win, you win fair and square.
Also, you might have a 'home court advantage' if you're playing at home.
I don't see why Nobel prizes would be any different. There are always more people who deserve a prize than receive it.
So yes, you can have both.
The implication was clearly that the particular "home" advantage made the difference and without it the person wouldn't have won. And the comment sounded like "I'm not saying it was unfair but it was unfair".
P.S. In sports you usually play both home and away to even out that unfair advantage. Big one time matches might even be held on neutral ground for the same reason.
Let's not play on semantics here. It's common sense not to suggest something is fair but then imply someone's nationality made the difference. I'm not saying I know nationality doesn't make a difference when awarding a Nobel prize. Just that if it does, then it wasn't fair.
We tend to measure it by how much money it earns. I think we could get away from that.
I'm interested in new methods for thatching homes, for instance. Maybe I'll find a weave that helps oaten straw last twice as long. It would never produce a meaningful economic benefit, but it would still be an innovation that enriches humanity,
The person who starts life off in massive debt, or who knows they'll be homeless if they don't somehow come up with a pile of hundred-dollar-bills every month, or (as is often the case) both, is somebody who:
* doesn't write for leisure
* doesn't organize politically
* doesn't innovate except on things they get paid to research
* and (perhaps most importantly) doesn't start a competing company.
These are on average, of course. A few people will still manage to do those things (especially if they come from wealth) but on the whole such activity is reduced. God help you if you have a kid and want to, say, run for office. How do you plan to pay for childcare?
Meanwhile, they are a person who will work on the things incumbent holders of power (owners of large businesses) want them to work on, for the sake of enriching 1) those owners, 2) landlords, 3) People who bought houses decades ago.
The system of entirely manufactured housing shortages and crushing student debt is pretty handy for keeping your population doing just what you want it to do.
I think a lot of people would actually be better off starting life with nothing and living somewhere cheap rather than starting with -$50,000+ and a huge rent bill every month. After all, we have the internet. But too many people don't discover this until it's too late, and they are shackled with a lifetime of obligations.
I was lucky to graduate without student debt largely thanks to my parents. My wife was not. I have been far, far more free in my choices in life, including the choice to live somewhere cheap, than her.