Yep, gotta hold the ideological line, because if we aren’t all totally in agreement on what constitutes being a progressive, we might as well be capitalist running dogs!
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Please, please, please, PLEASE don’t call Buttigieg “progressive”. He isn’t. His entire CV yells - nay, SCREAMS - neoliberal. One of the biggest “tells”
As in, “I support a few harmless to the 1% things like broad generalities in my policy positions; but as for significant economic change - FERGITABOUTIT!”
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Taxes yes, user fees no. I want zero payment at point of use, much the same way roads are free. I fully acknowledge that the cost is a tax line item, but I feel very strongly that even the nominal charges so common in k-12 are a misplaced economy.
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Would be nice if we can put the brakes on describing Pete Buttigieg as part of the “progressive wing” of the Democratic party. Progressives fight for working people and against systems of power. Buttigieg seems to be of, by, and for systems of power. He’s a new Clinton. He’s got nothing on a progressive like Warren, let alone a lifelong progressive like Sanders. https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/03/all-about-pete
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Correlation does not imply causation.
Strong correlation still does not imply causation
The conclusion that more education leads to more money is no more valid than concluding that it was the money that produced the education
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JFC aren’t college educated citizens a benefit to everyone? Don’t people like to have doctors and engineers around?
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I cited my numbers so you can independently verify them, and my sources regarding calculating R.
Just disagreeing with me is not advancing the conversation; can you make more of an argument / cite some counter sources?
because “is too”, “is not”, “is too”, “is not” is a boring argument…
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How much would it be if there was a progressive tax system?
First a disclaimer: I live in a country with free college. I teach in that system, in fact. I am content with it and would not exchange it for the American system under any circumstances.
I make the disclaimer because I know what I am about to say might be misunderstood as Just Asking Questions™, but I swear I am genuinely curious:
How do you imagine a free college system would work in America? Like, practically. Are there limited spots? Who decides who gets in? That sort of thing. Care to help me? I am, at first blush, quite sympathetic towards the argument that there should be universally accessible college free at point of delivery, but I can never figure out how it is meant to work with the system America has in place now.
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But in seriousness, if you’re looking for a good start to actually find causation, null hypothesis and all, don’t you want to start with those high correlation relationships?
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My community college is now tuition-free for city residents as long as they attend the classes they enroll in, but if you skip out after the drop deadline you have to pay your own tuition instead of the taxpayers.
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Hmmm, I’m pretty sure that correlation can imply causation. I think you perhaps mean that correlation doesn’t prove causation? Anyway, even without worrying about the semantics, I was curious enough to pop it into google and came up with this video, which seems instructive, even if not quite what I was thinking of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=251&v=HUti6vGctQM
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Ideally I would like to see a grand restructuring that would treat postsecondary education similar to our existing public school system, but in the intervening decades of change I think a compromise is possible. I think all public colleges and universities should have fully need blind admissions with the full tuition of each student publicly funded. Academic standards could remain in place. We already have an existing system of community colleges for students with less than stellar academic histories. I really don’t see the need to make huge changes to the private university system directly. I think most of the changes that I would like to see in the private system are better achieved through restructuring the student loan program to be a purely public endeavor that doesn’t turn a profit and has reasonable loan forgiveness standards.
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So, if I understand you correctly, the current admission slots at public schools are fully publicly funded and distributed purely based on academic merit in a blinded process to avoid favoritism, nepotism, and the like?
Thank you. This is illuminating.
As for loans, absolutely.
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Nothing should be free. “What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.” That’s as true now as it was 243 years ago. Anybody who goes to college should pay for it one way or another. If not with money, then with some kind of public service program or maybe a special income tax category. Yes, it is true that having skin in the game makes a difference in taking it seriously. That’s human nature and that’s never changed.
Because there isn’t a middle ground. One side very expressly wants to keep the majority away from college education, while the side that wants college education to be widely available and has no need to compromise on cost since it is readily affordable.
Honestly, I suspect that it operates like healthcare: small subsidies encourages price increases, while effective nationalizing would control them.
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I would suggest a way around the "skin in the game " argument. Make it so you need to maintain a certain GPA to stay in school, and eliminate the "the student is the customer " attitude that pressures professors to pass people who they shouldn’t.
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Exactly. We have a tremendous shortage of skilled workers, but all the emphasis is on producing more four year college degrees, without considering how many of those degrees are needed. I don’t think a tradesperson or technical worker, btw, represents any less of a contribution to society than someone with a sociology degree (and who is probably not using that degree in a meaningful economic sense). We keep chasing, with more and more aid, a problem initially created by directing too much money toward unproductive degrees. What a tremendous misallocation of resources, both in time and student-years!
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Didn’t the federal reserve say a few years ago that if we had 1,000,000 more people get art history degrees, then GDP would go up by 5 trillion dollars?
Possibly more, if they also managed to get a piece of their increased productivity
