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Comment by austenallred | Hacker News Reader

Makes a hell of a lot of sense, to be honest.

The problem in the US system is the government feels everyone has a "right" to an education, so it will underwrite an unlimited amount of loans regardless of what you do with them.

That pumps the system so full of cash no one is quite sure what to do. They just keep raising prices and people keep coming, because what are you going to do, not go to college? Even after funding slows, the prices are still sky high, and people keep paying.

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Why would this be any different than a right to, say, health care? Why even pay for k-12?

The government isn't running the schools (most of the time), it's just underwriting an infinite amount of loans for students to take and go to private companies with. So if you're a University you know a) students think they should pay however much it costs to attend and b) they have an unlimited amount of funding to do so with.

Thus ITT Tech.

Sure but we're talking about rights, not operations.

I'm not trying to comment on whether or not education should be a right, I'm just saying that believing it should be given our current system has had some negative repercussions.

Which is fine, but my comment was addressing the right to education.

I would say there is a major difference between local property owners paying reasonable sums for children to become literate (k-12)...

and a nation paying highly unreasonable and ballooning sums of money so that a functional literate adult can obtain an education that rarely leads to 10x better outcomes

You do have a right to public K-12, and it's free (your taxes pay for it).

You can pay for private K-12, or "pay up" and move to a more expensive school district (read: taxes) which would theoretically give you a better education.

School districts have problems with people claiming grandparent's home addresses to attend a better school, and it happens across the country.

Sure, but if the k-12 is necessary for employment, it follows that 12+ should be "free" as well. It seems like a college education these days is a basic education similar to 9th-12th grade.

No such thing as a right to either because neither health providers nor educators are slaves.

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