Sunday, December 11, 2011

Subsidizing higher education - a pro argument vs. con

The pro is by SU president Jay Lemons.

The con is by marginal revolution blogger and economics professor Alex Taborrok.

1 comment:

  1. I was recently talking to someone I know at work about higher education' she has sixty thousand dollars of student loan debt. I asked here if see thought college should be free and here response was no that it would be a bad idea because than it would lose much of its high regard if it were free. I tend to agree. I don't know a lot about higher education. I taught myself to type on the computer. Although I believe that some education beyond high school is useful. I believe that society places to much weight on the four year degree. She commented that here husband was working at a retail store and the management was impressed enough with his job performance that they enrolled him in a management training program when they checked their personal records they found that he did not have a college degree so they unenrolled him and at that point he left the company. The Idea was that higher education is the great equalizer as far as socioeconomics go but in many cases today it has become the great unequalizer. Another guy I know used to work for ford motor he told me that he applied for a job as a department head at the plant but he was rejected not because of a lack of ability he was qualified they told him that he did possess the skills and ability to handle the job but he lacked a college degree. We have now created a class structure based on these varying degrees' high school' associate' bachelors' masters' or doctorate. Now we have a situation where because of the inflation in higher education costs the likelihood of someone at the middle of the totem pole as far as family income goes has less ability to qualify for and meet the financial qualifications of higher education unless their willing to go deeply into debt or unless their very bright which would mean they could qualify for a scholarship' what about everybody else. What if the standard for getting that better job becomes not the bachelors but the masters degree this will only increase the inequality even more leaving only the rich and affluent to take advanage of higher education and qualify for all the better jobs. All this system of things does is create even more inequality than we already have. This is anything but a positive development.

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