How should higher education be financed?

‘Conversely, if everyone&#x27;s education were free, then there wouldn’t be a good way to determine a) which specific programs ought to have different prices because of the supply and demand for that kind of credential, b) whether particular people might be better-served by spending their time in different ways, or c) when we&#x27;re allocating too much of society&#x27;s resources to education, in the aggregate.’<p>a) If the education is free, there&#x27;s no need to determine _prices_ for different programs, is there? There is a need to decide how many places to offer in each programme, but this is an easier problem.<p>b) Particular people may decide for themselves without a prohibitive cost factor, thank you very much.<p>c) When has this ever been a problem? If we want to allocate close to zero to begin with, it is another problem.<p>In other words, free education for all is basically alright. It is hard to attract the best educational talent in this setting because salaries are usually capped and one can always make more in the private sector, but a combination of job security and high prestige is usually enough to have decent staff.

What is this FA? The &quot;problems&quot; of free (publicly funded) higher education have been solved for decades, if not centuries, in many (most?) countries.<p>&quot;Equality of opportunity&quot; becomes even worse a bad joke when a prerequisite for higher education is to be born to well-off parents.

General taxation. The generation currently working pays for the education of the next generation. Society prospers, economically and socially, as a result

The first thing should be to incorporate modern technology to cut costs. That means the internet. All publicly funded education should be required to offer their classes and degrees remote. This will barely raise costs and will lower tuition to trivial amounts. At this point there won&#x27;t need to be any debate about how to fund higher education because with economies of scale permitted by the internet, the costs aren&#x27;t enough that anybody will want to argue over them.<p>Don&#x27;t want to offer your degrees to anybody who is willing to pay the price and can pass your tests? Then you are welcome to decline all government funding including student loans.

The main problem today in the US education is precisely financing.<p>It created ultra expensive education as Universities do not have to constantly evaluate the quality&#x2F;price relationship as everybody else needs to. They just raise their prices and people pay(because they do not know how much effort it will take to pay it back).<p>It looks good on paper until the bubble pops. The same happens with Real State.

Expensive universities is a low-AI phenomenon

Not by money meant for science.

I think the question should be, are these schools even relevant anymore? AI and violence going on on campuses make you wonder.

Most of the time, a degree is a waste of the student&#x27;s time. Not to even mention the money aspect. People mostly do them due to peer pressure not actual value. Basically higher education should be reduced 75-90%.

It should be financed by taxes, which includes caveats like eliminating virtually useless degrees like music education, drama, fashion design, anthropology, etc. People who want that can pay out of pocket for private institutions.