Selective subsidizing of higher education - good or bad idea?

[Warspite]

Your post perfectly illustrates why the state should not subsidize the education you and your friends received. People who do not come from privileged backgrounds usually go into education that can pay the bills/gives a profession, not something to "hone their general skills and intellect", or get "rigorous logic or linguistic precision" because without connections/"cultural capital" they know this will not be enough to land them a decent job.

Maybe it is different in your country, but in the UK general skills and intellect can land you a decent job. In fact, a lot of very lucrative doors, and even some not-so lucrative ones, are closed if you cannot demonstrate this to a would-be employer. And not simply because of the inflation of job qualifications (a separate issue). This why a lot of students from non-privileged backgrounds (the majority who live in the middle) actually study things you would consider useless, quite of their own volition, and quite successfully in the end.

The tax payer should not pay for the likes of you. Sorry. Of course nothing wrong with your parents paying for you getting that. But that shouldn't be the state's burden. This money can be much better spent elsewhere.

I would agree with this overall sentiment, the irony though is that most taxpayers in this country, from all classes, actually would disagree.

Edit: And this also perfectly illustrates why "free higher education for everyone" really serves the rich much better than the poor - because unless the state pumps really huge amounts of cash into it, only the rich will be able to afford spending 4-5 productive years of their life getting vaguely relevant skills and knowledge (while living off their parents) - and at the same time this further inflates the need for a degree for the lower and middle classes to even get a job of a secretary or a receptionist.

TO my recollection, in this thread I have neither argued for nor against free higher education, merely that selective subsidisation has practical and ethical problems.

It would appear your legal education has not equipped with either reading comprehension or an appreciation of logical validity. Maybe Poland should ask you for its money back.

[Gups]

Good grief that's shitty. Forty grand wouldn't even cover the insurance premiums here. Even if it were in Sterling.

They don't have to pay insurance premiums here. The NHS picks up the tab. Fortunately we're not yet as litigous as you guys so lawsuits haven't bankrupted the state.

[Malthus]

I suspect that reveals more about the US system than the attractiveness of NHS employment in the UK. £40k for a 27 year old is a rather good income, and it's only going to increase with experience.

You have to remember that US med students go into considerable debt to obtain their qualifications.  At that pay level they wouldnt pay off their debt before they retired.

At $60,000 upon qualification and increasing thereafter they would not pay off their debt?

How does anyone afford a mortgage or a car loan in America?

For a top med school in the US, debt can be in the hundreds of thousands. The *average* debt for indebted med students for the class of 2010 was $157,944.

http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/about-ama/our-people/member-groups-sections/medical-student-section/advocacy-policy/medical-student-debt/background.page?

At an income of $60K, this would take a long long time to pay off - considering docs would need accomodation, a car, etc. 

[Malthus]

Don't we already have quotas in a lot of areas of higher education?

I mean - I remember people (not me of course) being put on wait lists for law school because all the spots were filled...

In part, that's a function of a professional guild attempting to restrict its monopoly. Too many lawyers = legal fees going down. 

I seem to recall the law society lobbying hard to prevent over-production of law students by law schools, at least in part for that reason ...

We address that at the bar exam level.

About 2000 lawyers are spat out of universities in Warsaw alone each year. About 300 advocates and legal advisers (roughly, the equivalent of barristers and solicitors) are made in Warsaw each year. 

In Canada, this is addressed at the entry to law school level. Once in, you have to practically *want* to fail the bar - but getting in is super-tough.

Another bottleneck is obtaining a good articling position.

Having the Bar be the cut-off seems a bad idea to me, as if you fail it, you have effectively wasted years of your life on law school ... what do the remainder of the 2000 who fail to pass the bar do, in Poland?

[Warspite]

I suspect that reveals more about the US system than the attractiveness of NHS employment in the UK. £40k for a 27 year old is a rather good income, and it's only going to increase with experience.

You have to remember that US med students go into considerable debt to obtain their qualifications.  At that pay level they wouldnt pay off their debt before they retired.

At $60,000 upon qualification and increasing thereafter they would not pay off their debt?

How does anyone afford a mortgage or a car loan in America?

For a top med school in the US, debt can be in the hundreds of thousands. The *average* debt for indebted med students for the class of 2010 was $157,944.

http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/about-ama/our-people/member-groups-sections/medical-student-section/advocacy-policy/medical-student-debt/background.page?

At an income of $60K, this would take a long long time to pay off - considering docs would need accomodation, a car, etc.

Agree it could be tough, but what sort of repayment plans are the norm? Paying it back over 10 years is much more onerous than 20. Plus one expects a starting salary of $60k to start rising with experience, at least that is the case here.

[Malthus]

Agree it could be tough, but what sort of repayment plans are the norm? Paying it back over 10 years is much more onerous than 20. Plus one expects a starting salary of $60k to start rising with experience, at least that is the case here.

I dunno what plans people tend to have to pay it off - it's basically the equivalent of taking out another mortgage, in amount.

Going into that kind of debt (not to mention, several years of non-earning while attending med school) would be a serious financial disincentive unless the average reward was significant.

I suppose it depends on what sorts of pay you can expect to get without the med degree.

[Fate]

The standard repayment plan is 10 years following graduation. $1,726 a month on a salary of $45,000-$55,000 for 4-7 years as a resident/fellow. 

[Malthus]

The standard repayment plan is 10 years following graduation. $1,726 a month on a salary of $45,000-$55,000 for 4-7 years as a resident/fellow. 

But in 20 years, you'll be raking in the dough ... unless some future version of socialized medicine is imposed. 

[Valmy]

But in 20 years, you'll be raking in the dough

And wistfully watching it be raked out by your malpractice insurance provider.

[Ideologue]

When the revolution comes, he'll treat our wounded and torture our captives and his pay will be not catching a bullet with his face.

On the plus side, student loans will be eradicated.  It might be be a net gain.

[Malthus]

When the revolution comes, he'll treat our wounded and torture our captives and his pay will be not catching a bullet with his face.

On the plus side, student loans will be eradicated.  It might be be a net gain.

Heh, you graduated from law school. When the revolution comes, you will be shot out of a cannon as ammunition. 

[Ideologue]

Cool.

[Iormlund]

It's very hard to work as a philosopher, but it's a very valuable skill to be able to bring rigorous logic and linguistic precision to the table for many employers.

Those two skills are indeed useful, but hardly exclusive to philosophy. Any science or engineering degree is based on math, that makes those skills essential to graduate.
They come along with a host of other useful abilities and knowledge. And that's why employers hire engineers and not philosophers, even outside of manufacturing. In fact out of all my friends who went into engineering, I'm the only one working manufacturing, and only indirectly (I design control and supervision systems). Most of them ended up in management, health & safety, sales, procurement, regulation and quality compliance ...

[dps]

You don't get it. It's not about whether they are bankrupt or not. It's about whether they work in their learned profession. If they don't, then the investment into their education was wasted, and as such should not be subsidized with the taxpayer money.

Other than by the use of forced labor, how do you propose that the state ensure that people with "useful" degrees actually work in the field in which they obtained their degrees?  I suppose it could be enforced as a matter of contract--upon entering higher education, you sign a contract with the government which states that in return for subsidizing your education in a particular field of study, you will work for a minimum of, say, 10 years in that field, but what happens if the government has overestimated the need for people in a particular field?  If the system turns out 20,000 chemical engineers this year, but businesses only have openings for 5000 of them, what happens to the rest?  You yourself stated that only a fairly small percentage of those who get law degrees in Poland are actually admitted to the bar--what about the rest?

[Sheilbh]

In the UK I think the NHS pays for doctors and nurses (and certainly for dentists) to study on the condition that they work in the NHS for a few years.  Similar to the armed forces.

But I think fundamentally you're right and it's especially difficult given EU free movement of labour.  Poland focusing so much on specific degrees when those graduates can go and work anywhere in Europe would be like Oregon doing the same.  There's no promise they'll work in the 'productive' sectors or that they'll work in your country.  Better to have a market of employers-parents-students-universities than trying to engineer a specific result.

People who do not come from privileged backgrounds usually go into education that can pay the bills/gives a profession, not something to "hone their general skills and intellect", or get "rigorous logic or linguistic precision" because without connections/"cultural capital" they know this will not be enough to land them a decent job.

This may be a cultural difference but that's not my experience in the UK.  It does land you a decent job (or it can, times are pretty tough now) and there's not much of a social tilt to the different degrees, with a few notable exceptions.