Thinking Ahead.....tuition Free Higher Education

[Samson]

Yes

Let's teach our children that nothing is really worth working for.

You dont have to work in college?

Yes, jobs in college are useful when we're paying our tuition, or supplementing the assistance we get from loans, parents, etc.

Were you attempting to answer me or nah?

Yes. See, that's how it works. Your post was the one that I clicked on when I answered.

You didn't work your way through college, did you?

So I asked if you didnt have to work while in college and your response is yes jobs in college are useful.

Do you see where I asked if jobs were useful? No...Ok then

I think the point is that education itself may be "work."

Certainly not in any familiar definition: While a student may "work" at learning something, he doesn't get paid for this, and the learning process produces nothing of commercial value

He may as well be said to be "working" in any masturbatory activity.

 

[Samson]

Every dollar spent on higher eduction returns at least 2 dollars in tax revenue. Often more. It is an investment.

The GI bill is proof that the idea works.

The GI Bill is proof that, in exchange for Military Service, people value Education.

It is not proof that people would value education more if they did not pay for it through Military service.

Only a weird person thinks that people who currently go deep into debt for an education don't value it. These same people would value it if tuition were free.

Silly nutter.

Your definition of valuing something is going "deeply into debt for" it.

Bankruptcy must represent some ultimate achievement for you.

You keep trying and failing.

Deep thoughts.

They must hurt you.

 

[LoneLaugher]

Every dollar spent on higher eduction returns at least 2 dollars in tax revenue. Often more. It is an investment.

The GI bill is proof that the idea works.

The GI Bill is proof that, in exchange for Military Service, people value Education.

It is not proof that people would value education more if they did not pay for it through Military service.

Only a weird person thinks that people who currently go deep into debt for an education don't value it. These same people would value it if tuition were free.

Silly nutter.

Your definition of valuing something is going "deeply into debt for" it.

Bankruptcy must represent some ultimate achievement for you.

You keep trying and failing.

Deep thoughts.

They must hurt you.

Are you claiming to have presented deep thoughts?

 

[Rikurzhen]

Every dollar spent on higher eduction returns at least 2 dollars in tax revenue. Often more. It is an investment.

The GI bill is proof that the idea works.

The GI Bill is proof that, in exchange for Military Service, people value Education.

It is not proof that people would value education more if they did not pay for it through Military service.

Only a weird person thinks that people who currently go deep into debt for an education don't value it. These same people would value it if tuition were free.

Silly nutter.

Most people go to university to earn a credential that they can use in the job market. In my experience, only about 15 to 20 percent of students actually care about what they learn, the rest just go through the motions because it's the expected thing to do. They put more care and passion into their social lives and sports and political interests than they do into learning the wonders of organic chemistry or studying Aristotle.

Secondly, to your broader point, there really is no value to society in pursuing this strategy. Studies have looked at the wage premium earned by people with higher degrees. There certainly WAS a wage premium but that's diminished as more and more college graduates take jobs as shoe salesmen, coffee baristas, call center operators. Those low end jobs are diluting the wage premium. More importantly, even when there was a measured wage premium, that wage premium disappeared when researchers controlled for the IQ of the degree holder. Employers weren't paying more for college graduates because they had read Chaucer or were up on the latest in Women's Studies feminist theory, they paid more because they found that hiring intelligent people was more effective and profitable than hiring less intelligent people. The knowledge gained in university was mostly useless, the exception being skills demanded by the market, such as mathematical fluency, engineering, chemistry, law, medicine, business, but very few uses for sociology skills or art history.

University is a very costly distraction for society which returns little benefit. Far better to create a system where young people can enter the workforce sooner, produce value rather than consume value, be screened for intelligence by employers and pick up specific skills from one-off university courses.

Of course, that approach would disadvantage blacks and that's why we have the system structured as we do - millions upon millions have to waste years of their lives to earn a credential to enter the job market, a credential which signals what could be determined from a 90 minute test.

 

[LoneLaugher]

Bullshit.

 

[Samson]

University is a very costly distraction for society which returns little benefit. Far better to create a system where young people can enter the workforce sooner, produce value rather than consume value, be screened for intelligence by employers and pick up specific skills from one-off university courses.

Of course, that approach would disadvantage blacks and that's why we have the system structured as we do - millions upon millions have to waste years of their lives to earn a credential to enter the job market, a credential which signals what could be determined from a 90 minute test.

Why would, "a system where young people can enter the workforce sooner," be a disadvantage to anyone, regardless of race?

 

[Rikurzhen]

Bullshit.

You worship bullshit?
You eat bullshit?
You vote for bullshit?

 

[Samson]

Bullshit.

You worship bullshit?
You eat bullshit?
You vote for bullshit?

 

[Rikurzhen]

University is a very costly distraction for society which returns little benefit. Far better to create a system where young people can enter the workforce sooner, produce value rather than consume value, be screened for intelligence by employers and pick up specific skills from one-off university courses.

Of course, that approach would disadvantage blacks and that's why we have the system structured as we do - millions upon millions have to waste years of their lives to earn a credential to enter the job market, a credential which signals what could be determined from a 90 minute test.

Why would, "a system where young people can enter the workforce sooner," be a disadvantage to anyone, regardless of race?

When stated your way, it's not a disadvantage to anyone. The problem arises when employers try to assess the job candidates. A college degree is a rough proxy for intelligence, so they can assess intelligence by whether the applicant has a degree or not. The rise of college degrees as a proxy for intelligence really took off after the Supreme Court ruling in Griggs vs. Duke Power which banned the use of general intelligence tests in the hiring process. What a 90 minutes test told the employer now requires a 4 year degree to signal the same information.

 

[LoneLaugher]

People with a college education earn more money in their lifetime than those who do not. They are more productive. They contribute more to the commons. Their children are more likely to be productive in life.

Idiots want fewer college graduates. Period. If you are in favor of limiting the number of Americans with college degrees, you might be an idiot. And you cannot claim to be having deep thoughts.

 

[Samson]

University is a very costly distraction for society which returns little benefit. Far better to create a system where young people can enter the workforce sooner, produce value rather than consume value, be screened for intelligence by employers and pick up specific skills from one-off university courses.

Of course, that approach would disadvantage blacks and that's why we have the system structured as we do - millions upon millions have to waste years of their lives to earn a credential to enter the job market, a credential which signals what could be determined from a 90 minute test.

Why would, "a system where young people can enter the workforce sooner," be a disadvantage to anyone, regardless of race?

When stated your way, it's not a disadvantage to anyone. The problem arises when employers try to assess the job candidates. A college degree is a rough proxy for intelligence, so they can assess intelligence by whether the applicant has a degree or not. The rise of college degrees as a proxy for intelligence really took off after the Supreme Court ruling in Griggs vs. Duke Power which banned the use of general intelligence tests in the hiring process. What a 90 minutes test told the employer now requires a 4 year degree to signal the same information.

Meh.

Hiring managers can determine the intelligence of a candidate within minutes of an interview: No general intelligence test or degree is necessary.

The Degreed Candidate is only preferred because many already accepted candidates happen to possess the degree: Hiring managers thus CYA with the degree. E.g., "how was I supposed to know Lonelaughter was an imbecile?

HE HAD A DEGREE!!"

 

[Rikurzhen]

People with a college education earn more money in their lifetime than those who do not.

What you're observing is correlation, not causation. Smart people tended to go to college. In the employment market they were rewarded for doing well, they did well because they were intelligent, not because they majored in child psychology in college.

It's the same process that liberals always mistakenly interpret. Liberals saw that middle class home owners were upright citizens and they believed that being a home owner is what caused people to become middle class and upright citizens so they launched a massive program to encourage blacks and Hispanics to become home owners, banking on the fact that this would turn them into upright citizens who were middle class.

Bzzt. Wrong. Upright middle class people bought homes because they were upright middle class people. Smart people went to college and did well later in their careers because they were smart.

They are more productive. They contribute more to the commons. Their children are more likely to be productive in life.

All this arises from their personal qualities, not from earning a degree. If Charles Manson earns a degree in prison, that doesn't change him into Ward Cleaver.

Inequality and Ability:

Using data from the NLS, Murnane et al. (1995) report that basic cognitive skills learned prior to high school had a much larger impact on the wages for 24-year-old men and women in 1986 than in 1978 in the United States. The cognitive measures they use are basic skills such as following directions, facility with fractions and decimals, and interpretation of line graphs. In other research, Ferguson (1993) finds that adding basic skills into the wage regression wipes out the estimated growth in the return to schooling during the 1980s in the United States. Using the AFQT score as a measure of ability, Ferguson shows that the return to basic skills rises during the 1980s and converges within all education groups. . . .

In contrast to the literature summarized in Section 2, these results are the first to show that a measure for mental ability is becoming increasingly important within sectors over time. The addition of IQ also serves to wipe out the limited increase in the return to education in the professional sector, as well as decreasing the estimated increase in the return to education in the service sector: the return to education in the service sector increases from 9% to 11% instead of 9% to 14% without IQ. However, the inclusion of IQ into the analysis does not meaningfully affect the size or trend of the residual variance within each of the three occupational sectors. . . .

The addition of IQ into the analysis reduces the returns to education, particularly for 1992, so that there is virtually no appreciable increase in the return to education in either sector after controlling for IQ. The increasing return to education found in Table 6 is now picked up by the increasing return to IQ in the professional and service sectors. . . .

The results show that ‘‘residual inequality’’ is increasing over time due to an increasing emphasis on mental ability and/or the general unobservable skill within each occupation. Consequently, the trend in residual inequality is being driven by technology not only dispersing the variances of abilities, but more importantly it is increasingly emphasizing general skills versus sector-specific skills over time.​

 

[Rikurzhen]

Hiring managers can determine the intelligence of a candidate within minutes of an interview: No general intelligence test or degree is necessary

Slate:

The evidence is overwhelming. Take tank gunners. You wouldn't think intelligence would have much effect on the ability to shoot straight, but apparently it does. Replacing a gunner who'd scored Category IV on the aptitude test (ranking in the 10-30 percentile) with one who'd scored Category IIIA (50-64 percentile) improved the chances of hitting targets by 34 percent. (For more on the meaning of the test scores, click here.)

In another study cited by the RAND report, 84 three-man teams from the Army's active-duty signal battalions were given the task of making a communications system operational. Teams consisting of Category IIIA personnel had a 67 percent chance of succeeding. Those consisting of Category IIIB (who'd ranked in the 31-49 percentile on the aptitude test) had a 47 percent chance. Those with Category IV personnel had only a 29 percent chance.

The same study of signal battalions took soldiers who had just taken advanced individual training courses and asked them to troubleshoot a faulty piece of communications gear. They passed if they were able to identify at least two technical problems. Smarts trumped training. Among those who had scored Category I on the aptitude test (in the 93-99 percentile), 97 percent passed. Among those who'd scored Category II (in the 65-92 percentile), 78 percent passed. Category IIIA: 60 percent passed. Category IIIB: 43 percent passed. Category IV: a mere 25 percent passed.

The pattern is clear: The higher the score on the aptitude test, the better the performance in the field. This is true for individual soldiers and for units. Moreover, the study showed that adding one high-scoring soldier to a three-man signals team boosted its chance of success by 8 percent (meaning that adding one low-scoring soldier boosts its chance of failure by a similar margin).

Smarter also turns out to be cheaper. One study examined how many Patriot missiles various Army air-defense units had to fire in order to destroy 10 targets. Units with Category I personnel had to fire 20 missiles. Those with Category II had to fire 21 missiles. Category IIIA: 22. Category IIIB: 23. Category IV: 24 missiles. In other words, to perform the same task, Category IV units chewed up 20 percent more hardware than Category I units. For this particular task, since each Patriot missile costs about $2 million, they also chewed up $8 million more of the Army's procurement budget.​

 

[flacaltenn]

Germany has returned to a policy of tuition free universities.

Germany Free college education for everyone Tuition unjust -- Society s Child -- Sott.net

Smart. This is an investment with great returns for the citizenry.

We ought to be doing the same thing.

Sounds like Socialism

Higher education should be reserved for those who can afford it....it is the American way

No excuses.. You can get a 1/2 tuition waiver with Lottery funds even in a "backwards" Red State like my Tennessee if you can keep a B average. In California, you can get a 2 year degree for the cost of owning cable and cell phone. No WAY I would want to do more than that for people who insist on wasting their parent's money. It's a proposal that ALL those bitter Liberal Arts students amongst us just love..

 

[Dont Taz Me Bro]

Higher education should be reserved for those who can afford it....it is the American way

I completely agree.

 

[flacaltenn]

People with a college education earn more money in their lifetime than those who do not. They are more productive. They contribute more to the commons. Their children are more likely to be productive in life.

Idiots want fewer college graduates. Period. If you are in favor of limiting the number of Americans with college degrees, you might be an idiot. And you cannot claim to be having deep thoughts.

You're quoting a generalization. ON AVERAGE, that's probably correct. But there's a LARGE fraction of graduates who end up never using the credentials either because there is no market for them OR they didn't research the jobs and the careers and it doesn't appeal to them.

Not hard for Harvard or MIT to balance out the salary failures at about a dozen other universities.

Which brings up the next point.... If it's FREE ---- why can't my kid go to NorthWestern instead of Miss. State???

 

[Rikurzhen]

There's a shit-ton of studies which demonstrate that it's IQ that employers want and reward, not the skills learned in film criticism class

Returns To Schooling And Bayesian Model Averaging: A Union Of Two Literatures

Some studies, such as Blackburn and Neumark (1993), Murnane Levy and Willett (1995), Grogger and Eide (1995) and Heckman and Vytlacil (2001) have investigated whether the increase in return to schooling over this period is attributable to a reward for additional schooling, or a changing premium for measured ability. The typical approach in these studies is to allow for ability-education and ability-education-time interactions to determine if the growing return to education has been experienced primarily by those of highest ability. The general conclusion has been that after controlling for ability, the growth in the college wage premium is more modest, and Heckman and Vytlacil (2001) report that the college wage gap has been growing only for those in the highest ability quartile.​

Here's a fantastic natural experiment which took place:

Shrinking Earnings Premium for University Graduates in Hong Kong: The Effect of Quantity or Quality?

In 1989, the Hong Kong government embarked on a program to increase the provision of first-year first-degree places from 7 percent of the 17–20 age cohort to 18 percent. The number of university students doubled in five years. Since university places are tightly controlled by the government, the expansion program represents an exogenous increase in supply of university graduates to the labor market. This paper shows that the increase in supply has brought about a decline in the earnings premium for college workers. Moreover, the decline is more substantial among younger workers than among older workers. We also find that locally educated university graduates used to earn significantly more than did overseas graduates. Their earnings advantage, however, had declined between 1986 and 2001, particularly among the younger age group. These observations suggest that the decline in the university earnings premium is probably more the result of declining quality of university graduates than of a labor market crowding effect.
​

Ability, Educational Ranks, and Labor Market Trends: The Effects of Shifts in the Skill Composition of Educational Groups

One might wonder whether the strong results for the effects of changes in the composition of educational groups on weekly earnings education differentials hold for other outcomes, such as employment and annual earnings. In fact, the effects of including educational ranks are considerably stronger for these outcomes. For annual employment, education differentials are slightly negative once educational ranks are included suggesting that employment differentials are more closely related to a person’s educational rank than their educational attainment. Moreover, accounting for changes in composition of educational groups results in change in the 1969-1989 college/high school annual employment differential switching from a 1.3 percentage point increase to a 0.9 percentage point decrease.

Similarly, the results for annual earnings are quite strong. For example, the difference in annual earnings between college graduates and high school dropouts increases by 32.6 percentage points between 1959 and 1989. After accounting for changes in the composition of educational groups, this increase falls to a dramatically smaller 11.5 percentage points. Without question, accounting for changes in the composition of educational groups generates a very different picture of the U.S. labor market.​

 

[rightwinger]

Germany has returned to a policy of tuition free universities.

Germany Free college education for everyone Tuition unjust -- Society s Child -- Sott.net

Smart. This is an investment with great returns for the citizenry.

We ought to be doing the same thing.

Sounds like Socialism

Higher education should be reserved for those who can afford it....it is the American way

No excuses.. You can get a 1/2 tuition waiver with Lottery funds even in a "backwards" Red State like my Tennessee if you can keep a B average. In California, you can get a 2 year degree for the cost of owning cable and cell phone. No WAY I would want to do more than that for people who insist on wasting their parent's money. It's a proposal that ALL those bitter Liberal Arts students amongst us just love..

I know...because American students are just like their parents. dumb and lazy and looking for a handout

It is a cornerstone of the Republican platform

 

[Samson]

Hiring managers can determine the intelligence of a candidate within minutes of an interview: No general intelligence test or degree is necessary

Slate:

The evidence is overwhelming. Take tank gunners. You wouldn't think intelligence would have much effect on the ability to shoot straight, but apparently it does. Replacing a gunner who'd scored Category IV on the aptitude test (ranking in the 10-30 percentile) with one who'd scored Category IIIA (50-64 percentile) improved the chances of hitting targets by 34 percent. (For more on the meaning of the test scores, click here.)

In another study cited by the RAND report, 84 three-man teams from the Army's active-duty signal battalions were given the task of making a communications system operational. Teams consisting of Category IIIA personnel had a 67 percent chance of succeeding. Those consisting of Category IIIB (who'd ranked in the 31-49 percentile on the aptitude test) had a 47 percent chance. Those with Category IV personnel had only a 29 percent chance.

The same study of signal battalions took soldiers who had just taken advanced individual training courses and asked them to troubleshoot a faulty piece of communications gear. They passed if they were able to identify at least two technical problems. Smarts trumped training. Among those who had scored Category I on the aptitude test (in the 93-99 percentile), 97 percent passed. Among those who'd scored Category II (in the 65-92 percentile), 78 percent passed. Category IIIA: 60 percent passed. Category IIIB: 43 percent passed. Category IV: a mere 25 percent passed.

The pattern is clear: The higher the score on the aptitude test, the better the performance in the field. This is true for individual soldiers and for units. Moreover, the study showed that adding one high-scoring soldier to a three-man signals team boosted its chance of success by 8 percent (meaning that adding one low-scoring soldier boosts its chance of failure by a similar margin).

Smarter also turns out to be cheaper. One study examined how many Patriot missiles various Army air-defense units had to fire in order to destroy 10 targets. Units with Category I personnel had to fire 20 missiles. Those with Category II had to fire 21 missiles. Category IIIA: 22. Category IIIB: 23. Category IV: 24 missiles. In other words, to perform the same task, Category IV units chewed up 20 percent more hardware than Category I units. For this particular task, since each Patriot missile costs about $2 million, they also chewed up $8 million more of the Army's procurement budget.​

You appear to be trying to make a point that a intelligence test is good.

This is not a counterpoint to the statement that hiring managers can assess intelligence within minutes of an interview.

 

[Bush92]

We need our manufacturing base back in the United States. Not everyone wants or needs a college degree. Leave tuition up to the states. In some states if a student maintains a high enough GPA they get all or some of their tuition paid at any STATE school. If you want to go to Princeton and live in New Mexico then you better get scholarship money. The federal student loan program is corrupt.