[piva00]

> Look, the cost comes from somewhere. You earn it later and pay it later, in taxes or in loan service payments. Either way, you pay it. At least with a loan you have a shot at being done paying one day. And this sort of thing only makes sense as a nation managing a treasury if the people go on to make significantly more from their degrees.

Society benefits from having a highly educated population, even if wealth generated by that is squandered by a class of people, a society needs people to be educated to be able to innovate and generate new wealth.

If you are only thinking in financial terms there's no way for higher education to ever make sense in the long term, given that over time it slowly becomes the new status quo (as it's happening), and salaries won't ever continue to increase with higher education when there's a larger and larger share of the labour pool highly educated. It is still a net benefit to society to have highly educated people, there's more specialised labourers to draw from to transform ideas into wealth generation.

I don't think we should ever think of education in purely individual's finance terms, I gladly pay my taxes (in parts to fund education) in a country where I wasn't educated in because I know it benefits me in the end, more educated people helps to avoid economical stagnation.

It's not free lunch but giving everyone in a society an equal opportunity to achieve specialised education is a net positive in the long term, even if it costs a lot. The same with healthcare.

> With the way education is going, credentials no longer guarantee good pay, and if everyone can go "for free" then every job will require a degree

That already happens in the USA even with education being as expensive it is, I don't believe it's a sound argument...

[readthenotes1]

"Society benefits from having a highly educated population, "

Show your work here. Society also benefits from having electricians, plumbers, and garbage men.

Be sure to include how you would prove that graduating with a bachelor's degree indicates that the graduate is educated. From what I have seen, that ain't necessarily so.

[friend_and_foe]

You don't believe that the scenario I'm describing as it is happening before your eyes is a sound argument?

[piva00]

Given that the USA does not provide universally free education and still suffers from degree inflation requirements, no, I don't believe it's a sound argument that free education would make it worse. It will happen anyway, as it is happening in the USA, even if it costs a lot.

At least with free education everyone has the opportunity to attend it no matter your level of wealth or your financial outcomes from it.

[friend_and_foe]

That's not the argument I made though. The argument I made is that it isn't any better, isn't free, and as a further point, they'll do away with the free university programs when they cease to provide economic return because it's a mirage.