Well, not just elites. This is the policy everyone voted for: less taxes (causing young folks to go heavily into debt for worthless degree credentials), less social safety nets, a generational wealth transfer from the young to the old.
The results are exactly what you’d expect, and older generations should absolutely be worried when their cohort has shrunk through death to a minority voting bloc.
I don’t think taxes on regular people have dropped, we simply pretend social Security, Medicare, State and local, + fees don’t count as taxes. Which means we can “lower” federal taxes by providing less federal support to state projects.
> Deep state cuts in funding for higher education over the last decade have contributed to rapid, significant tuition increases and pushed more of the costs of college to students, making it harder for them to enroll and graduate. These cuts also have worsened racial and class inequality, since rising tuition can deter low-income students and students of color from college.
> Overall state funding for public two- and four-year colleges in the school year ending in 2018 was more than $6.6 billion below what it was in 2008 just before the Great Recession fully took hold, after adjusting for inflation.[1] In the most difficult years after the recession, colleges responded to significant funding cuts by increasing tuition, reducing faculty, limiting course offerings, and in some cases closing campuses. Funding has rebounded somewhat, but costs remain high and services in some places have not returned.
> Then, during the Reagan Era and the Tax Revolt of the 1980s, states passed tax and expenditure limitations, restrictions that state governments create to limit the amount they can tax or spend.
> “And that meant that state budgets came under threat,” explains Deming. “And so states that used to basically highly subsidize a college education for many people started to cut back in various ways, either by raising tuition or by spending less.”
> Reagan cut higher education funding and student aid, and college costs boomed as a result.
> The College Board estimates that during the 1980-1981 school year, on average, it cost students the modern equivalent of $17,410 to attend a private college and $7,900 to attend a public college — including tuition, fees, room and board. By 1990, those costs increased to $26,050 and $9,800, respectively.
a lot of it can be attributed to spending in non-academics - like administration, sports, etc. these need to be reduced.
Similar to ROTC programs for Army in conjunction with local colleges, why not special sports programs administered seperately but just co-located with regular colleges that go along with the scheduling, etc?
Administrative expenses need to be chopped from the outside, there is no way the current folks are going to reduce that.
Sports alone are generally close to self funding at many universities with plenty showing net profits. It’s not just top schools that benefit, giving alums a reason to visit and specifically care about the school has knock on effects to general donations as well as funding athletic scholarships that pay the full tuition amount.
Some athletic fees are excessive, but encouraging students to use the pool, gym etc has real benefits to student health and can be scaled to actual usage levels.
For major sports it’s mostly donations, game tickets, TV broadcast rights, concession stands, merchandise, etc.
As an example Virginia Tech football tickets are start at ~500$/season breaks down as 8$/game fee + 400 base price + variable required donation and can go up well over 2k a season for the better seats. It’s a 35,000 seat stadium that’s largely full so your talking a minimum of 20+ million in annual ticket sales just for Football.
By comparison VT has 39,000 students and the athletic fee is 163$ + a recreational Sports Fee of 163$, together it’s 5% of tuition. Which collectively adds up to a similar scale as just one sports ticket sales, but covers general facilities used by any student. Looking across all sports and revenue streams the recreational sports fee clearly isn’t the major funding source and as football etc contribute indirectly to the schools general fund their clearly close to break even if not a significant money maker.
Less taxes does not mean dropped taxes. More succinctly, the proportion of government expenditures going towards younger people’s education has decreased than expenditures going towards older people or other populations.
>> less taxes (causing young folks to go heavily into debt for worthless degree credentials)
So let me understand this thought process? It is better for Taxpayers to pay for "worthless degree credentials"
The biggest problem in society as far as jobs are concerned is credential-ism itself. A standard public education should be good enough for a person to obtain a good middle class job, a K-12 education should be good enough for 50-60% of all jobs in the market
That fact that it is not, is a huge indictment of both the private sector demanding too much, and the public school system no providing proper standard of education.
K-12 SHOULD NOT be "college prep" like it is being treated today, and a person SHOULD NOT need a 4 year degree to do the most basic jobs in society, up to and including computer programming or other general IT work.
I think you have it in your mind that the government can solve all of these problems with higher taxes and more spending, when in reality government is almost exclusively to blame for the majority of the problems
> The biggest problem in society as far as jobs are concerned is credential-ism itself. A standard public education should be good enough for a person to obtain a good middle class job, a K-12 education should be good enough for 50-60% of all jobs in the market
Why? What if the markets’ supply and demand curves indicate need for people with more than high school education, and an oversupply of people with just high school education?
Note that I think US public school education standards are basically non existent, and there should be a massive retooling to ensure higher standards (including standardized testing) and more focus on actual skills in high school so that at 18 the kid comes out with something usable.
But I do not see how or why our society can guarantee someone a certain class of living with an arbitrary amount of education.
But there are far more jobs demanding a college degree where it's not required to be successful at that job, than jobs requiring college degree skills and knowledge but accepting under qualified high school graduates.
>>What if the markets’ supply and demand curves indicate need for people with more than high school education
Then that indicates the high school education is not stringent enough for the market, and should be adjusted accordingly
> and an oversupply of people with just high school education?
The market is showing currently an extreme lack of qualified people. if the market is saying there is an " oversupply of people with just high school education" but there are millions of jobs open, that means the market is telling us that a High School Diploma is meaningless to the market, which as you point out that is what many employers are saying. They are hire people with a High School Diploma and it is a crap shoot where they have basic levels of education or not because in many schools its a participation award not a skills award
This has driven employers to respond with demanding higher levels of "education" in an effort so screen people..
> The market is showing currently an extreme lack of qualified people.
And/or a lack of commensurate wages to incentivize qualified people.
We agree on the situation as it currently is of high school being worthless since you pass just for showing up at least half the days of the school year.
But supposed there is a future where K-12 education is rigorous and we improve to the point that calculus and basic physics/chem/bio are as normal as reading and writing, then I can envision a situation where K-12 might not be enough.
I disagree with you about government as the solution. First, the government should cover, at no cost, two years of community college. Second, employers should be unable to mandate higher education that requires candidates to go into tens of thousands of dollars of debt if employers can't show that credential isn't materially required to perform a role's functions.
>>First, the government should cover, at no cost, two years of community college
I am honestly not opposed to that... But I still believe we should have a better Public Education system less focused on "college prep" and more focused on actual education, preparing people for Life, Jobs, etc as an adult.
The 2 years of Community College should be Vocational Training for the chosen field after your General Education is done in the K-12.
But many people go to Community College to complete their General Education College requirements for their 4 year degree..
> Second, employers should be unable to mandate higher education that requires candidates to go into tens of thousands of dollars of debt if employers can't show that credential isn't materially required to perform a role's functions.
Will be difficult to enforce. Employers can always look at the degree and secretly use it as a criterion, while being prepared to claim there was something else about the candidate that led them to hire her.
Our subsidizing and marketing college for everyone is the root problem, and it’s calling all sorts of knock-on effects. This not only leaves people in debt and causes young people to put off productive life, but have created a surplus of people with useless degrees that are going in and remaking various aspects of life and politics into an academic mold according to academic theories that have little real-world value.
If we’re not willing to end massive subsidies for higher education (and we’re not) we should use the government’s massive leverage (by virtue of that flow of dollars) to impose tight enrollment caps on various degrees, and shut down universities that aren’t creating economic value. We should also create alternative credentialing systems that cut universities out of the picture, because degrees are often just used as a proxy for intelligence and work ethic.
