There's a big difference between no tuition fees and "free" education. All this means is that the cost of education is passed on to all tax payers.
Now this can be justified, there is utility in having an educated workforce and society. However when everyone is paying there is a need to have a decision about how many people need that education to provide the benefits everyone gets. The UK is seeing these problems with 40% of school leavers going to university. There aren't enough jobs for graduates and we are way past the point of marginal returns in terms of social or cultural advancement.
Personally I much prefer the idea of fees and student loans. Not US style versions of either. In the UK they are effectively a graduate tax that you may pay off in time, they don't harm your credit rating and repayments are a percentage of your income about a relatively high amount (close to the average salary).
* You have to declare them when trying to get a mortgage (or any other loan) and so may reduce the amount you are leant.
* If you go bankrupt - the loan does not go away.
* Want to launch a funky startup? Now the graduates you want to work for you start demanding more money because a higher percentage now goes back to the Student Loan Company.
I fought hard against the introduction of fees when they were introduced in the UK. In 1998 they were set at £1k a year - we said it was a slippery slope and were dismissed as paranoid. Fees in the UK are now up to £9k per year.
I remember when I started university the cap was £3k per year in England I believe. That was one of the reasons I chose to go to Scotland - no tuition fees for EU students (the fact that students from the rest of Britain have to pay is another matter...). However, the tuition fees were/are still lower in Scotland, around £1700 a year.
All of those things act like any other tax. That's all it is, a tax you may one day stop paying. A mortgage is dependent on your ability to repay, i.e. your net income, if the income tax rate went up then mortgage companies would also reduce the amount they would lend you.
The alternatives are either a graduate tax - which has all of the issues you mention, except you never stop paying it, so potentially pay far more than the cost of your education - or general taxation in which case the people who didn't go to university (generally less well off) are paying for your degree.
> general taxation in which case the people who didn't go to university (generally less well off) are paying for your degree.
That's a nice story, but it doesn't tally with the other story about UK tax revenues being overwhelmingly provided by well-off people. So which is which?
General taxation is not a bogeyman, if done fairly. If a poor person had to pay 1p per year to send a poor kid to university, with the other £8,999.99 being paid by a well-off person, I don't think the poor would have a problem with it... would you?
Counter example: There are 8000 poor persons paying 1p and 10 well-of paying 100 for his kids to go to university. None of the 8000 poor people has kids in univ.
Ignoring the made-up numbers, that means that 60% of people are contributing to the education of that 40%, unless those 60% of people are exempted from a certain kind of tax that the 40% have to pay, which is exactly what the thread starter was calling a "graduate tax".
> that means that 60% of people are contributing to the education of that 40%
... and? These are the future business and political leaders of their country. Don't they have an interest in educating them properly, so that they'll be ruled by competent people?
Besides, some of them will have been "poor people" who managed to squeeze into that 40%. We are not talking about hypotheticals here: it happened in Britain for a while, just go check the life stories of droves of modern civil servant and politicians and you'll find people who made effective usage of their free education to better themselves and their country. This will inevitably happen less and less, now that poor families with smart kids are forced to take on 27k of debt - a deferred graduate tax which, being regressive (as all flat taxes are), is disproportionately affecting people from poorer backgrounds rather than well-off families (who, in the UK, are used to pay even more for pre-university education anyway -- for them it's just another drop in the water).
I don't necessarily disagree with you, just pointing out that if only 40% of the tax base uses a service, then 60% of the tax base is helping pay for it without directly using it. The indirect effects of those contributions are definitely more interesting!
That's assuming that poor people attend university at the same rate as wealthy people, which is not and will never be true, even if fees are abolished, as poor people can't afford to postpone full-time work for 4 years.
"[...] way past the point of marginal returns in terms of social or cultural advancement [...]" - how do you measure that? We have just started.
More free education is always better, and as a bonus it forces society to automate mindnumbingly boring jobs when there is nobody left willing to do them. Imagine all People on Earth would have a university degree, good all-around education and culture would explode with the beauty of a supernova way beyond even our wildest imaginations. But no, some people need to be kept uneducated so they are willing to take shit jobs in the dust to serve the few chosen ones. All for the sake of "marginal returns"(?), which seems more important than humanity itself sometimes. This way of thinking must end. The sooner the better. Get educated.
I don't live on the coasts and all the waitresses and bartenders and coffee baristas here have some kind of liberal arts degrees. My wife's hairdresser has a degree in English Lit IIRC. All that's exploding with the beauty of a supernova is their debts and higher ed administrator salaries. One of the waitresses at the local restaurant student taught at my son's school, and it doesn't make the service any better.
Intentionally vocational training and education are confused. "I'll take out $50K of loans to get vocational training at uni to get a credential so I can get a great job" then get stuck waitressing because 40 were graduated for 10 job openings is a net loss. "I'll get an education so I have interesting things to think about for the rest of my life" is a net win, although probably not worth $50K when you can get it just as good or better for free elsewhere, just without the credential.
and the solution to that would have been to travel to the past and tell them: "don´t get a liberal arts degree! don´t study english literature! go apply to that hairdresser offering now!"?. A society puts people into incredible debt for an education with not much direct market value because it values that market more than itself?
Firstly the large number of graduates in non graduate job belies this. It's a massive con that there are anything close to the same benefits accruing to everyone who gets a university education.
What should be happening more is people learning a trade. Germany's economic powerhouse status is not due to graduates nearly as much as skilled technical workers.
yes, it seems there are not enough paid places in society especially for cultural / liberal arts educated people and they end up as baristas or similar, but i dont see this as a bad thing. It puts pressure on automation, on re-thinking how a barista gets paid, it fuels anger and frustration of those affected and helps eventually changing thesed things to acommodate better to the current and future situation. The worst solution is to get less people educated, so we can sustain some after-ww2-status-quo.
> The worst solution is to get less people educated
I agree with the sentiment that since the pointless massive debt of a university education makes the graduate baristas life more miserable and thus can become more frustrated and prone to demand change in the system, but you could have the same outcome by skipping the wasted years and just getting frustrated mixing drinks straight out of your compulsory state regimen.
I thought these headlines were about ongoing automation, a still huge uneducated workforce that becomes more obsolete over time, about how humanity is not only about economy but also about culture and arts, and what we can do so that everybody can freely contribute to humanity without acting as a braindead worker drone all life long.
The current system of fees and loans just isn't working. We've had huge price inflation led by the universities because they know the government will back up the loan. Ironically, the extra money is often spent on new facilities (also built on credit), which are used to attract new students. It's not uncommon for a university to make a loss on undergraduate teaching. This needs to stop.
There's too much access to credit for both students and universities and too much of it is being wasted on competition and prestige in a market with few controls on quality. The transfer of wealth between students (and often their parents) and the universities is getting too large.
Any solution which relies on the student's access to credit is going to be exploited by the universities to gain access to more money. It's very similar to the housing market, few controls, too much cheap credit, and lots of emotional life decisions being made.
Abolishing fees would force the government to say no to the universities and keep the price under control. Students, no matter how wealthy, are too vulnerable a group to avoid exploitation under the current system.
Almost totally agree with you. WHICH degrees are also a factor. How many degrees in underwater basket weaving should the government be subsidizing?
I bet that making education 'free' will increase the unit cost per student per semester (total cost per year / number of students) and dramatically increase it per degree.
University costs in the US have been increasing rapidly at a rate far higher than inflation already. Some people argue that this is due to the high availability of student loans decreasing the pressure on universities to keep costs and tuition low.
This comes from the camp that believes that sticking kids with six digit debts right out of school is bad, unnecessary, AND that universities are needlessly wasteful. Eliminating the cost to the student entirely doesn't seem like the answer to me either due to decreased incentive for students to pass their classes and decreased pressure to drive down costs at the university. I believe 'free' university education will ultimately lead to even larger unit cost per student per semester and far greater cost per degree.
I tend to prefer solutions that leverage market forces. What do you think?
Now this can be justified, there is utility in having an educated workforce and society. However when everyone is paying there is a need to have a decision about how many people need that education to provide the benefits everyone gets. The UK is seeing these problems with 40% of school leavers going to university. There aren't enough jobs for graduates and we are way past the point of marginal returns in terms of social or cultural advancement.
Personally I much prefer the idea of fees and student loans. Not US style versions of either. In the UK they are effectively a graduate tax that you may pay off in time, they don't harm your credit rating and repayments are a percentage of your income about a relatively high amount (close to the average salary).