Should individuals or the state pay for higher education?
The Economist Debate series has some great stuff regarding the issue.
On the side of the individual:
A university education is of enormous and direct benefit to the individual. A major reason for its value is that only some people have it. So the individual, and not the taxpayer, should pay for it. There are important and pressing calls on the resources of the government. Using taxpayers’ money to help a sub-set of young people to earn high incomes in the future is not one of them.On the side of the state:
I believe; however, that knowledge is so important in the future that all countries need to put substantial tax money into higher education to be able to get a classless knowledge society that utilises the full power of the nation. I believe from my personal experience of Swedish students that the motivation for the individual students is as high and that the students are as competitive as students in other countries paying for their university education themselves.
If the nation is not prepared to pay for its most important resource, we are in trouble.
I'm hard pressed to fall on one side of the issue, as much as I hate tuition bills. Idealistically, there needs to be a paradigm shift: Does the manager of Giant Eagle need a college degree to fulfill his job? I would argue, no. Can someone be an intellectual without a college degree? Absolutely. The belief that only formal 'higher education' leads to intellectual and/or societal improvement is rubbish. It is merely one path. However, currently, it is by far the most acceptable.
1 comments:
In light of the fact that most professional careers require a bachelor's degree, I would say that the government should subsidize a certain percentage of college tuition (say 30%).
This way the GE manager can weigh the worth of a college degree against his value of the 70% tuition money, which in his position would more than likely fall toward the money.
A subsidy doesn't open university level education to all the masses (which I personally think is a bad idea), but more of the masses.
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