[Reminder: Posts marked “Halfassed” are my inelegant solution to a lifelong habit of getting bored and moving on before finishing what I already started.]
From Wall Street Journal
https://www.wsj.com/articles/college-or-trade-school-its-a-tough-call-for-many-teens-1520245800
What if they were the same place?
According to the subhead, the issue facing students trying to chose a future is cost, especially student loans.
But why is college expensive? Because as the wealth divide opened up between college graduates and non, states stopped paying for college.
https://tcf.org/content/commentary/graph-dont-blame-teachers-for-rising-college-tuition/
The problem is political: why should my state tax dollars be used to educate someone else’s children while mine go to trade school?
A prominent academia critic is Charlie Sykes. [Vice: I Asked Academia’s Most Vocal Critic Wy College Is A Waste Of Money.] He identifies many genuine problems. But he is the problem for the same reason academia is the problem: a rigid inflexibility when it comes to what the word “college” means. Or, in pragmatic terms, an unwillingness to realize that Ohio State could offer inexpensive 2 year programs right along with everything else.
This whole idea of "college for all" is basically a hoax. First of all, not everybody needs a college degree. Not everybody can do college work. There are a lot of people who would be extremely happy doing other things. We have too many students going to college. There are millions of students who have gone to college, who are not academically prepared for it, who have taken on debt, who have then dropped out with the debt load, and the wage premium for those students is absolutely zero. And I think those students have been conned.
Peter Dorman (professor at Dartmouth on Puget Sound funded by tax dollars) at Econospeak bemoans the lack of proposals from Democrats for universal welfare programs:
There was a time, one I can remember from when I was growing up (the 1950s and 60s), when being a liberal meant you wanted certain rights and benefits for everyone, at least ostensibly. We had Social Security because everyone should have a basic pension when they retire, and all disabled people need to be cared for.
…
Now, liberals are concerned about minorities and the poor. They are against privilege, which is defined as not being a minority or poor. Public programs are designed to give assistance to the most oppressed and not waste their resources on those who have the privilege to fend for themselves. A poster child for the new politics is higher education. Liberals want bigger subsidies, like more Pell Grants, for the poorest students and those who self-select by enrolling in community college. They were distraught at Bernie Sanders’ call for free public higher ed for all, since that would siphon off scarce resources for the benefit of privileged, nonpoor families. From their perspective, this was proof that Bernie and his ilk were unwoke: unaware of the scourge of privilege, they even wanted public support for it.
I point out that there is one big obstacle in the way of proposing a great universal program: we don’t have the language to express the program in clear and concise terms:
The single biggest obstacle is that the Democratic coalition includes university professors and university professors (like all humans) do not want their job to change.
If there was a word for “the entire range of post high school education” Democrats would say it should be universal, public, and free.
There is zero reason for our separate but equal system. Zero. There is nothing magical about economics that causes it to perish if taught at the same institution that teaches plumbing.
“Not everyone needs a 4 year education!!!”
True. Now why can’t Ohio State offer 4, 2, and 1 year programs?
You personally are the problem.
