Bernie might leave me the money and let me work that out for myself.
I mean, look, I get that we actually need a government, and that we fund it by paying taxes. But every time someone like Bernie comes up with some grand new thing for the government to do, they take more money from me and from you to do it with. (Yeah, I know, "we're only going to take money from other people. That never actually works.)
Government programs aren't free. They cost you money. So the question I have for people, when I hear something like Bernie's grand ideas, is this: Given that you have to pay for it, how much more government do you really want?
the issue is that not every student makes the cut and not every university has the same ROI, whether because the degree itself holds little value on the job market or because the degree costs are too high to ever recoup.
another question is do we want to finance liberal arts degrees that traditionally have a bad ROI or do we want only the wealthy to engage in those sectors?
it's not a simple question, and the angle "who pays for it actually" seems reductive.
Education is in a death spiral where costs increase and effectiveness decreases. Do you think throwing more money at the universities will make that better, or worse?
I agree that whether it's a good idea depends on that answer. I'm rejecting a stronger statement you made, about how any government program is suspect "given you have to pay for it".
In the cases of education and healthcare, it seems to me that there has been a decrease of governmental involvement (compared to other nations, if you like, or even internally to our own nation in the case where bankruptcy discharge became disallowed) that should not have happened, and that decrease is costing dramatic amounts of money. You can't tell whether a policy is a good idea just based on whether it expands or contracts the role of government. We can be suspicious of government under-involvement too.
Back to fixing the education more-cost-less-results spiral. I agree that what this proposal will do will depend on the specifics. But this proposal, if it helps, probably will do so only accidentally, because it doesn't seem to be attempting to do any such thing. It's trying to address the cost to students, and that's all.
To address the overall cost problem, it has to do something to incentivize universities to be more efficient at delivering education to students. If it was something like "If you've got an e-learning way to get to a full diploma, we'll pay you (the university) enough that you should be making decent money at it, and we'll give the student a computer and broadband if they don't have it", that would incentivize the university to have such a program, because money. And it could scale easier than in-person, if implemented well. Even better, you could now have competition between universities based on quality of instruction vs. odds of passing.
I'm sure there are holes in that approach, but I think it's at least somewhat in the right direction...
Your country almost certainly does charge for education, you're just shielded from the immediate cost.
>The system of being unable to discharge student loan debt via bankruptcy seems brazenly corrupt, though, such that demolishing the whole thing may be an appropriate response.
Alternatively, going forward we could allow the discharging of student debt in bankruptcy with the knowledge that this would prevent many useless degrees from being funded and correspondingly would result in a large decrease in higher education spending. I'm fully in favor. For far too many people college is merely an extended adolescence and creates perverse signaling issues when it comes to getting a good job. As a nation, we should be more mindful of the degrees we decide to fund and the amounts dedicated to such degrees. Your nation, which "doesn't charge money for education," is almost certainly doing this.
Looking at it from economical standpoint only is just very narrow view. Education is not training for a job. There is value in knowledge. Even if you think only about economy it's very hard to predict what will be profitable.
Dont forget that if someone is studying "useless degree" than it's enough burden to know you might not get job in that field.
I think it's wonderful if anyone has a chance to have a try at higher education.
Also as many countries show education doesn't have to be expensive and putting financial limits on them keeps them efficient.
Maybe so, but it's also not something I'm willing to pay for or subsidize as a tax payer. Sitting around reading books all day would also be enriching but no one is claiming we should pay people to do that with tax dollars.
Bernie wants to take tax money and work out what the best thing to spend it on is. It's disingenuous to imply it's any more taken by force than taxes already are. Significant portions of your taxes already go towards people who have, by your definitions, behaved irresponsibly.
I don't know whether this is the best use of that money -- whether there's something else that would have much better effects on welfare and economics in general.
I also don't have any student loan debt from my university degree, though it's because I grew up in a country that doesn't charge money for education.
The system of being unable to discharge student loan debt via bankruptcy seems brazenly corrupt, though, such that demolishing the whole thing may be an appropriate response.