LogFAQs > #893632236

EvilMegas posted...

Come on Zeus, i know its a gimmick but jeez

Having opinions is a gimmick now? What?

Mead posted...

Our entire higher education system is borked and needs a hard restart, ideally all education that leads to gainful and useful employment should be covered by taxpayers IMO, but making it easy for people to fraudulently get out of debt is only going to make things worse

I'm not sure it should ever be free, simply because people tend to take things more seriously when they've personally invested in something (and, even as things stand now, we *already* have a lot of students who don't take their education seriously). It should be affordable, sure, and we already have a lot of subsidies for public universities. However, a large part of the affordability issue is the over-availability of generally government-back loans which have allowed many universities to continually raise tuition rather than control costs on their side.

NightShift posted...

but the population doesnt understand the benefits of an educated/skilled populous. all they see is a fraction of a fraction of a percent of their earnings going to a "lazy lib" or "minority" but when its someone that fits in with their primitive tribal urges then its ok and not socialism. just what that person has "earned"

Which brings us to problem #2: I'm not sure that the current system actually benefits a large number (perhaps even the majority) of participants. We have a lot of educated baristas and deli clerks, but those are jobs which don't need much education in the first place. Either the system is letting down students (whether it's the quality of the education or the course offerings which don't actually impart valuable skills) or the system isn't providing a benefit.

More generally, you shouldn't conflate "educated" with "skilled" because you actually teach skills outside of the college system. Those can be two very different functions. Colleges impart a general education whereas trade schools give very specific, practical skills and often do a better job of placing graduates in their fields. That's overlooking alternative high schools with curriculum designed to get kids into specific fields. Otherwise, we *already* invest a fortune in the public school system and it should be picking up more of the slack. Instead of generating productive graduates, it's currently turning out students who need to take remedial college courses.
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There are precious few at ease / With moral ambiguities / So we act as though they don't exist.