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Comment by syki | Hacker News Reader

This isn’t the only solution. The government could provide higher education at little or no cost to qualified students. As state funding per college student has declined loans have risen. There are other reforms to the system that would help lower costs. Your proposal might work too and I don’t necessarily disagree with them. I just want to point out that it’s not the only solution.

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Governments already do this! My brother goes to a school only a few miles from NYU that’s totally paid for by NY city+state government. I think he pays a couple hundred dollars per semester.

But students choose NYU over those schools…

Only STEM education, apprenticeships and trade schools. I don't want my taxes to fund some obscure PhD in babylonian dance history and then their only contribution to the society is brewing coffee at a Starbucks while living a greek life in college party town. We need liberal arts but the reason why they become Baristas is because there isn't much need for them.

Liberal arts education in universities is a disaster. 10% of the students are actually passionate about it, take it seriously and go on to contribute to the society. Rest of them are rich kids who are out there to party.

We need to push students to think about their career choices before picking them.

I agree, but the purpose of government funded higher education should be to get you a job, period. Trade schools, tech schools, community colleges and smaller public universities all exist and are significantly cheaper than a fancy private school in the middle of Manhattan. There's zero reason for the government to be involved in the latter.

The whole college system is quite inefficient. 4 years of education, with a lot of the material being superfluous to what you end up doing.

A more focused system could be much more economical and societally beneficial.

You can always elect to "broaden" your education on the side, but should not be the baseline path. Most would not be willing to pay for the extracurriculars, if you gave them the choice.

From European perspective it feels strange that more of the general education isn't effectively done in High School. Then you could have 2-3 year Bachelor level education.

Because of how each state handles education separately, and the presence of private schools, in the US you have a wide variety of high school outcomes. From kids that aren’t literate, to kids who could probably earn a bachelors in less than a year, if their high school education was considered in a more holistic fashion. Therefore, university programs that are set up to cater to the largest population possible necessarily aim for the lowest common denominator. And of course there is always the perverse incentive that colleges and universities are paid by the credit, so reducing course loads would probably never make it past the bean counters.

I believe schools should only earn based on percentage of post education wages.

Need to think through the exact mechanism, but at least public schools should operate this way. Once college has skin in the game, education would change so fast for the better your head would spin

I wonder in some cases how far the standards would drop... That would incentivise to pass just about everyone with glowing credentials. Ofc, the employers should wisen up in year or a few... But hey, at that point the cohort is already out making money...

Well, schools have the incentive to do this today, already. Any student they take on is additional revenue, even if they perform horribly/are not qualified. Yet we don't see most schools lowering standards for revenue purposes.

But there are always second order effects and perverse incentives to any system. I agree if it were enacted as I stated that outcome could be something along lines of what you're suggesting.

Of course, we already have that now with the university of Phoenix type of schools.

I meant moreso aligning incentive of school and student. But exact mechanism of implementation would need to be refined to avoid any obvious perverse incentives

> 4 years of education, with a lot of the material being superfluous to what you end up doing.

Not sure that is the problem of universities though. Look at computer science, I wish I would be able to apply my bsc/msc education in my job but that simply is not the case.

Sure, university taught me how to think in a different way but the actual course work is not so helpful. I would not fault the university for this.

It sounds like what you want is an apprenticeship-system and not a university.

Do people go to university to become "educated" or to get a job?

The answer to that question should motivate the shape of the education system. The answer is implied, of course, but pretty obvious people go into debt for hopes of better employment opportunities.

Not sure I understand the question. Universities are for shaping future researchers and teaching you the foundations. If you don't need the foundations for your future job, do not attend a university. To me at least, this does not imply changing universities...

Universities are for getting a degree as a signaling tool for getting a job. A tiny percentage of people go into research, yes.

No, universities are for Research and if people misuse it, it’s the problem or the people and not the universities

But it sounds like you want universities to change

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