[staunton]

> this is what we will get 10x with free college

That seems quite different. First, lots of countries have free higher education and seem to do just fine. Second, lowering price of entry is orthogonal to lowering expected performance. Your argument does not apply.

[ElFitz]

Some countries even pay students to attend their highest ranking engineering schools.

[upsidesinclude]

>highest ranking engineering

By defintion some of the highest performing students who must compete for entry.

These are not apples alike.

[ElFitz]

This is what I was answering to:

> (Side note, this is what we will get 10x with free college, and the guaranteed loans have already driven it this way a bit more)

But perhaps good colleges in the US just accept anyone that walks through the door and can pay the tuition?

[upsidesinclude]

Effectively. US universities work on a growth model, expanding their student body and capital investment for tax purposes and to increase profits. There is always some school that will accept a student for the sake of those unforgivable government supplied student loans

[SideQuark]

Every free college country sends less of their people through college than the US. Is that the outcome we want? Fewer educated?

[leoedin]

Maybe? The idea that "more formal education is better" is kind of silly when you dig into it. What value does it give society to have a huge percentage of people spend some of their most important years learning things which are completely perpendicular to whatever career they might do?

Education at this point feels like exploitation. We tell people that they can achieve greatness, they just have to pay huge amounts to a college to be educated, when the truth is that most of the value of college is networking and status signalling, and the value of those is pretty much directly related to how prestigious the institution is.

Yes, we should set up a system that allows all people, whatever their background, to pursue a liberal arts education if they're passionate about it. But a system that makes a pretty useless and very expensive degree a barrier for entry for completely unrelated jobs is just exploitative.

[SideQuark]

> Maybe? The idea that "more formal education is better" is kind of silly when you dig into it

If you believe that is true, then why would a country want to pay for it? After all, the world isn't limited to your strawmen.

The reason it's valuable to countries the world over, why so many want to pay for it, and why most all of them provide some level of public paid education, is it demonstrably results in a population that ends up with a higher standard of living.

Dont believe it? Simply check Google scholar.

[ElFitz]

> Every free college country sends less of their people through college than the US.

Really? Says who? Because the OECD certainly doesn’t seem to think there’s any significant difference.

https://data.oecd.org/eduatt/population-with-tertiary-educat...

https://data.oecd.org/eduatt/adult-education-level.htm

[SideQuark]

From your data, median and mean among OECD with state paid tertiary education is 42% and 43%. US is 51.2%.

So the mean and median is around 20% less people with tertiary educations.

When you say no significant difference, what is your threshold? 50% less people educated? 20% is a huge difference.

[ElFitz]

Yes, but most countries in general have lower tertiary education rates.

If I too were to play the data cherry picking game, I could point out that Norway is at 55%.

How does that prove anything?

It just disproves your unfounded assertion:

> Every free college country sends less of their people through college than the US

I really fail to see how any of this proves any causality between free college and lower or higher education rates.

But it seems you enjoy shifting goalposts, so perhaps we should end it here?

[yakubin]

Lithuania and Poland say hello: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_...>

[SideQuark]

That's 2014 data. Here's 2022 Poland data. https://data.oecd.org/eduatt/population-with-tertiary-educat...

Lithuania doesn't have free college https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries...

[yakubin]

> Lithuania doesn't have free college

My bad. I assumed free college is standard in that region.

[kahirsch]

> Every free college country sends less of their people through college than the US.

That used to be true.

[elashri]

Do you mean per-capita or over all? Because a very few countries with a bigger number of populations than US have free-education. If the former, can you provide a data source?

[revelio]

They mean per capita. Countries with very cheap or free university allow very few people to go on such terms, relative to the size of the population.

[jpgvm]

Yes but they also generally don't offer bullshit degrees that people obtain and then end up working at McDonalds.

Germany, Switzerland, Belgium all come to mind as countries with free or near-free education that while they don't graduate the same % of their population through tertiary eduction it's not for lack of available opportunity but rather many people choose not to pursue tertiary eduction.

This is actually a good thing because they are often choosing alternatives like vocational education that is more suited to their career choices.

Baristas with university degrees is the outcome of pushing everyone to get a degree and is common place in both the US, Canada and Australia as a result as all 3 have this same notion that you need a degree to get a job. Atleast in Australia and Canada you don't also get saddled with crippling debt.

[revelio]

Sure. I'm not saying their approach is bad or wrong, I'm supportive of it. I'm just observing that it results in far fewer people getting degrees. Agreed that this may be for the best.

[jpgvm]

I see, that wasn't how I interpreted what you originally wrote but yes, fewer people with degrees but seemingly better outcome.

[throwaway71271]

looking at how things are going, why would you want more educated people?