[tway_GdBRwW]

> Universities will have to start focusing on ROI.

In Europe, they have a simpler system. Education is paid for from taxes. If a student does well, they pay for it via taxes. If they don't, then they aren't crippled by debt.

The problem with the ROI approach is it still places too much burden on the student, and, well, life happens. Say you major in comp sci (or some other high-paying field) but shortly after graduation something happens which prevents you from working in the field. Sucks to be you.

And likewise it sets up universities to, as you say, "cut courses with poor returns." Like for example "teaching", because school teacher pay is crap, so it has a poor ROI.

[vondur]

I would imagine in Europe they select more carefully the students whom will go to College. Here in the US we've told students that everyone must go to College. We now have too many people in College and many of them aren't going to be successful once they are in. It's not sustainable. In many of our public universities, the graduation rate is well below 50%

[sofixa]

> I would imagine in Europe they select more carefully the students whom will go to College. Here in the US we've told students that everyone must go to College

You imagine wrong. Pretty much everyone goes to university in most and European countries. Even in wildly tourist dependent places, a degree in tourism is a normal thing for a young person to pursue before going to work at hotels/restaurants.

[dukeyukey]

It's actually less than half for the EU as a whole - https://erudera.com/news/statistics-show-41-of-eu-youngsters...

[sofixa]

The absurdly low numbers for Romania and Hungary make me think that people leaving to study abroad fall through the cracks in these stats.

[dukeyukey]

If those students/graduates move to other European countries (which they mostly do), they'll be counted in their destination country, evening things out.

Where did you get the idea most Europeans get a degree?

[sofixa]

> If those students/graduates move to other European countries (which they mostly do), they'll be counted in their destination country, evening things out

If they move to the Netherlands, the NL will only count what % of its citizens have degrees, not everyone else (because many may go back or move elsewhere after finishing their studies, you can't count them easily alongside the rest of your population; students are usually counted as some sort of temporary resident, if counted at all). And then there's also the UK which is a top study destination for Eastern Europeans.

> Where did you get the idea most Europeans get a degree

I come from one EU country, live in another, have friends from all over the EU, have visited as a student and now working adult. Most young people pursue degrees, even in forestry or tourism or whatever topic. Of course some will fail getting them, but 30% of under 30s is absurdly low for stats to be reliable.

[Lukas_Skywalker]

In Switzerland, it‘s only about 15%. The others most often do an apprenticeship: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/politics/apprenticeship-system/...

It‘s a pretty efficient (and quite unique) system. People learn to do their job at a normal company and attend school for usually two days a week. And they can still switch to the university track later without starting from the beginning.

[MichaelRazum]

Wow interesting! Swiss have also one of the highst gpd per capita. And the university EthZ beats most of other European universities.

The thing you mentioned is not unique to Swiss Germany had it as well. But I think still you have there more people who study...

[cscurmudgeon]

Data says otherwise though.

Only three European countries are above the US in tertiary education rate: Ireland, UK and Luxembourg.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1227287/share-of-people-...

[robertlagrant]

> Say you major in comp sci (or some other high-paying field) but shortly after graduation something happens which prevents you from working in the field. Sucks to be you.

That's why the article's saying you should be able to declare bankruptcy.

> And likewise it sets up universities to, as you say, "cut courses with poor returns." Like for example "teaching", because school teacher pay is crap, so it has a poor ROI.

Teaching is relatively well paid and there are huge numbers of jobs. It's highly likely that a teacher could repay loans. There are plenty of degrees far less capable of providing employment than teaching.

[magnoliakobus]

I think most people would agree with me in saying the European model sounds pretty swell compared to forcing people into declaring bankruptcy because of economic/personal factors potentially out of their control, while also inserting an incredible amount of volatility into the entire university system that would make long term institutional planning much less possible.

[BeetleB]

Be careful what you wish for. The majority of my fellow engineering graduates would not have gotten an engineering degree in Germany.

They would have flunked the first year - a weed out year - and then been forced into a technical diploma program and not be allowed to call themselves engineers.

My friend who went to the German school said they have a target of flunking half the students that first year. Funds are limited and shape how many can graduate.

[kraussvonespy]

And in the US, bankruptcy doesn't help with the student debt, so if the majority of your debt is student loans, there's really nothing that can be done other than die to get rid of them. And I'm 100% certain that if the student loan - industrial complex could saddle relatives and kids with that debt after death, they'd sure go after that too.

[luckylion]

Many will agree, but that's part of the reason why the US has a 50% higher GDP with 30% lower population. Focusing on well-beeing, fun and experience comes at a price.

[GreenWatermelon]

GDP that's concentrated in the top few % of the population.

The fact that despite 50% higher GPD and 30% less population there's still rampant homelessness is damning enough.

[robertlagrant]

> The fact that despite 50% higher GPD and 30% less population there's still rampant homelessness is damning enough.

You can't solve all of that through GDP. There are social and drug and mental health issues that seem to not present to nearly the same extent.

[dahart]

The U.S. GDP per capita is behind Norway, Ireland, Switzerland, and these countries are known for low cost and excellent education.

What do you mean about 30% lower population? How is that relevant? You’re quoting a per-capita stat, the population was already factored out. And you’re comparing a single country to 27 countries. Makes zero sense.

[chrisweekly]

> "Teaching is relatively well paid"

Compared to what? In the US, teachers are absolutely underpaid relative to their similarly-educated and -skilled peers in other professions.

[robertlagrant]

Compared to degrees that could struggle on average to pay back a loan, e.g. a degree in the humanities.

[chrisweekly]

Not to be argumentative (really ), but that's borderline nonsensical; you're comparing a profession to a broad category of educational attainment. Teachers typically have a degree in the humanities. What other profession is so commonly viewed as underpaid?

[schaefer]

You forgot to mention teachers in the US are also overworked.

[chrisweekly]

Sure -- though that's almost just two ways of describing the same thing. If teachers were paid $500k, few would describe them as overworked, and if they only had to work 4-hour days (with current salaries and benefits), they might be fairly compensated.

[Cyph0n]

Teaching as in school teachers? In the US? Not even close to being well paid.

[BurningFrog]

> In Europe, they have a simpler system

Europe does NOT have an education system!

The ~50 different European countries all have their own systems, with huge differences between them.

[tourmalinetaco]

In the USA, the government also pays for education. That’s part of the problem, in fact. Since the loan to the college is always paid for by the government, the college is effectively handed a blank check. Said check, now filled in with an arbitrarily high amount, is handed to the student as a bill to pay back to the government. The same is done in your system, in fact, except that the entire country suffers that burden, regardless of if that degree actually amounts to any meaningful contribution.

[gruez]

>In Europe, they have a simpler system. Education is paid for from taxes. If a student does well, they pay for it via taxes. If they don't, then they aren't crippled by debt.

That's all well and good for the student, but what about for taxpayers/governments who's funding that education?

>And likewise it sets up universities to, as you say, "cut courses with poor returns." Like for example "teaching", because school teacher pay is crap, so it has a poor ROI.

Sounds like the solution is to raise teacher pay, which would also have the added benefit of retaining teachers after they graduate. Giving teachers cheap training but paying them poorly seems worse than the status quo because you end up shoveling money into training teachers that'd end up dropping out anyways.

[crazygringo]

> That's all well and good for the student, but what about for taxpayers/governments who's funding that education?

We can say the same thing about K-12 education -- it's just something we choose to fund collectively, because that's the kind of society we want to be.

But also, progressive taxation means that the rich fund it more than the poor. So the general idea is that if law school and medical school are expensive to provide but result in vastly higher salaries, then it gets paid for in the end out of those lawyers' and doctors' taxes. Not the taxes from average Americans.

[gruez]

>We can say the same thing about K-12 education -- it's just something we choose to fund collectively, because that's the kind of society we want to be.

But in K-12 education, the taxpayer/state has strong control over what's taught. In the last few years there's some latitude by the students, but nothing close the panoply of programs offered by universities. If education is state funded, but only for programs with proven ROI (eg. STEM), I'd be fine with that.

[jltsiren]

When the state pays, what matters is the ROI to the state. There is a need for teachers, social workers, and people familiar with various cultures, but the market will never pay them well.

Public funding models often have incentives for delivering the degrees the state wants. For example, there could be field-specific quotas for degrees. The university gets paid for each degree up to the quota, but not for exceeding the quota. That can have interesting effects in fields that are popular but in low demand. For example, the acceptance rate to psychology can be as low as 2-3%.

[tourmalinetaco]

Progressive taxation isn’t even necessary. If someone makes $10,000 and is taxed 10%, they give up $1,000. And if someone makes $10,000,000 then they give up $1,000,000.

[nyokodo]

> Progressive taxation isn’t even necessary

It isn’t necessary, no, and in fact a flat super simple tax code would probably result in more tax revenue. However, since politicians like the power of the tax code, and because the wealthy like a complex tax code for all the loopholes, and since ordinary people like the idea of those wealthier than them paying more tax as a percentage of their income, then we’re never going to get a simple tax code.

[oldprogrammer2]

But it’s not the same as K-12. I can’t send my kids to an expensive private boarding school and expect taxes to pay for it.

[sofixa]

And absolutely the same logic can and should apply for universities - there can be private exclusive institutions, but the majority should be affordable and mostly paid for by taxes.

[penguin1029]

This already is the case. 75% of student debt is private universities and colleges.

If you get into Stanford but can't afford it, a loan seems like a good idea, but in reality the loan eligibility should consider the degree and future earning potential (along the same lines of how banks qualify other types of loans).

If we simply cancel student debt or remove private colleges' ability to charge a market rate the result will be no more private colleges (similar to other countries with fully publicly funded education). In these countries you typically have a national exam that determines where you go, or you have to lottery in to a school if it isn't in your district.

[tough]

A country's which population is educated, usually bodes well, unless it's an authoritative govt one, in which case dumbing down the population is the way (from the govt POV, at least)

[jimbob45]

Say you major in comp sci (or some other high-paying field) but shortly after graduation something happens which prevents you from working in the field. Sucks to be you.

And if you’re a nurse or a police officer or a teacher or a lawyer and you lose your license under specious circumstances, it really sucks to be you.

[bradleyjg]

It’s not much better for the taxpayers to be lighting money on fire. Also, the students still pay for it in the most precious currency there is—-time.

Credentialism is pernicious regardless.

[fardo]

Simpler isn’t always preferable: note that the key feature from the consumer perspective in that system is

> you pay no matter what

Meaning if it’s assumed “despite learning little, you still will be able to pay for it”, there’s no longer any motive force towards quality, as your payment is assured. Incentives on taxpayers thereafter who want to minimize their tax burden would therefore be optimizing primarily toward cheapness of the educational process, rather than efficacy and quality of the education which outbound students received.

A vigorous market for education, would suggest you would likely get a variety of nodes along a “costliness to quality” options frontier.

[eesmith]

> there’s no longer any motive force towards quality, as your payment is assured

There are many excellent European universities, including ones which have been around for centuries, telling me there are ways to handle your concerns.

> A vigorous market for education

How's that Corinthian Colleges degree working out? Costly and no quality. And exactly the life-crippling outcome we should expect in a 'vigorous market'.

[fardo]

This is non-responsive to my point. Pointing out that paid universities like Corinthian in a grossly distorted market predictably are not very competitive offerings, or that good offerings can nevertheless still exist in heavily distorted markets, both fail to address that

> Current educational incentives caused by how payment is handled in these all-pay systems mean there is very little or no pressure exerted towards promoting an educational arms race towards quality, rather than minimizing cost to service that education.

In a more competitive market, yes, I believe you'd both likely see better European offerings, as well as substantially more compelling American paid offerings than the current batch of cash grab for-profit universities. They exist in their current form almost exclusively because financial lenders in the US have no incentive not to issue loans to students - even if the program is bogus, they are guaranteed re-payment.

This is a commonality shared between both current European offerings (via taxation guaranteeing repayment), and American alternatives (via guaranteed load repayment).

[eesmith]

'In a more competitive market' sounds like an article of faith, akin to the No True Scotsman, where there's no definition of what is competitive enough until it meets the proponents' sniff test.

What would a sufficiently competitive market entail? Has it ever existed?

Would it look like modern US K-12 systems where commercial schools prioritize the most profitable students and leave the others to the public schools? Where good marketing beats good education?

How would it not be "heavily distorted" by impositions like Title 9 and other civil rights requirements? By government requirements on the school in order to receive state and federal money? By accreditation requirements?

[fardo]

>has it ever existed?

This question being written as singular suggests to me you’re conflating some combination of education as a concept, education in America, and education in Europe. I see this as muddled thinking, they each have their own issues and their own timetables over which issues can and do exist.

Education history in Europe is actually decently hyperlocal and pretty path dependent for each country during the 19th and 20th century. Talking about it as a monolith is challenging, but there’s a pretty consistent pattern in societies with all-pay taxation-paid schooling that it has clear incentive structures that a school, having been “paid up front“, is not incentivized to put in the work to provide a high quality education, and as the financier of that education is the taxpayer, the pressure is primarily to keep costs low.

As for America, you don’t need much faith to believe that in the US instituting dischargeability would dramatically improve competition and quality in these spaces and the market for education - so yes, this market used to be substantially more competitive and used to exist. Since the 1970s when these laws were passed, student debt and tuition costs have skyrocketed, low quality for-profit university creation skyrocketed, and people have been hobbled with debt for degrees many are never going to pay back. Dischargeability reduces this greatly - it causes financiers to create motive pressure on education to not be a fiscal vampire preying on its students and equip them with meaningful trades and socially useful knowledge.

As for standards and regulations on schools, assuming the public sees fit to fund higher education through government spending, having requirements for a school to receive that government funding seems reasonable, so long as they reflect the desires of the local populace.

Ultimately, all this is a discussion of tradeoffs - I think someone can happily prefer

> everyone gets a free tertiary education paid for by their taxes

I think that it being free and paid-by-all means it’ll have low motive pressure towards quality and therefore be comparably mediocre to free elementary and secondary compulsory education, which even based on your own reckoning seems to be a two-tier system where the public institutions get short shrift - but you seem to care about it being free or less focused on fiscal student outcomes as its own value. It’s a tradeoff.

[eesmith]

> but you seem to care about

I care about having actual definitions of what "more competitive market" and "vigorous market for education" means, and gave examples of markets with significant market failures.

Is it even possible to have a vigorous market without strong government oversight?