>There's massive wealth in the US, and it could absolutely subsidize a different kind of education which is intended to produce an educated and informed citizenry.

No. It couldn't. You certainly could make a 4-year degrees ostensibly an extension of high-school - where the school is fully paid for - and some countries do do that. There's still opportunity cost of not earning an income for those 4 years. There's no getting around that.

>One could also imagine a hypothetical culture that does not prioritize earnings so highly, and could value other attributes of service or community more highly than earning high incomes, but let's not get too crazy here...

Plenty of people do that already. In fact, most people balance out income with other life goals whether it's through career choices, deciding to stay home and raise kids, or even deciding to stay in some city because your entire family is there. So I don't know what you mean by a "hypothetical culture that does not prioritize earnings so highly", everyone already makes those considerations and though income is important, for most people it is not the most important thing.

>At the highest tier, the expensive schools protect the oligarchy by keeping their children in different social spheres than the rest of the population. At the level of state schools, it's a zero sum game that people feel forced to enter because their ability to make a living is otherwise severely impaired.

I don't agree with that characterization at all. For one thing, state schools provide quality education (that is as good as any high-priced ivy league school). I'm not sure what the zero sum game you're referring to is. Many people do see university as a vocational institution and what's wrong with that? Making Nobody is forcing anybody to do anything, and most people are excited about becoming teachers, or software developers, lawyers, nurses or architects.

> For one thing, state schools provide quality education

Long ago I worked at a startup in Los Angeles. We had software engineers from all over, but because of the location many from UCLA or Cal Tech. We used to have a joke about hiring a "CS major from Brown". I am sure Brown is a great school. But some of the Ivy League educated people that we would interview would have a ton of confidence and polish but not necessarily better technical skills. So they felt they deserved a better job, but it wasn't clear they were equipped to do a better job.

> For one thing, state schools provide quality education (that is as good as any high-priced ivy league school). I'm not sure what the zero sum game you're referring to is.

I know UC-Davis provides as good or better an education than Stanford (not at all sarcastic and meant in an earnest way), but it seems willfully blind to not see that they serve different social and economic roles in the American class system.

>but it seems willfully blind to not see that they serve different social and economic roles in the American class system.

Sure. Just like a BMW is a status symbol in a way that a Toyota Corolla is not. The irony in this case, which also applies to state vs ivy league schools, is that a Corolla is a more reliable car (cheaper to operate and cheaper to maintain too!) - so as a car it is 'better', though just not as 'cool'. Similarly, a state school will provide you a quality education at a fraction of the cost and afford you all or most of the same kinds of opportunities as a ivy league school.

So what does that mean for the 'American class system'? To me it means that we live in a a society where you can spend lots of money to acquire 'status'... or you can save that money and do your own thing.

If we are using car brands as analogies, sure, in some way a BMW is a status symbol on public road, but on race tracks, pretty much every non-SUV BMW model would excel. Look at how many non-purpose-built BMW production cars that entered the 2019 VLN race series. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_VLN_Series

After a car leaves the showroom, it's ultimately up to the owner to decide what to do with the car. A Corolla is great at getting groceries, but a BMW can not only take you to supermarkets but also win races on Sundays.

Oh BTW, BMW has just won the 24 Hours of the Nürbergring this past Sunday.

Run an Estimated Family Contribution sometime. Elite schools are cheaper than public, or at least similar, for kids in the middle / upper middle class range. Status is about admissions, not tuition. And sometimes about the intellectual hazing ritual (MIT, Chicago).

> I don't agree with that characterization at all.

Are you denying there's a networking benefit to attending an Ivy League school? I don't have the article I was thinking of handy, but this source (0) seems to say the main advantages are networking and status.

[0]: https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0811/the-value-o...

> an educated and informed citizenry.

The sad part is that with the exception of those graduates with degrees that require mathematical or statistical rigor, I don't find my college educated friends to be better informed than my friends without degrees.

If there is one thing I could change about education in the US, I would add classes in statistics starting in the same grade we start teaching algebra and I'd have students take both a pure math and a pure statistics classes every semester until they finish their schooling.

Classes in philosophy, especially the philosophy of science I think should also be required. As should classes in logic.

The problem is that education has become a factory that teaches people what to think and not how to think.

There’s an old concept from classical education: rhetoric. The art of persuading people with words, writing, speech, debate. A small corner of students today, law and politics, learn this.

In earlier times, we were sending a few people to college to be leaders, and thus all were expected and required to learn to persuade. The hoi polloi were not in college, and were to be convinced by said rhetorically trained leaders. There were many more hoi polloi, and democracy provided the check and balance between the educated and manipulative (in good and bad ways), and the unarmed masses.

Now we have many more topics to cover and many more students, thus the term Universe-ity. Few students learn rhetoric formally. Which is good in the sense that when there is an expectation of needing to argue, it descends into sophistry. Arguments about how many angels fit on the head of a pin, etc.

What all non-rhetoric students should learn is how not to be convinced, not to be persuaded. Something that has been called critical thinking. There have been a lot of writings in the past on how to train students in critical thinking. It was a hot topic in post-WWII education. When 60 million people die, arguably because of a lack of critical thinking, and those that survive go to college on the GI Bill, they start asking good questions. When hundreds of thousands of older students who lived through the horrors of modern war entered campus, they made it clear to the Academy that critical thinking was a priority. That sort of moral authority, gained at the end of a rifle barrel or in a cockpit facing life and death, is lacking now.

Expand that to persuaders in the visual arts, and it becomes media studies. Media studies as the transliterate counterpart of critical thinking and classical rhetoric in text. Logic falls under rhetoric. And, when you think about it, there is a broad overlap between statistics and media studies. I recommend the book, How To Lie With Statistics, published in 1954. Tufte wrote some good stuff too.

Not everybody needs to learn to be a persuader in college. That can be picked up later as needs arise or not. But everyone coming out of college needs to learn to be a critical thinker, an anti rhetorician. There are standard techniques, philosophies, ways of thinking, psychologies that could be bundled together in a Freshman course. I’m still a fan of General Semantics and cognitive bias research myself. Mixing humanities and STEM in a common cause. Fifty years ago as a high school senior, I developed a unit plan to do something similar for high school students.

Looking at prior examples, state-subsidized education seems to become indoctrination at the worst possible time. The value of education being determined by employers may be suboptimal, but it's at least decentralised enough to resist mass dishonesty or tyranny. If you have an idea to replace the current system I'd want to know how it doesn't lose that feature before I listened further.

Many European countries pay for their citizens’ university education, and from experience I can confirm that there is none of the sort of indoctrination that you are concerned about.

If anything I’d say more college-educated citizens is a shield against tyranny, as it trains you to be more intellectually critical, and therefore (one would hope)c , inoculated somewhat against anti-factual biases.

In Europe far fewer people go to college vs the US (apart from Norway, UK, NL). Moreover, they have significantly more rigorous secondary educations, especially on the technical track.

I wasn't familiar with the stats here, and this seems to be true (though I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say "far fewer"):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_...

Though note that the gap closes when you compare "equivalent to a 4-year degree or higher" rather than "equivalent to a 2-year degree or higher". Seems that 2/3 year degrees are much more common in the US for some reason. Wonder if that's 3-year bachelor's degrees vs. the more common 4-year in many European institutions.

E.g. US/UK/DE/FR, pct completed for 25-34 yr olds:

2 year: 47/49/30/45 4-year: 36/42/28/28

I'd be interested in further reading/analysis as this is a pretty rough eyeball of the tabular data on my part, and I'm not claiming to have understood this fully.

If you don't think indoctrination at universities is a serious issue, you clearly haven't seen the inside of a college classroom for quite some time.

Do you have any examples? My university education, at a state university, was paid for by my state government. I have no idea what 'indoctrination' you're talking about. The only requirements that the state government gave my university were the requirements under their land-grant status.

Colleges in the US are very skewed ideologically, towards the far left. This has been a very clear and consistent pattern building up over a few decades, but it has become obvious only in the last 5-10 years, where that bias has been exercised much more openly to promote one worldview and suppress all others. I recommend following The College Fix (http://www.thecollegefix.com/) or FIRE (https://www.thefire.org/) to keep up with stories on this topic. There are also other publications like the Chronicle (https://www.chronicle.com/) or Inside Higher-ed (https://www.insidehighered.com/) that feature some of this content.

Here are several examples of political bias/indoctrination/monocultures on college campuses:

- College faculty have overwhelmingly singular political preferences, based on their donations: https://www.thecollegefix.com/92-percent-of-college-faculty-...

- Professor who exposes lack of academic rigor in grievance studies is investigated by his university (Portland State) on "ethics" grounds: https://quillette.com/2019/07/29/when-ethics-review-becomes-...

- College students oppose free speech/thought/inquiry on campuses per polls: https://www.thecollegefix.com/shock-poll-most-students-oppos...

- University debate society bans Richard Dawkins from speaking to prioritize the "comfort" of their students: http://www.universitytimes.ie/2020/09/the-hist-will-not-be-m...

- University uses COVID as an excuse to ban some gatherings but not others based on ideology: https://www.scribd.com/document/477474467/Southeastern-Legal...

- University punishes student for his Instagram posts: https://reason.com/2020/07/24/fordham-university-disciplines...

- Professor threatens to fail students who write about Trump in a positive light: https://www.yaf.org/news/illinois-professor-threatens-to-fai...

- Professor bans student from class because he challenged the professor's views on gender: https://www.foxnews.com/us/college-student-kicked-out-of-cla...

- College tries to censor coursework that paints negative views of Islam: https://www.thefire.org/federal-court-rejects-unsound-lawsui...

I could keep going but this is what I was able to find quickly through search. The reality is that there is no room for views that go against the prevailing culture on most campuses today. Those who share the prevailing views are now in the camp of using the power of their supermajority to suppress/censor/punish/ban anyone who disagrees with them. Honest debate and truth seeking cannot take place in such an environment - and if that is true, then it follows that university environments tell people WHAT to think, not HOW to think, and that constitutes indoctrination.

The question posed is not whether the political viewpoint of academicians lean in a particular direction. The question is regards to whether government-funded schools enact the biases of the government.

You evidence demonstrates that is not the case -- many of those left-leaning professors are employed by institutions funded by the governments of red states.

I misunderstood. Federal and state funding do make up a significant portion of public university budgets, but post-recession, federal funding makes up a greater share than state funding (https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/issue-bri...). Regardless, I don't feel universities enact the biases of governments, either at the state or federal level. I think there is a general bias in the academic community that crosses those lines.

I think that bias (perceived or real) is more of a factor of US higher-education tradition of than anything else. If you get a liberal arts degree, you'll take courses focused in nuanced discussions of arts, humanities, sociology, etc... and those courses are going to be taught by people who inherently thought those topics were important enough to dedicate their lives to.

Of course, it's completely reasonable for a sociology professor to think that social issues are important, just as much as we might expect a business or economics professor to believe that business or economics is important. And the things that people think are important influences a person's politics.

If you look at the academic disciplines that are interest groups that conservative politics align with, you'll find conservatives there: petroleum engineering, business, marketing, religious studies, etc. The thing is, there's just not that many academic focus areas that contemporary conservative politics prioritizes in their messaging.

In the end, I don't think the bias of individual professors at a university is a concern as much as institutional bias is. You can never really hire a professor who doesn't have an inherent interest in their own work. The important part is that we continue the western tradition of well-rounded study so that people are exposed to as many differing viewpoints as possible.

Your point about biases aligning with the field is interesting. I think it depends on how "generalized" a field is. "Economics" for example, allows exploration of both pro-capitalist and anti-capitalist perspectives. However, social science has been subdivided into many narrow fields like "gender studies", which include presupposed assumptions. If instead these same subjects fell under a single broader field called "social science", then there is room for academic exploration both in favor of and against such assumptions.

We probably both agree that individual bias cannot realistically be eliminated. However, I feel that despite biases, individuals shouldn't practice disingenuous academic behavior. As a quick example of this, I'll offer that sociologists regularly claim there is a significant gender pay gap without performing a multivariate study that controls for various confounding factors. If they exercised more rigor and held a sincere mentality of truth seeking, they would explore those obvious contradictions to their assumptions more readily, and also welcome the same explorations from their students and peers.

I think intolerance for different opinions is broader than just professors though. It's also campus administrators (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/16/opinion/liberal-college-a...) and the students themselves (https://www.thecollegefix.com/shock-poll-most-students-oppos...). If this intolerance persists or worsens, the outcome will be that anyone who disagrees must self-censor and express blind faith to avoid negative consequences. That's not academic freedom, but rather religious coercion.

It has been nearly a decade for me, but I went to a large state school for undergraduate and an even larger state school for graduate. I too have no idea what you're talking about.

Rather than replying to my personal anecdote with a hostile "you don't know what you're talking about", I'm sure you'd find yourself with fewer downvotes if you instead provided your own personal anecdote, or some objective information supporting your argument.

I thought that this statement was sufficiently self-evident as to not require examples, anecdotal or otherwise. The comments and downvotes would suggest otherwise, so here goes a basic one.

Look at the voting registration or political donations among academics in the United States. They are skewed almost exclusively toward one party, despite the fact that the country itself is quite divided. Even arguing that it's common for a field to self-select and skew this way or that, there is an extreme political monoculture among the instructors at most U.S. universities.

Now, can one _prove_ that this leads to an insular intellectual culture there that presents one side of an issue? Probably not, that's a hard thing to prove because persuasion and beliefs are a very complex and multi-faceted topic. However, common sense would dictate that yes, when all of your instructions are aligned more or less with one part of the political spectrum the end result is a lopsided presentation of things that has the effect of indoctrinating students to the dominant political view of the instructors, even if that was never the explicit intent.

One example from my own experience. I had a public health professor who did a multi-part lecture on the evil of the U.S. embargo on Cuba. This took place over several classes resulting in about four hours of total lecture time, and included a fair amount of history. At no point during any lecture did she mention the Cuban missile crisis, i.e. the Cuban government allowing the Soviet Union to place nuclear weapons 90 miles off of the American coast, putting a large portion of the population at risk of nuclear destruction. Now I don't think this necessarily justifies the embargo, but to spend four days of class discussing the embargo on Cuban without a single mention the Cuban missile crisis is intellectually irresponsible at best, and a example of someone's personal bias worming its way into the instruction.

Please, examples.

How does Hungary defunding gender studies fit into that worldview?

how does it not fit into that worldview?

"There is none of the indoctrination you speak of"

Defunding an area of study because the ruling party doesn't like it sure looks like state propaganda to me. Funding coming from the government makes that easier.

So, a semi-fascist government trying to undermine education is an argument against publicly available education?

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/03/world/europe/soros-hungar...

They already got rid of the non-government funded ones, that didn't seem to be any more difficult that going after the government funded ones...

Part of a solid academic education includes entertaining viewpoints that you might not necessarily agree with. Academics is the proper place to have those discussions. If your tax dollars don't support an unfettered academic discussion, they are by definition, supporting a biased agenda.

That's kind of the point I'm trying to make. When governments start dictating to institutions of learning is when voices independent of government are needed most.

Edit: I should add that, while most of the people who think college indoctrination is a problem would think it's propaganda to teach gender studies in the first place and defunding it is not, the very fact that an administration has to make that decision at all means that someone somewhere is going to feel the government is indoctrinating their children.

To maybe add some more particulars to this, in most Western countries governmental authority is legitimized via public opinion. We all have heard that "a well educated citizenry is critical to democracy" but one ought to also consider that one's education will impact one's opinions. So state funded education could theoretically manipulate mass opinion in favor of government backed positions over time (maybe by framing historical events in a particular way for example).

Manipulating public opinion may seem petty or roundabout for a government but having legitimized policy creates a lot of stability for decision makers so it seems worthwhile. The gambit even pays off when the majority of the public isn't persuaded by education too, since the people who agree with you are by definition the "well educated" you can give their opinion more weight without seeming like a tyrant.

That's the idea being alluded to by the parent here at least I think.

Yes, and it's an idea that has no basis on the actual, not theoretical, experience of most of us here.

My experience has been that I never learned much negative about my city/state/country in grade/high school. I had to learn all those things elsewhere.

Yeah I suppose to detect a situation like this you'd need to do some sort of meta analysis on changes in how historical narratives are framed versus government policy. Like, maybe some country goes from ally to non ally and then historical narratives around that country shift to a slightly more negative tone. I dunno.

My opinion was more shaped by accounts of education when state power waned - By the accounts I've heard Rome, the USSR, the Ottomans etc all tried to retain power by tightening control over institutions of education. It's a natural lever to grab for when things get worse, and it's also when these institutions most need to be independent.

All institutions, public, private, and communities, have a narrative that favors them. That's not particular to universities.

However out of all the institutions I have personally and anecdotally interacted with, universities have by the far the most openness to dissenting ideas, by a very substantial margin.

A lot of people revel at the amount of internal gossip and conflict within universities, but the fact that it exists, rather than there being people kicked out without question, is a testament to its flexibility.

> Looking at prior examples, state-subsidized education seems to become indoctrination at the worst possible time.

3/4 of the university students in the US are currently enrolled in a state-subsidized public institution. This has been the status-quo for many decades.

To the contrary, US state universities are known for their solid educational foundations and research output -- and the reputation of various private-universities in the US is rather spotty.

The reputation of private schools is “spotty” in the sense of being a much broader distribution, IMO.

The very top schools and the very worst schools tend to be private, with the latter being the (near-?)scam, for-profit schools.

As a european that statement just seems disconnected from reality.

I understand that it is how many americans view the world, but claiming that the society that I live in can't possible exist is... disheartening.

Even to many Americans.

college education is free in Germany. They also are known for their engineering prowess...

Is it true that Germany “tracks” students early and aggressively? I.e. if you’re not doing well academically, then you are encouraged to use the vocational track.

Not that there’s anything wrong with vocational training compared to a university. The plumber who came out for a 15 minute house call probably makes more than I do in a year.

> Not that there’s anything wrong with vocational training compared to a university.

The quality of work put out by German tradesmen is also world-class: I think the system deserves praise. Small manufacturing businesses are the backbone of German exports.

That’s a lot of corporatocracy kool aid you’re drinking.

Corporations (who pay lower taxes than citizens) in charge of education is a specific form of dystopian hell.

I did say it was suboptimal. The fact that you chose to insult rather than put forward solutions tells me you either don't understand the strengths of such a system or know your own solution would fall short.

Education determined by private employers will have less groupthink than education determined by a democratically elected group of legislators?

>At the level of state schools, it's a zero sum game that people feel forced to enter because their ability to make a living is otherwise severely impaired.

What you're missing here is that colleges... teach stuff. You are more skilled after you get a good STEM degree than you were before you got that degree. Medical schools aren't a "zero sum game" or way to protect the oligarchy, they teach you how to practice medicine. This tangible, practical value of education is missing from the humanities.

The humanities in theory would teach humanity. That is, the patterns of literature, philosophy, art, and communication that lead to the best human outcomes and amplify human talent and virtue. It should be training in how to engage with the wider world productively and positively.