You’re right.
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I wish I weren’t, but it’s where we are. I’d like to see things turn around, but I’m afraid it’s going to get darker before we get to something better.
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“The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.”
‘The Merchant of Venice’ act 1, sc. 3
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If the government is going to allocate large amounts of resources to any program, I damn well want them to (1) be accountable for the expenditures and (2) be running the program to provide the greatest benefit for the least cost.
Every unnecessary dollar spent is a dollar NOT spent on other necessary programs.
Universal post-secondary education is only realistically attainable (especially if we double the number of students) by having the sort of economies that can only be reached by single entity control. The “we can have our gold plated system but make it universal” attitude is either startling optimism (“gold-plate doesn’t cost anything more!”), sad solipsism (“better gold-plate for me than needed programs for others”), or deliberate sabotage (“people will never be willing to pay the taxes for a gold-plated system, so insisting on that kills the idea of universality”).
Someone has to run the zoo, and yes, in a democracy, it will often be those I don’t particularly care for. But at least I have control over the state every few years. The idea of handling over vast sums of state funds to non-elected bodies seems to abandon accountability.
And yes, having idiots in charge (and my home province has just elected such an idiot) is the price of democracy. But doing an end-run around democracy by removing government control from government spending may seem attractive, but is a far more insidious evil in the long-term. The ends do not justify the means (and the ends are poisoned anyway).
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That concept in public school “oversight” has never actually worked. Just the opposite, in fact. Every time some state (using the US example, here) tries to intervene to “raise standards” because the “taxpayers deserve more for their money,” actual academic performance goes down. “No Child Left Behind” left many, many children behind.
The success stories in public education in the US have been where 1. find the best teachers and pay them well; 2. train the next generation of teachers well and make sure they don’t have so much student loan debt that they have to drive Uber on the weekends to service the interest.
Your parable about not having “gold-plated” education falls short of reality. Other countries in the world have free or nearly so college education and some of the best universities. Germany, France, Japan, Sweden all have tuition-free or nominal fees coupled to post-secondary education on par or better than most US universities, public or private.
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Seriously? You’re looking at the massively subsidized elite creation of those countries, and you think that is a model? The way forward isn’t making Harvard free, so the few thousand privileged students can go their more cheaply. The way forward is to massively increase the base of those who can get post-secondary education. It’s to add tens of millions to the student rolls.
And to pay for those new students, you bet universal secondary education has to be approached in the same way as universal health care.
Of course, if what you are fighting for is really a matter of making the academic playground more affordable for the elites who can presently attend, then it’s no wonder you’re having trouble gaining support from either the right or the left.
You cannot have universal health care with all the American style amenities. You cannot have universal secondary education and keep the pleasant myth of academy.
The people who will benefit from such a program aren’t those who were already privileged enough to be able to attend, although it will be cheaper. The program’s proper beneficiaries are the majority who never could.
It’s not unlike the fact that the people who already have the privilege of decent medical insurance lose out when we move to universal healthcare, and they have to face wait lists and lack of access to expensive medicines. It’s the huge number of people who now have access to healthcare that are the primary good. The loss of the amenities by the middle-class are simply the price that a decent society happily pays to make these services universal.
Harvard is a PRIVATE UNIVERSITY… so no one is talking about Harvard… Most of us are talking about public institutions, like UMass, USC, GSU, UMich, etc, and so on.
Thanks for making academia sound like the most unimportant part of society… good to know that you value education so highly.
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What are you talking about? The whole system is subsidized in those countries. What makes those universities elite isn’t the money, it’s the students and teachers. The Sorbonne is still the Sorbonne if the classes were taking place in an abandoned warehouse. Frankly, that’s one area US colleges have gone off the rails. The best way to be a great school is to bring together the right students with great faculty. You can’t make up for a lack of either one with a smoothie bar.
Not sure why you’re bringing health care into it, but sure I’ll take a swipe at that, too.
What amenities? I’ve worked in two hospitals in a European socialized healthcare system and I’ve worked in hospitals all over the US. “Amenities” in the US only go to people who are wealthy. For the average American who seeks healthcare in the US, it’s the same experience as in free-at-the-point-of-care Europe. Actually, it’s worse in the US. In Europe, if your physician thinks you need 5 days of recovery, you get 5 days of recovery. In the US, if your physician thinks you need 5 days of recovery, tough shit, they need that bed, you’re dumped in the parking lot in 47 hours whether you like it or not.
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But those countries are hell holes compared to America! /s
I’ve had zero, other than those provided by nice people working in health care.
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I’m definitely not fighting to make elite colleges more affordable for the rich. I’m not sure what makes you think that. Was it something I said? 
I also think you’re inflating the increase in the number of people who would be going to college under a free system vs. the existing paid system. They still have admissions requirements, and colleges only have so much physical space to house students and teach classes. In the short term, those are pretty hard limits. Will schools expand over time? Maybe. Will new schools form? Probably. But those still have limits. I don’t think there will be a large expansion. I think there will probably be a shift in student demographics, with more kids who might not even think of college as an option attending.
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Indeed, a rhetorical point. Any of us who have gone to any university are part of a rarified elite. Not as elite as Harvard (there’s always a more elite fish), but elite. Increased subsidies of to us is increased subsidies to the elite.
Now, that’s not a bad thing because there’s a hell of a lot of suffering among even the elite because the we’ve progressed and the elite allowed to attend are not always rich. But I think the model many seem to be thinking of is maintaining that elite - that is the European model.
For the undergrad, you are not part of academia. You get to fraternize a little with it, walk on those hallowed grounds, etc, but let’s get real - it’s a playground for them, not a vocation. And yet the price of letting them walk this (very pleasant) playground is astronomical.
Look, undergrad education is incredibly important. But as it stands now, it’s mixed in with the research aspects of academia through historical accident. Since only the elites would involved in academia, only the elites get a post-secondary education.
It’s time to break that bond once and for all. And the breaking point comes when we, say, quintuple the size of the undergrad populace. There’s no way we can afford that if we also plan to quintuple the size of academia.
Academia is important. But industrial level universal post secondary education is not going to occur in the present day academic setting, any more than industrial level universal health care is provided by hiring elite doctors with all the fanciest equipment in beautiful settings. It simply doesn’t scale.
Exactly my point - the university environment, as currently structured, is designed for people who are wealthy. It doesn’t scale to the industrial-level necessary to supply a vital service to everybody.
The Sorbonne is wonderful - but you can’t create 5,000 Sorbonnes at once. The cost per pupil will kill you and basically end the idea of meaningful free tuition. So you either maintain the selectivity of the current Sorbonne (making them the elite) and pay their whole cost, or you truly make post-secondary education universal.
Then it’s not universal, then those who get in are by definition an elite (and highly correlated with being upper-middle class (which I’ll define as being twice the median household income of $35K)). If all we’re doing is making their lives easier, that’s a worthy goal, but surely it should placed in the context of significant increasing the educational outcomes of those who presently cannot go to colleges and universities.
I’m sorry, I’m far more interested in a program to get the other 75% of the population the opportunity for a post-secondary education that is simply unaffordable. And that includes housing them, feeding them, tightening the whole process so that they sacrifice the least income, etc.
Our entire approach is based on catering to an elite - that’s why it needs to change. And it’s why I use the health-care analogy. Try to make the current US health system more affordable brings the monstrosity that is ACA - better than nothing, but not the universal health care that Americans deserve. Simply taking the current educational system and removing tuition is like ACA. It certainly helps, and looks wonderful for the few that can take advantage of it, but it’s not a patch on a truly universal system because a truly universal system cannot be created by tweaking the current system.
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Most people are talking about making community college, which tends to serve working class and non-traditional students more than 4 years. But many 4 year public universities are making strides at diversity. What would help most of my students (many of whom are working class kids) would be not having to stress about tuition.
I just don’t think you have any idea of what is actually happening on the ground.
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ETA:
This is one aspect where your analogy completely falls apart. You’re treating post-secondary education like health insurance. That neglects that not all people who need health insurance need to go to the hospital. The core need is access, not utilization.
Everyone should have access to post-secondary education. That doesn’t mean that everyone should have to go to college, regardless of needs, wants, or aptitude. You’re basically saying (and this is why the analogy isn’t apt) that everyone should get an appendectomy, whether they need one or not, so we can’t afford to do those appendectomies with a DaVinci. It’s nonsense.
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Look to Texas public schools for an example, if you doubt.
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