No-one should be put off going to university for financial reasons (£60k)

[Aeson]

I don't think it's clear how much of the gap between people with college degrees and high school graduates is because of people who go to college generally being smarter or more willing to work hard.

Being smart and willing to work hard is probably less of a factor than you'd think. These days if you don't have a degree on your resume it's very unlikely you'd even get in for an interview for a high paying job.

[Aeson]

No, the data absolutely do not admit that conclusion with any certainty.

Ok. So you'd rather they spend it how? (remember, "realistically")

[Kuciwalker]

I'd prefer people spend their money on the things that they choose. I'd prefer not to create government subsidies to induce people to choose different things, when there's no clear reason to believe that the government's choice is superior. I'd also prefer that the government not redistribute wealth to the upper ~25% of the population; I'd prefer wealth to be redistributed to the poor.

[giblets]

Ok. So you'd rather they spend it how? (remember, "realistically")

How about the government doesn't spend it at all?

[Aeson]

Neither of those things is realistic.

[Aeson]

This is a logically incoherent response.

No.

No, the data absolutely do not admit that conclusion with any certainty.

Unlike you I don't need some spreadsheet to tell me that providing someone a college education is a more valuable use of money than most, if not all, of what the government does. I also don't have delusions that if our government decided to cut education subsidies that they wouldn't find something else to spend the money on.

In addition, there is every reason to believe a priori that the market is OVER-supplied. This is a subsidized, competitive market with essentially no consumer liquidity contraints.

Why do you hate competition in the labor force?

[Jon Miller]

The people most likely to stop going to college because of a reduced subsidy are mostly those who earn substantially smaller-than-average returns from the degree.

Wrong, it is mostly poor people who no longer think they can afford to.

JM

[Jon Miller]

Additionally, there is a large benefit from education where Latisha might get a lifetime earning increase of just 100k or something, but Tyrone (her son) feels like he can go to college and thus gets a lifetime earning increase of 9m (as he becomes a successful doctor).

JM

[Kuciwalker]

Wrong, it is mostly poor people who no longer think they can afford to.

JM

You mean, the poor people who expect their post-graduation earnings will no longer pay off their loans?

[Jon Miller]

But they are. You fill out a FAFSA form which uses a formula, based on your parents' income and assets, to determine an Estimated Family Contribution, the amount of which determines how large your Pell Grant is, up to the cap. It may be set up where a relatively large EFC still gives you the cap, I don't know, but it seems to have some mechanism to consider parental income.

This is very true. It was much easier for me to go to college with my subsidized loans and even pell grants (for a couple of years) than for my neighbour (whose father had worked with my father before my father's accident) despite the fact that we both were intelligent and she had better grades than I because my family had 5 children and my father no longer worked after the accident.

JM

[Kuciwalker]

Additionally, there is a large benefit from education where Latisha might get a lifetime earning increase of just 100k or something, but Tyrone (her son) feels like he can go to college and thus gets a lifetime earning increase of 9m (as he becomes a successful doctor).

JM

[Jon Miller]

You mean, the poor people who expect their post-graduation earnings will no longer pay off their loans?

If the required loans are high enough poor people won't even think about it.

I don't think you understand how poor people think.

JM

[Jon Miller]

With a higher world wide level of education, education is even more important in the current labor market.

http://www.livescience.com/3259-college-remains-key-prosperity.html

"Education is the key to this polarization, Western said.

"It used to be that families could enjoy a middle class standard of living without a high school education, and that is clearly no longer true," he said, "and in fact, in more recent data that our paper didn't report on, it seems what's really important just over the last five or 10 years is post-graduate education, some sort of higher degree."

The only workers whose earnings grew in the past eight years were those with higher degrees, who make up 2 percent of the work force, Western said.

The analysis is incomplete, but it looks like the typical graduate degrees attained were MBAs, JDs and MDs, he said."

Note that the labor market includes places like Sweden who really subsidize education, where the education itself is free and money is provided to live on in addition to cheap loans to live 'better'.
"Every student is entitled to 12 semesters of allowances and loans, totaling 1,841 SEK per week (July 2007: 200 EUR, 274 USD, 127 GBP) for full-time studies (after 1 July 2006).[31][32] Allowances are usually 632 SEK per week (August 2007: 68 EUR; 94 USD; 46 GBP) with loans covering the rest. The limits for loans and allowances may be substantially increased under certain circumstances."

http://www.sweden.se/eng/Home/Education/Research/Facts/Higher-education-and-research-in-Sweden/

So Sweden spends about 54.4 billion sek (about 0.5% of gdp) on higher eduction and about 4% of the gdp is spent on r&d.

For the US (from wiki):
"The total cost of all higher education in 2002 was $289 billion." "10,286,175 million gdp in 2002"
So the US spent over 2% of gdp on higher education in the same time frame. Note that we don't have as highly educated populace as Sweden. The numbers I have found suggest ~2% of gdp for r&d but I bet this doesn't include all funding for r&d.

The problem in the US is how low the education subsidizes are, not how high they are.

JM

[Kidlicious]

The jobs in the future require education. If you don't subsidize education you will have unemployed people which amounts to economic failure. Isn't it amazing how people can learn so many big words and be so stupid?

[Jon Miller]

You should try to expand your world view and the people you have experiences with a little bit.

JM