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Comment by linuxftw | Hacker News Reader

> Not only will they make more money the exclusivity means they will be more desirable as well.

In a functioning society, this would only be true if the education quality is actually superior.

One does not sent their child to Harvard for the education. One sends their child to Harvard to build personal and business connections.

The question is should tax-payers be on the hook for this? Definitely not.

Why not? What’s the point of the state paying for higher education? I’d say encouraging social mobility and making more people into high value creators.

It's not very egalitarian to let wealthy private institutions be the gate keepers of social mobility. I don't believe we're talking about 'education' here, rather we're talking about status signaling.

I'm 100% for free higher education paid by the state. I'm 100% against the current college and school system.

China does the opposite. To get access to government jobs (which include essentially all middle management and up positions in the private sector), there's an exam, the "Gaokao" ... administered by the government.

It is absolutely infamous for the amount of fraud and corruption, as well as how far government employees will go to force their kids through the exam. In both senses - preparation, cheating, outright fraud.

Fraud horror stories: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-53316895

Preparation horror stories: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/magazine/inside-a-chinese...

Cheating horror stories: https://time.com/4360968/china-gaokao-examination-university...

Having 5 different options in the private sector + a fallback (the state universities) seems a very desirable outcome compared to that, I must say.

> One does not sent their child to Harvard for the education. One sends their child to Harvard to build personal and business connections.

It’s not a coïncidence that the education is damn good, too. A motivated student will be proximate to great minds in a way that is demonstrably productive.

It's a combination of prestige and education quality. And the fact that they can afford to be very selective, so they can keep the prestige intact by admitting the very best for the majority of the student base.

Consider this: The best and brightest that aren't admitted to the ivy league due to financial purposes will attend some other institution. Those institutions will raise their prestige over time as the market acknowledges the education outcomes.

As long as we continue to let these ivy league institutions gate-keep society, we'll be stuck in this system. Cutting out federal tax-payer money from these wildly overpriced institutions is a good first step.

>Cutting out federal tax-payer money from these wildly overpriced institutions is a good first step.

I would tend to agree. It's usually my first response when someone says <insert community college here> isn't a good school.

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