[dahart]

> The current system in the US was not created as a program to efficiently educate a modern workforce to maintain a modern economy , so it fails miserably

By what metric is it failing? Why do you think it wasn’t created to educate the workforce? What is your emphasis on “modern” referring to? You clearly have strong feelings about this, and I’m curious why, but your comment doesn’t clearly communicate why you feel this way, nor give much evidence to back up the belief that education is broken and that fixing it is easy. Where is the evidence that education could be more efficient? What does more efficient mean? Are you talking about financial cost, or time & effort spent learning, or something else? If it’s “easily replicated” more efficiently then why hasn’t it already happened?

[ren_engineer]

>By what metric is it failing?

the trillion dollars of student debt that can't be paid off because many degrees don't produce real economic value to justify the cost of education. Having millions of people waste years of their lives and massive amounts of money is a failure.

>Why do you think it wasn’t created to educate the workforce?

because I know the history of the university system and it's barely changed in centuries

>If it’s “easily replicated” more efficiently then why hasn’t it already happened?

because the government subsidizes it with trillions of dollars so there is no incentive to change

[dahart]

> the trillion dollars of student debt that can't be paid off because many degrees don't produce real economic value to justify the cost of education.

Less than 10% of student loan debt is in default, and the total debt is less than 2 trillion, so I don’t believe it’s accurate to say “trillions” can’t be paid off. Also according to the US Fed, degree holders earn on average 2x more than non degree holders. (Think about the increase in tax base as a result).

Student loan debt isn’t necessarily any indicator of failure. Debt is (perhaps) a natural part of the economy. There might be reasons that we should fund education and not ask students to borrow. But the borrowing by itself is not proof that anything is wasted or wrong.

> it’s barely changed in centuries.

What are you referring to? The fields of Bioengineering and Computer Science didn’t exist centuries ago. Physics and Chemistry have changed completely. Almost nothing in the modern soft sciences did either. Modern research funding is nothing like it was centuries ago, or even 50 years ago. I have no idea what you’re talking about.

> because the government subsidizes it so there is no incentive to change

Then it means people pay less than they would otherwise? That further begs the question of what kind of efficiency you want. What should a college education cost, and who should pay for it? How much should professors get paid, and who should pay them, where should the money come from?

You complained both about govt subsidizing and debt. So how do you envision this getting cheaper? I’m in favor of govt funding education, but that’s a bigger subsidy than today. I think the govt can already afford it (since degree holders earn 2x more than non degree holders) but that doesn’t change the efficiency of the system.