Obama's Student Loan Forgiveness plan.

[Bakustra]

Hmmm. Duchess's basic argument is that state-subsidized university education in the arts and humanities is unnecessary, at least on a large and systematic scale. That, instead, someone other than the state should have to find the money for such things, rather than the state simply arbitrarily throwing money at everyone who decides to pick up an English or history degree.

I've seen fascism, and I don't think this qualifies, Bakustra. "Not state subsidized" does not equal "forbidden," or shouldn't except in the kinds of states that I'd call fascist.

While my standards of how to spend public funds are a lot more liberal (literally) than the national average in the US, I do think there has to be some kind of limit on what we do and don't spend money on. Not every project we can imagine the state funding can be funded, even if we're totally willing to soak the rich for the taxes we're planning to use to pay for it.

Fascism, at its ideological core, is about the subordination of individuals to the state, which in this case is substituted with "society", but "society" in that example is ultimately the state. If you define society as a composite or gestalt of all the components that make it up, then the argument falls apart because the existence of those degrees means that they are valued. If society is defined in another way, then ultimately it is elites- the state itself- which is deciding what is and is not valuable to society, and teaching people that they should do things for the benefit of the state is a core goal of fascism. Not to mention that intellectuals are intellectuals because they value learning and knowledge for their own sake, not for the sake of the state.

The state also doesn't subsidize everybody who goes for art or history or literature or all the other fields of study smug idiots in the natural sciences and engineering deem worthless, either, and so I can only interpret this as an attempt to stop people from entering such fields.

And you're a cheap troll looking for cheap thrills whose efforts have become a parody of themselves that everyone laughs about when talking to each other off this board. Society has no obligation to give a tertiary education to anyone who is not a ward of the state, unless by doing so society will benefit. Therefore the state, in the role of promoting social interests, should focus its aid programmes on degrees which yield a tangible social benefit. People who are not capable or interested in studying these degrees should be offered the alternative of federally supported education at technical schools--including for example the one surviving WPA art school--which offer non-degree programmes in mastery of skilled fields, which yield to directly useful skills at much reduced cost, including in some fields that there are notionally degrees for, like art, music, etc, which are better learned by a system of basic skills certification and internship with skilled individuals in that field, as well as the simpler and more straightforward skills like automotive repair. If you want a liberal arts degree, however, you'll have to find the money to pay for it yourself. Boo-fucking-hoo, why should federal tax money pay for someone to get a "General Studies" degree when it could be used to fund part of universal healthcare instead?

Ooh, you're mad now. You're invoking social shaming! I'm going to let you in on a little secret: I really don't give a rat's ass what you and your imaginary friends think of me. I hope you're not crushed by this.

Justify any of your assertions- 1) the state has no obligation to give education unless "society", as defined by the state itself, benefits, 2) that art and music schools are inherently cheaper than university arts programs, 3) that study of literature, film, and art for the sake of critique is worthless, 4) that ignorance of the "liberal arts" is preferential to knowledge of them (since I don't see any room for general education on those subjects in your little schema), 5) that your asinine definition of the liberal arts is the preferable one to the contemporary literature, languages, philosophy, science, mathematics, and history or the ancient rhetoric, arithmetic, astronomy, grammar, logic, geometry, and music, 6) that a central body is capable of reasonably determining what is and is not of benefit to society and how that is compatible with democracy, 7) that it is impossible to fund both universal healthcare systems and literature programs, that this is a clear problem that is damaging our society, with citations, and 9) that people who pretend to be English when they are not are worthy of respect and not contempt.

Finally, consider why this argument of "for the benefit of society" only applies to education and not to, for example, the arts in general, and please offer some reasoning why your state should tolerate antisocial and countercultural lyrics in rock n' roll, punk, pop, or the dreaded hip-hop.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I am proud to be called a fascist when it's by you. As usual your presence in a thread simply ruins an interesting discussion of ideas of how we should quantify what justifies government investment, in favour of hyperbolic assertions from a dozen different ideologies. Rarely do I see someone combine the hyper-libertarian claim that all ideas involving subordination to the state are fascist (hint, if you don't pull out a pistol and shoot at the cops when pulled over for a speeding ticket, you're subordinating yourself to state authority. I guess you're a fascist and not a free citizen), combined with the noxious pomo bullshit that all degrees are equally valuable. One imagines you have no system of political beliefs and are simply trolling from a gestalt of ideas your vaguely conscious brain has picked up. At any rate, there is no point to answer anything you say, because there is no substance to it and you are never interested in having a debate or discussion. Your presence on this board is simply pollutation, and so I am going to step over the sewage and leave this thread. I should have known better than to post in one you'd already posted in; for that I apologize.

[ChaserGrey]

German universities use "numerus clausus", so you need to have a certain overall grade if you want to study a certain field. E.g. if you want to do medicine and have less than a, say, 1.9 average grade, too bad. (There are some other mechanisms, as well.) Usually, applicants are also ranked by grades.

So if you want to study medicine, law or anything high profile? You better have good grades to show for.

I'm curious- is there a uniform national standard for admission to a post-graduate program like medicine, or do schools set their own standards? Of course, from what you said about the number of slots at the University of Vienna vs. Austria as a whole, it sounds like there might only be one or two other schools in the country?

Either way, it doesn't sound that different in practice from the way we do things here in the U.S. There's not a single national standard, but getting into (say) medical school requires good grades and strong standardized test performance simply because there are so many more students than there are slots available nationwide. (And I know whereof I speak- I did get into med school once upon a time, though I didn't finish. Long story, and not really relevant.)

[Alphawolf55]

Now that other people have posted, I can respond to Simon.

Wolf, one problem is that I don't see there being any problem big enough that it needs your plan to solve it. Why, exactly, do we need to do this? What's the problem that needs fixing?

The problem that kids are taking out debt practically the size of mortgages for degrees that aren't returning value? I just don't find it ethical to make kids to go into huge amounts of debt because when they were 17 they had some secondhand knowledge of what the world is like. Sure we can have better Government programs to finance education like I feel we should to help solve this issue but it doesn't change the fact that we're spending 60-80,000 dollars a kid for education. I feel in that case if the Government is paying for your education it's not unreasonable to expect a good return on the investment. Money is a resource just like any other, it's not as constrained as say oil but it has to be properly allocated. We're getting to the point where a married couple could choose to either both go to college or pay off fully a house. Why should we pay for a kid to get an education that isn't be properly utilized when that money could go to many other areas like mortgage assistance, alternate energy investments, 401k padding, universal health care.

This only serves to create extensive front-loading- you're competing with students who've studied for three years to get into the university in the program they'd like at all, which means you have to study three years to do it. I'm not sure this is desirable. Do we really want secondary education to de facto take six or seven years instead of four?

I wouldn't have a few problems with it, I mean yes there is lost opportunity cost but personally I think people are going to college a too young an age anyways. Granted, I had to take a few years off to figure out what I wanted out of a college and to gain residency to a cheaper program so I'm bias.

Hmmm. Another question. For some fields, how do you even define the number of jobs in the market? Which jobs is a physics major qualified to do? Just academic positions? Government research? Private industry? Do you count the Wall Street quantitative analyst positions under 'private industry,' and other job options which are only tangientally related to actually doing physics? What about physics majors who decide to go teach high school- are they counted?

I will admit for some fields this would be hard, but I feel you could look at careers where the vital knowledge you gain from that major is needed. Meaning for example, if a supervisor position at a store requires a degree on qualifications but none of the actual work you're doing actually requires a degree in any way, it's not counted.

-Universities' decisions not to admit more students aren't made "because it will be best for the student," as a rule. They're made because the university doesn't want to expand to become very, very large- which a place like Harvard would become, if they expanded until they could take in every reasonably bright student in American who wanted a Harvard education. This is a practical limit that doesn't involve the school arbitrarily deciding what you're allowed to do.

They don't want to grow because it goes against their education philosophy, they feel it's best for the students to be at the size that they're at. Or are you arguing that Universities are no longer making students the top priority?

-What you propose makes no allowance for growing fields. I would be wise to choose my major now in light of what I expect to be in demand later, when I'm looking for work. Consider the boom in computer programming- would your system have limited the number of math or computer science majors in 1960 to a standard of demand measured some time in the 1950s? If so, we'd be pretty damn short on programmers in the '60s and '70s.

That's a silly strawman. Every year the job market could be evaluated, if there's a 20% growth in a market, grow the slots by an additional amount. Notice also that for majors I suggested a higher number of slots the jobs, I did this just for this fact so if there is growth the people with those degrees could be recruited. You don't need to go by last decade ago. Universities grow by huge amounts in each year.

Because it's not arbitrary- they only have facilities to accept, say, forty students.

They could always expand on the facilities yet they choose not to.

One that just occurred to me: specialization. Certain universities pride themselves on being the institutions in certain areas- Princeton for the sciences, MIT for computer programming, and so on. Do these institutions get a disproportionate number of slots, to allow them to sustain thriving programs in the areas they specialize in? Doesn't that crowd out other universities from trying to develop strong departments in new areas?

Well those are private systems, I guess they could do whatever the hell they want. I was talking more for public universities.

Hint: he said this applies to medical students. That doesn't mean it applies to all students. Only some, in specific areas, that require unusual systems to teach what is often a post-graduate degree. You go to medical school after receiving a university education from somewhere else, in something else, what is known as a "pre-medical" degree. Medical degrees are graduate programs, which are tightly integrated with the associations and codes of the medical profession

Actually he said that you need a certain overall grade to study certain careers. Then he used medicine as example of a high profile one that requires high grades. He never said it only applies to high profile degrees, but if he meant it did I'm sorry for misinterpreting.

Granted I'll admit it doesn't have to be a direct limitation of degrees, but my overall point is we need to get the value of degrees up, we need to get businesses to stop requiring degrees for everything regardless of required skill set. So in some way I feel we need some additional barriers to college to help limit the amount of degrees out there, right now price does it but easy credit has changed that and I'd rather not make education about who can afford it. You probably feel education is a right, I feel it's more something that you earn but once you earn it, it should be free.

Also Bakustra, fascism is the merging of state and corporations, you're thinking of socialism.

[Stark]

What crazy dictionary do YOU have?

[Alphawolf55]

Mussolini who said "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power."

[Thanas]

Then the liberal arts will contract back into private universities and smaller departments filled with people who are able to pay for their education out of pocket.

This is a pretty stupid idea for the sole reason that a bunch of private donors or rich kids should not be the one deciding which art is going to be produced, which history is going to be tought etc.

Also, I fail to see what overwhelming harm "liberal arts" do to society seeing as how nations that do subsidize such education do pretty well. It certainly is not a threat to society as you make it out to be, nor is it wasteful per se.

[Mr. Coffee]

I am proud to be called a fascist when it's by you. As usual your presence in a thread simply ruins an interesting discussion of ideas of how we should quantify what justifies government investment, in favour of hyperbolic assertions from a dozen different ideologies. Rarely do I see someone combine the hyper-libertarian claim that all ideas involving subordination to the state are fascist (hint, if you don't pull out a pistol and shoot at the cops when pulled over for a speeding ticket, you're subordinating yourself to state authority. I guess you're a fascist and not a free citizen), combined with the noxious pomo bullshit that all degrees are equally valuable. One imagines you have no system of political beliefs and are simply trolling from a gestalt of ideas your vaguely conscious brain has picked up. At any rate, there is no point to answer anything you say, because there is no substance to it and you are never interested in having a debate or discussion. Your presence on this board is simply pollutation, and so I am going to step over the sewage and leave this thread. I should have known better than to post in one you'd already posted in; for that I apologize.

Dutchess, you haven't lost your touch. Stay golden, homegirl.

[Stark]

Mussolini who said "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power."

Are you seriously saying you believe this to be a total circus of fascism? Bakustra is clearly talking about social policies of indoctrination, which you apparently believe to be 'socialist'. Which socialism is that?

[Alphawolf55]

Mussolini who said "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power."

Are you seriously saying you believe this to be a total circus of fascism? Bakustra is clearly talking about social policies of indoctrination, which you apparently believe to be 'socialist'. Which socialism is that?

I'm not talking about the ideals of state indoctrination, I'm saying the type of program Duchess is talking about and the type of program I'm talking about are far closer to socialism then fascism.

[Stark]

And Bakustra is saying that he sees implications in the value you place on people and education that are fascist in nature. Ignoring 75% of fascism in favour of a single quote doesn't change what fascism is; creating people whose value is measured by their ability to serve the ubiqutious state and industry is hardly an outlandish thing to characterise as fascism. The intent behind your 'program' doesn't change that; it's actually quite quaint that you think 'I made up a policy to do xyz, so obviously it will do xyz and nothing else'. If social policy was as easy as you seem to think, maybe simple solutions would work without ramifications.

PS in what sense are you using the term socialism? Australia is socialist. Soviet Russia was socialist. Uh oh!

As an aside, I always laugh when crazy old Zeon posts another screed, because I remember when she tried to blame some guy and her low self-esteem for parroting absurd authoritarian bullshit. Maybe we need more anecdotes from peopel who wasted years at university trying to do engineering degrees because they were dumb enough to let SDN set their values for education?

[Alphawolf55]

And Bakustra is saying that he sees implications in the value you place on people and education that are fascist in nature. Ignoring 75% of fascism in favour of a single quote doesn't change what fascism is; creating people whose value is measured by their ability to serve the ubiqutious state and industry is hardly an outlandish thing to characterise as fascism. The intent behind your 'program' doesn't change that; it's actually quite quaint that you think 'I made up a policy to do xyz, so obviously it will do xyz and nothing else'. If social policy was as easy as you seem to think, maybe simple solutions would work without ramifications.

PS in what sense are you using the term socialism? Australia is socialist. Soviet Russia was socialist. Uh oh!

As an aside, I always laugh when crazy old Zeon posts another screed, because I remember when she tried to blame some guy and her low self-esteem for parroting absurd authoritarian bullshit. Maybe we need more anecdotes from peopel who wasted years at university trying to do engineering degrees because they were dumb enough to let SDN set their values for education?

I'd hardly call Australia socialist, it has socialist tendencies and would be called socialist by an American conservative but I don't see it being socialist. I mean aren't the most important sectors generally it's mineral resources which aren't even Government owned in the same way oil is run by the Government in Venezeula?

I'm using socialism in the sense that the state pays for and supplies either education, homes or retirement for it's citizens, that everyone has a chance to gain a education. I mean if we want to use a more text book term of "Socialist economies being based upon production for use and the direct allocation of economic inputs to satisfy economic demands and human needs" it's the idea that we use these programs to satisfy what we recognize people need and what our economy needs.

[Stark]

You may be discovering that words like 'socialism' don't have one fixed meaning in every context and in every time period. You're growing up in front of me!

If you can't see the link between priorising education based on ablity to 'serve' and fascism, how can you see the link between government student loans and socialism?

It's almost as if answering my question about what sort of socialism you're talking about would have cleared all that up. PS, that's a terrible 'definition' of socialism, clearly more suited to 50s Russia than any of the social welfare democracies.

So are you going to think about how political or social programs have knock-on effects throughout a society beyond the raw economic results expected by those who formulate them, and how that is what Bakustra is talking about (well, more about the unstated values you have, but y'know)? Would you understand how thinking about what educational priorities set by a government says about that government if it was written in a textbook you could google?

[Alphawolf55]

If you can't see the link between priorising education based on ablity to 'serve' and fascism, how can you see the link between government student loans and socialism?

See this is where you're mixing it up. The reason I'm suggesting education be somewhat tied to the economy, is because it's what will ensure that individuals will get what they need, be it education, a home or an addition to their retirement, it's not to ensure that citizens serve the state as much as possible, if that was true I'd suggest only letting people get education in certain fields and force them to get said educations. It's not for the benefit of the state, it's for the benefit of the student. If it was for the benefit of the state, the best thing to do would be to let students rack up tons of student loans so they become debt slaves to the Government.

I mean yes you could confuse them but it seemd Bakustra was saying 'These things are fascism" not "These things could become like fascism or be assumed to be"

It's almost as if answering my question about what sort of socialism you're talking about would have cleared all that up. PS, that's a terrible 'definition' of socialism, clearly more suited to 50s Russia than any of the social welfare democracies.

That's the wiki definition, so I admit it's not perfect. What would you say would be your definition? Also Social Welfare Democracies, are not socialist they are considered market economies.

So are you going to think about how political or social programs have knock-on effects throughout a society beyond the raw economic results expected by those who formulate them, and how that is what Bakustra is talking about (well, more about the unstated values you have, but y'know)? Would you understand how thinking about what educational priorities set by a government says about that government if it was written in a textbook you could google?

I still say it doesn't seem Bakustra was talking about possibilities, he was talking about absolutes. For example when I first suggested such a program, he didn't say 'Such a program could lead to fascist tendencies" he said it was an authoritarian system far greater then anything we saw in Stalinism, doesn't seem to me to leave much room for interpretations.

[Stark]

Yeah, that's what I'm getting at; simply dismissing waht he's saying because a textbook disagrees with his word use is stupid, because he's talking about motives and consequences. Its not like he's saying 'wah wah people in general being better prepared for life and with less debt = bad'; he's talking about the politics and culture around your suggestions. Obviuosly I don't really know what his intent is, but that's what I take away from it - you can argue he's being overly absolute, but then you can look at Zeon's posts and see how that is actually a very, very funny thing to say.

Reading stuff various people have posted about tertiary education has made me imagine that it's far more commercialised than it is in Australia. When people complain about mismanagement or waste or whatever, is that why the price of education in the US is so ludicrous?

It's hilarious that I can say 'socialism has many meanings' so many times and you're so amazingly dense that you respond by saying market economies can't be socialist. It's literally like you cannot understand the words you're reading; possibly because your textbook has a different meaning for all of them.

[Alphawolf55]

Reading stuff various people have posted about tertiary education has made me imagine that it's far more commercialised than it is in Australia. When people complain about mismanagement or waste or whatever, is that why the price of education in the US is so ludicrous?

What's generally the cost of education in Australia? Do you guys have big dining halls for the students where they sometimes get all you can eat buffets? Or huge gym facilities with swimming pools?

It's hilarious that I can say 'socialism has many meanings' so many times and you're so amazingly dense that you respond by saying market economies can't be socialist. It's literally like you cannot understand the words you're reading; possibly because your textbook has a different meaning for all of them.

I understand what you're saying but you haven't justified your statement. Yes people can interpret words to have different meanings but it doesn't make them right. If we're using relaxed language around here fine, but I was always under the impression (and told before) that here when we use words we have to use them in an academic sense.

[Bakustra]

Alphawolf, I called your proposal extraordinarily authoritarian because as you presented it, it was about placing hard limits on what people could or could not study, which is indeed more authoritarian than the USSR under Stalin. I didn't call it fascist (though, of course, it could potentially lead to fascism), because of the cultural factors that Stark mentioned. I called Zeon's arguments fascist because they rely upon valuations of education and educational programs based on its suitability for the state and deny the individual any importance in this, some of the same cultural factors that Stark mentioned, e.g. the valuation of the state over and to the exclusion of the people it is composed of, the devaluation of intellectualism and learning for the sake of learning.

I object to any efforts to place hard caps on degree programs because I believe, personally, in dissociating education from economics and making it more a question of learning for its own sake. I also believe, philosophically, in presenting people with enough information to make their own decisions and readying to catch them if they choose poorly than cutting off the majority of options, which informs that as well. Oddly enough, I am fairly optimistic about the abilities of people to make the right choice in the end- even if there are a few missteps along the way.

[Stark]

You're lecturing me about definitions when you think fascism as a word is defined by a single quote from Mussolini, which totally ignores lots of fascist policy? Come on. When you read Eco's 'Ur-Fascism' did you say 'lol not what wiki said' and erase it all?

In AU they do interest free student loans repaid throught tax, but I have no idea if what the student is charged is the actual, real cost of education. It was free in the 80s, but the recession killed that. Tuition is rising, but it is more like $10k a year that you'll pay back at some point in the future when you have a real job, as opposed to the much larger, actual 'real' debt that students seem to carry in the US. Since private health insurance in AU is also far cheaper than it is in the US, I'm curious what forces are acting to create that disparity. The top-down stuff you're suggesting probably wouldn't be as important if people didn't waste such a huge pile of money when they studied.

[Samuel]

If you define society as a composite or gestalt of all the components that make it up, then the argument falls apart because the existence of those degrees means that they are valued.

No, it means they are valued by the individual getting them. Since the cost is subsidized by the state, individuals face decisions that do not reflect the costs to society.

Not to mention that intellectuals are intellectuals because they value learning and knowledge for their own sake, not for the sake of the state.

Or they value knowledge because they believe it can help people.

1) the state has no obligation to give education unless "society", as defined by the state itself, benefits

Well, if we go on moral terms, if society has a net cost from an activity, it is bad it shouldn't be undertaken.

3) that study of literature, film, and art for the sake of critique is worthless,

It is merely a case that they are worth less than the cost of providing a degree.

, 6) that a central body is capable of reasonably determining what is and is not of benefit to society and how that is compatible with democracy

bureaucracy - the magic gift that keeps on giving. Seriously, they do this all the time when it comes to everything else. The EPA for example decides how much pollution people get to deal with.

, 7) that it is impossible to fund both universal healthcare systems and literature programs

It isn't. However money spent on one item cannot be used for other purposes. It may be of higher value to spend money on a different policy.

that this is a clear problem that is damaging our society, with citations,

No, no, it is non-optimal. That doesn't require visible damage. You can't see the money that could have gone to other projects- they haven't been made.

[Bakustra]

Technically, caring for the chronically and terminally ill is "non-optimal" because we could spend that money on other things. Provide an example, using the same reasoning you are making, for subsidizing the provision of diabetics with insulin, as we could spend that money on other things.

EDIT: Also, if you can provide scientific reasoning why study of literature is so functionally useless that the entire cost of the program be paid for by people wishing to study it, as the EPA uses for pollution, go ahead and do so. I look forward to the obsolescence of art.

[Alphawolf55]

Alphawolf, I called your proposal extraordinarily authoritarian because as you presented it, it was about placing hard limits on what people could or could not study, which is indeed more authoritarian than the USSR under Stalin. I didn't call it fascist (though, of course, it could potentially lead to fascism), because of the cultural factors that Stark mentioned. I called Zeon's arguments fascist because they rely upon valuations of education and educational programs based on its suitability for the state and deny the individual any importance in this, some of the same cultural factors that Stark mentioned, e.g. the valuation of the state over and to the exclusion of the people it is composed of, the devaluation of intellectualism and learning for the sake of learning.

I object to any efforts to place hard caps on degree programs because I believe, personally, in dissociating education from economics and making it more a question of learning for its own sake. I also believe, philosophically, in presenting people with enough information to make their own decisions and readying to catch them if they choose poorly than cutting off the majority of options, which informs that as well. Oddly enough, I am fairly optimistic about the abilities of people to make the right choice in the end- even if there are a few missteps along the way.

The problem I feel is, it's extremely costly to teach everyone who wants a university education if they're not going to use. Is it worth around 100,000 dollars to educate a person regardless of merit or necessity of the degree? Additionally degrees are no longer about education these days it seems, it's mostly about markets and getting jobs. I mean I don't think you can deny that something has to be done for example in situations where businesses have turned degrees not into something used to showcase their qualification to do a job but rather as a way to weed out other applicants?

To me if we're going to argue education has it's own value, instead of focusing on universities focus more on humanities and liberal arts in community college programs (since they contain the cost far better then universities and for humanities often times have the same needed resources), making them free and making them not about degrees but about the education in itself that they offer. Granted, I think for the most part we need a better merger between community colleges and four year universities, have the first two years of general studies be handled at community colleges and have the rest of the 2 years of your major handled in a university

[Simon_Jester]

Then the liberal arts will contract back into private universities and smaller departments filled with people who are able to pay for their education out of pocket.

This is a pretty stupid idea for the sole reason that a bunch of private donors or rich kids should not be the one deciding which art is going to be produced, which history is going to be tought etc.

Also, I fail to see what overwhelming harm "liberal arts" do to society seeing as how nations that do subsidize such education do pretty well. It certainly is not a threat to society as you make it out to be, nor is it wasteful per se.

I don't think she considers them harmful, just not in urgent need of state funds that could be used in other ways. I don't think she's right about this one, but I do think it's a sane form of argument: "Don't spend money on X, because Y has a better cost-benefit ratio and X can do well enough on its own."

Of course, it implies a fairly low standard of acceptance for what "well enough" means in the humanities, which I'm... not all that surprised to hear from her. Again, I don't think I agree.

Now that other people have posted, I can respond to Simon.

Wolf, one problem is that I don't see there being any problem big enough that it needs your plan to solve it. Why, exactly, do we need to do this? What's the problem that needs fixing?

The problem that kids are taking out debt practically the size of mortgages for degrees that aren't returning value? I just don't find it ethical to make kids to go into huge amounts of debt because when they were 17 they had some secondhand knowledge of what the world is like.

I think there are better ways to solve the problem, you see. The real problem isn't the distribution of who goes into what major; it's the total number of slots at universities, relative to the number of new job openings for graduates.

The first one is pretty flexible, and can increase or decrease rather freely (I'm not sure it's actually grown much relative to the population lately). The second is more of a problem, because the economy's been in free fall for the past three or four years, and universities are desperate to make up funding shortfalls by any means necessary, including squeezing the students so that they have to take out loans.

If you wanted to cap the total number of four-year degrees issued in the US, that would actually be less intrusive, restrictive, and problematic than capping the total number of students in individual majors. Of course, then you'd actually have to do something about the tendency to hire only people with four-year degrees for jobs that do not strictly require them... and if you were prepared to do that, you wouldn't need to create arbitrary barriers to entry at the university level.

Hmmm. Another question. For some fields, how do you even define the number of jobs in the market? Which jobs is a physics major qualified to do? Just academic positions? Government research? Private industry? Do you count the Wall Street quantitative analyst positions under 'private industry,' and other job options which are only tangientally related to actually doing physics? What about physics majors who decide to go teach high school- are they counted?

I will admit for some fields this would be hard, but I feel you could look at careers where the vital knowledge you gain from that major is needed. Meaning for example, if a supervisor position at a store requires a degree on qualifications but none of the actual work you're doing actually requires a degree in any way, it's not counted.

You'd kill physics research in the US that way, by the way- it's structured to rely on graduate students to do highly skilled grunt work that must be done for the research to proceed, but there simply isn't enough money in university budgets or the set of available grants to provide research positions in academia for all of those physics graduates after they leave.

Restrict the number of physics bachelors' awarded each year to the number of people who get good-paying jobs doing physics, and you'll find a lot of physics departments effectively shutting down entirely.

-What you propose makes no allowance for growing fields. I would be wise to choose my major now in light of what I expect to be in demand later, when I'm looking for work. Consider the boom in computer programming- would your system have limited the number of math or computer science majors in 1960 to a standard of demand measured some time in the 1950s? If so, we'd be pretty damn short on programmers in the '60s and '70s.

That's a silly strawman. Every year the job market could be evaluated, if there's a 20% growth in a market, grow the slots by an additional amount. Notice also that for majors I suggested a higher number of slots the jobs, I did this just for this fact so if there is growth the people with those degrees could be recruited. You don't need to go by last decade ago. Universities grow by huge amounts in each year.

I don't know; I think that imposing this kind of centralized, external control (mostly exercised by people who went to university 20, 30, or 40 years ago, realistically) is going to ossify the system.

One that just occurred to me: specialization. Certain universities pride themselves on being the institutions in certain areas- Princeton for the sciences, MIT for computer programming, and so on. Do these institutions get a disproportionate number of slots, to allow them to sustain thriving programs in the areas they specialize in? Doesn't that crowd out other universities from trying to develop strong departments in new areas?

Well those are private systems, I guess they could do whatever the hell they want. I was talking more for public universities.

Public universities specialize too, you know- some campuses focus on science, others on the arts. Others try to rebrand themselves- I went to a campus founded as a small exurban liberal arts college, which the current president has been busily remaking in the image of a science and tech institution.

What allowances are you willing to make for this?

Fascism, at its ideological core, is about the subordination of individuals to the state, which in this case is substituted with "society", but "society" in that example is ultimately the state. If you define society as a composite or gestalt of all the components that make it up, then the argument falls apart because the existence of those degrees means that they are valued. If society is defined in another way, then ultimately it is elites- the state itself- which is deciding what is and is not valuable to society, and teaching people that they should do things for the benefit of the state is a core goal of fascism. Not to mention that intellectuals are intellectuals because they value learning and knowledge for their own sake, not for the sake of the state.

The state also doesn't subsidize everybody who goes for art or history or literature or all the other fields of study smug idiots in the natural sciences and engineering deem worthless, either, and so I can only interpret this as an attempt to stop people from entering such fields.

So, Bakustra, let me ask you, point blank:

-Should the government spend tax money to subsidize higher education for students?

-Should the government spend this money evenly on all students, regardless of field of study? Or should it focus this money on some fields more than others?

-If the answer to the above question is "evenly," then is there an answer to the question "what if we face a shortage of skilled people in Area X?" Or is the answer "everything will be all right," which is the same as no answer at all?

-If the answer to the above question is "focus it on some areas," why is it fascism to pick some areas at the expense of others because of a perceived social need or lack thereof?

-If, as you seem to be saying, that's fascism because it 'subordinates individual choices to the state,' then how is it possible to govern at all? All possible decisions a government can ever make, aside from the decision to do nothing, subordinate someone's freedom of choice to someone else's interests, usually those of the state/society/the public/whatever. I have to wonder whether there's room in your ideal form of government for the state to make a decision like "gee, we should encourage X, but need not encourage Y, because plenty of Y happens on its own, while not enough X happens on its own."

Or did you turn into an anarcho-libertarian while I wasn't looking?

Ooh, you're mad now. You're invoking social shaming! I'm going to let you in on a little secret: I really don't give a rat's ass what you and your imaginary friends think of me. I hope you're not crushed by this.

Of course you don't care. That changes nothing. Your trolling is transparent. You can ignore that fact, of course; you will ignore it. You're predictable that way- and very, very tiresome, because you've been making the same Mad Libs argument over and over against all and sundry for months, if not years, now.

[aerius]

This isn't going to go anywhere until we can agree on the following:

1) What is the purpose of a college or university education? Are you going there to get a fancy piece of paper so that employers don't circular file your resume, is it for learning for the sake of learning, is it learning real world skills & knowledge so that you can do your job, or all the above or something else?

2) Related to the above, who should be going to college or university? A select few? Those who are good enough? Anyone who can fog a mirror?

[Stark]

Your first point can't be overstated. Whether it's a result of industrialisation, globalisation, or tertiary education marketing, for many (many, many) roles you will not even be considered as a candidate if you don't have a tertiary qualification. And no, it generally doesn't matter what it's in; it's just a quick and nasty way to filter applicants. In that context, a bullshit degree is, in fact, significantly better than no degree at all.

To 'fix' that, you'll have to change not just culture, but employer culture, competition in the workplace, course content, all kinds of things.

[Thanas]

This is a pretty stupid idea for the sole reason that a bunch of private donors or rich kids should not be the one deciding which art is going to be produced, which history is going to be tought etc.

Also, I fail to see what overwhelming harm "liberal arts" do to society seeing as how nations that do subsidize such education do pretty well. It certainly is not a threat to society as you make it out to be, nor is it wasteful per se.

I don't think she considers them harmful, just not in urgent need of state funds that could be used in other ways.

The easy answer is that the federal government only has an obligation to support students who are going to university in things which make a direct contribution to society. If you cannot locate a direct social benefit to a federal assistance programme, it probably shouldn't exist.

I read that as non-contributing money being a waste. In any case, whether she said she considers them harmful or not is besides the point as it matters little if she considers them "harmful" or merely a waste, the issue is contribution.

I don't think she's right about this one, but I do think it's a sane form of argument: "Don't spend money on X, because Y has a better cost-benefit ratio and X can do well enough on its own."

Of course, it implies a fairly low standard of acceptance for what "well enough" means in the humanities, which I'm... not all that surprised to hear from her. Again, I don't think I agree.

Point is that such a pretty stupid standard of "cost-benefit" is nonsense. It assumes you can attach a value to education that translates into market value. Nevermind the obvious problems of how some fields would then be the sole providence of the rich (and I am sure Duchess is just salivating at the idea of rich white guys deciding what goes into the history books), it also logically follows that as soon as the market shifts education should be discontinued. (Which would mean that since Germany has had decades where teachers were placed at a low market value and not many hired for years, Germany obviously should have stopped funding teacher education).

Her own argument also is inconsistent and dishonest as she automatically excluded several rather wide fields of study. But lets look at one of them - engineering. Germany does not need nuclear engineers anymore, really, what with non-nuclear power being the law now. Which means that if somebody (like Duchess) would want to study nuclear engineering now, we should immediately require said person to either be rich or be dependent upon charity of rich guys.