The only value provided by education is certainly not contribution to career. The question is should certain types of education be more directly subsidized by taxpayers than others.
The underlying theory of subsidizing tuition is that a college degree increases lifetime earnings, which increases GDP and the tax base, ultimately paying for itself. Generally speaking, investments which do not pay for themselves are considered bad ones.
Taxpayers don't want to make bad investments in subsidizing college education. Clearly this is happening at a massive scale, but I think liberal arts degrees are just the scapegoat. The reality is that $1.3 trillion in mostly unpayable and undischargable debt is a problem much bigger than earning the wrong degree.
With the housing bubble and subsequent crash [1], the truth is that not everyone should have a mortgage, and pushing the homeownership rate above 64% was not sustainable. But college degree rates are on a much longer term and steady rise, and there's not clearly a bubble [2] but maybe I'm looking at the wrong data.
If $1.3 trillion in student debt didn't actually result in significantly more people getting degrees than otherwise would have, then we are talking about a completely failed policy which is merely padding school endowments. Literally nothing to do with choice of degree.
Imagine an alternative policy; making a $1.3 trillion investment in building and endowing 5,000 public universities. Significantly increase the supply of college education to drive down the cost. Would that have worked better?
The underlying theory of subsidizing tuition is that a college degree increases lifetime earnings, which increases GDP and the tax base, ultimately paying for itself. Generally speaking, investments which do not pay for themselves are considered bad ones.
Taxpayers don't want to make bad investments in subsidizing college education. Clearly this is happening at a massive scale, but I think liberal arts degrees are just the scapegoat. The reality is that $1.3 trillion in mostly unpayable and undischargable debt is a problem much bigger than earning the wrong degree.
With the housing bubble and subsequent crash [1], the truth is that not everyone should have a mortgage, and pushing the homeownership rate above 64% was not sustainable. But college degree rates are on a much longer term and steady rise, and there's not clearly a bubble [2] but maybe I'm looking at the wrong data.
If $1.3 trillion in student debt didn't actually result in significantly more people getting degrees than otherwise would have, then we are talking about a completely failed policy which is merely padding school endowments. Literally nothing to do with choice of degree.
Imagine an alternative policy; making a $1.3 trillion investment in building and endowing 5,000 public universities. Significantly increase the supply of college education to drive down the cost. Would that have worked better?
[1] - http://cdn.tradingeconomics.com/embed/?s=unitedstahomownrat&... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_...