It's easy to make the argument:
"If we invest $1M in education, we will have $10M in additional future economic output, $4M in future taxes, and $20M less in law enforcement / criminal prosecution / jail fees. It improves global competitiveness."
That's a no-brainer. Education is a very high ROI investment for a country. Like infrastructure spending or industrial policy, it's about cold, hard economics.
One step more complex -- but equally high ROI -- is towards having a functioning democracy. That's economics, but a bit more squishy.
Investing in the arts, humanities, and music is a good thing as well. However, that's a very different bucket of money. I wouldn't lump it in with the former two.
They may of course contribute as individuals, too, but their training is not required for them to do so.
Nurses and carpenters help society and functioning civilization.
In other words, we need more people with a minor in the humanities and fewer people with a major in it.
Not everyone must be a plumber or electrician, but we're well-served by having some basic knowledge, and an ability to find answers to the questions that arise as we do basic handywork, such as changing a lightswitch or replacing a faucet. Similarly, we are well-served as a society when we can answer basic questions about our democracy past the age of 18; IE, shortly after testing ends, and typically before it actually matters - when voting.
Not everyone needs to become a licensed electrician, or have a deeper-than-average understanding of civics. But knowing someone you can trust with an answer that isn't purely to line their own pocket is still important.
All political systems (all of them) have "holes" in that they're more or less dependent on individual virtue to function in a long-term fashion - some of them having holes so large they can only work as naïve thought experiments with perfect civically-minded (thus imaginary) people - and not academic knowledge, which is completely orthogonal to said virtue.
That "grasp of civics" you're talking about is the same, it's not about knowing but being willing to make some real thankless efforts; the culprits in the proverbial "Tragedy of the commons" aren't ignorant.
however, my understanding (though i can't speak for the other commenters) is that the reasoning behind "humanities-educated people make better democracies" is NOT that humanities-educated people are more virtuous, and thus will willingly not degrade the commons (the reasoning you seem to be criticizing). rather, it's that humanities-educated people cannot be manipulated as easily by a demagogue (and other similar things).
the usually cited problem with democracy is that it gives the people the power to choose, but it does not automatically makes them capable to make good choices. that's where the education comes in.
clearly many questions require technical/domain knowledge to be answered and are not simply a matter of preference. for example, fixing your car, or building a bridge. and even running a business or cooking an elaborate meal. with technical knowledge, you are able to make better decisions whatever your preferences are. humanities education is then implied to be the "technical knowledge" for participating in society.
of course, in that case, we can discuss what should be the content of the "humanities education", but that's another discussion...
I can see where you reasoning is coming from but I mostly disagree. I can see two factors that could prevent manipulation: 1. The rare case of wisdom (that I define as being strong willed enough to think independently and not fall for self-deception/wishful thinking + intelligent enough to think correctly) which doesn't apply here since education doesn't influence this and 2. Manipulation going too much against the previous indoctrination, which does apply here but kinda defeats the point.
In fact, I'm mostly distrustful of intellectuals (!= intelligent people). That misattributed Thucydides quote about scholars ("The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools.") further illustrated by Uncle Ted ("Though they like to fancy themselves independent thinkers, the intellectuals are (allowing for individual exceptions) the most oversocialized, the most conformist, the tamest and most domesticated, the most pampered, dependent, and spineless group in America today.") summarize my position.
Where I do agree is that practical/technical knowledge allowing individuals to be more independent and less reliant on specialized technicians to change a light bulb is highly important. Sadly, the Western world I (we?) belong to has almost finished removing teaching of DIY and even the individual ability to do so (cf modern cars, appliances or operating systems). I suspect that this isn't a coincidence considering the aforementioned ramifications...
but i also believe that in fact knowledge is another very important factor in resisting manipulation (absent from your list), and more generally, being part of a functioning democracy. i mean here knowledge of lofty things like history, economics, sociology, which can then serve as a base to know and understand more practical things, like laws, regulations, taxes, government subsidies, or how roads, schools, or health insurance is funded -- otherwise how could anyone make any decision regarding these topics? and all of these things can be taught.
independent thinking is important but with zero knowledge you could maybe be convinced to join a cult or something, for example. like, for ancient peasants the king was effectively a god anyway.
of course, all of this is highly idealized. i agree with you and Uncle Ted. academia, in practice, often is not a place that champions these ideals. but maybe it could be.
> Sadly, the Western world I (we?) belong to has almost finished removing teaching of DIY and even the individual ability to do so
yeah, i fear these developments
And it is false. Those are truthisms, except at one point, college can destroy people’s lives. College can teach people wrong things. College can misdirect people from being about to contribute to the economy and redirect them towards the political goals of the teachers, especially when those don’t derive revenue from their contribution to the economy. College can also misdirect people who would have been happier and more useful with immediate work.
There goes my demonstration: College can be harmful to society, it’s subjective to judge when the threshold was crossed. For my opinion, it was crossed in 2013 through politicization.
A lot more than we have now.
> One (or a few) sculpture can satisfy the needs of a large community.
I cannot disagree more. You may as well say that no one should tell stories anymore because we already have the Iliad and Hamlet. You may as well say that Vincent van Gogh was wasting his time picking up a paintbrush because we already had so many great Renaissance paintings.
Art isn't a commodity where you spend 15 minutes a day Admiring Art and it gives you the aesthetic equivalent of your daily protein intake.
I completely agree with you, but
1) you can make art without taking out enormous loans and
2) if you want to pay cash or take out a private loan to attend these schools you still can
3) learning about art does not make you an artist, it makes you a museum curator.
The last one is probably the most important. An expensive degree does not make your painting more beautiful, or your notes more in-tune, or your bakery more delicious. It is a credential.
Examples of things with high-impact towards civics:
- Philosophy, especially political philosophy. Aristotle, Confucius, Marx, Smith, ...
- History, political science, economics, journalism
- Theory of law, studied academically. Lawyers, for the most part, have the opposite effect.
- Anthropology + international relations
Examples of things which currently don't:
- Most major in art, film, visual studies, literature, African/women's/LGBTQ/Asian/... studies, language majors, linguistics, ...
This is a statement about the practice of such majors. For example:
* Art/film/... ought to contribute, historically has contributed, and in much of Europe, actually still does. In most of the US, it leads to either unemployment or work in advertising, and doesn't teach the right things.
* Looking at the experiences of different minorities ought to contribute. In practice, most of these majors are dysfunctional self-admiration cults, with people citing each other's work, due to misaligned incentive structures in academic hiring.
* It's no coincidence that the most important work in philosophy, in the past century, was not done by philosophy majors.
* A Chinese / French / Russian / ... major will place you about one tier down from a Chinese / French / Russian / ... immigrant in terms of... just about everything.
In either case, many of these things do still have value, but it's not the same funding bucket.
Even in the 00s and 10s, there used to be people complaining bitterly that they have a lot of student loans after getting a degree in puppetry (seriously.) And the same people would have lit themselves on fire in a public square if they had been denied student loans for getting a puppetry degree.
I feel that you can't have it both ways: guaranteed student loans for any degree, no matter how impractical, and also complaining that some degrees funded with student loans don't lead to a lucrative career. Choose one or the other.
That is the sticker price of college is a competition to be who is the most elite. There's also a scholarship competition, so if you have a higher sticker price, and then you give a scholarship, you can advertise you give the most scholarship money to your students.
A fool and his money are easily parted.
Traditionally the story was that almost no one paid the sticker price, but still that’s an eye watering sum even discounted.
I’m sure in the next few years we’ll have stories of people 500k in debt or more for their schooling.
The California State system, which costs $7-9 thousand per year, is far more representative.
2. The question that started this thread was “does anyone really pay 250k for college?” Even as an outlier, the UC system price is relevant. It is an existence proof that many people _do_ pay close to that sum for undergrad.
Of course you might need others things too like a car if you aren't on a larger more urban (and thus more expensive) campus. But that obviously varies.
The "good" univeristy in my state would be more like 20k for tuition in-state and like 35k for out of staters.
If you look at the music teacher example you see the end result of these perverse incentives turning into a pyramid scheme. Being a music teacher at the college is one of the few profitable ways to pay off your student debt while staying in your preferred career so of course she doesn't want to give that up, she's still in debt.
If college isn't about money, that turns college into a consumer good, but if college is a consumer good, why should the government let people borrow money for their consumption?
By that logic the government should lend money to young people so they can go on expensive vacations and enjoy their youth.
The problem is that the electorate tends to not understand the concept of second-order effects. For example, a college graduate in the arts might, directly or indirectly, generate more economic activity than someone without a college degree, regardless of the difference in income level of people in those two buckets.
The problem is going to that there's going to be a large shock to the system. As pointed out in the article, a lot of teachers make $55k. So basically no education degree should be awarded because the average worker is better than a teacher.
Eventually the supply of teachers will dry up so much that salaries will go up. But how many years do you think until that happens? And then add 4 to when the supply catches up. Although I would bet what happens is that states no longer require a degree.
Many educators are unionized. These days (it comes and goes, I wish it had been waxing when I was that age) the electricians' and HVAC techs' unions offer apprenticeships to pretty much all comers, not just the niece or nephew of a member.
If this is a fair question to ask students, then it is a fair question to ask the schools as well. They are the ones charging enormous amounts of money to students for this.
This doesn’t prevent people from learning to paint or play the clarinet. It prevents students from taking out enormous loans for it.