गैर-एसईईएम (या गैर-लाभकारी) कॉलेज की बड़ी कंपनियों के लिए सार्वजनिक धन को गैर-कॉलेज शिक्षित करदाता के लिए कैसे उचित ठहराया जाएगा?
मैं उत्सुक हूं कि कॉलेज शिक्षा के बिना किसी को औचित्य देने के लिए किस तरह के तर्क दिए जा सकते हैं कि उन्हें किसी और की शिक्षा के लिए भुगतान करना होगा जो उन्हें खुद कभी नहीं मिला।
बड़ी कंपनियों के साथ जहां यह उम्मीद की जाती है कि लोग बिना मूल्य के उत्पादन करने में अधिक सक्षम होंगे जैसे STEM की बड़ी कंपनियों के साथ तर्क है कि दीर्घकालिक, वे अधिक कर का भुगतान करने में सक्षम होंगे जिससे मूल करदाता अधिक आराम से रिटायर हो सके।
लेकिन यह एक तर्क से कम है जब इसके प्रमुख के बारे में जिसके परिणामस्वरूप उच्च भुगतान की स्थिति की कोई गारंटी नहीं है। वास्तव में आप कर राजस्व में कमी कर रहे हैं जो वे भुगतान कर सकते थे यदि वे एक ही समय काम करते थे।
तो कोई किसी और के लिए कम लाभदायक प्रमुख के लिए भुगतान करने के लिए किसी को कैसे मनाएगा?
जवाब
एक पीढ़ी के बाद, आपके पास बहुत सारे इंजीनियर और वकील और कुछ, यदि कोई हो, तो शिक्षक होंगे।
दो पीढ़ियों के बाद, आपके पास न तो इंजीनियर होंगे और न ही शिक्षक।
हमारी संस्कृति सिर्फ इंजीनियरिंग से ज्यादा है। यह संभव हो सकता है कि अल्पावधि पर ध्यान न दें, लेकिन लंबे समय तक नहीं। तो कोई कह सकता है कि हम व्यवस्थित रूप से किंडरगार्टन शिक्षकों और कला इतिहासकारों को कम कर रहे हैं, और आप अपने विभागों को बदनाम करके चोट के अपमान को जोड़ना चाहते हैं?
फॉलो-अप: टिप्पणियों में बहस हुई है और मेरे साथ शिक्षकों और कला इतिहासकारों के मिश्रण के बारे में कुछ वास्तविक टिप्पणियां भी हैं । पूर्व को एसटीईएम स्नातकों की अगली पीढ़ी के उत्पादन में कुछ टिप्पणीकारों द्वारा उपयोगी के रूप में देखा जाता है , बाद वाले को बेकार के रूप में देखा जाता है। लेकिन मैं अपने विश्वास से खड़ा हूं कि संस्कृति सिर्फ इंजीनियरिंग से ज्यादा है। स्पष्ट करने के लिए, मेरा दृढ़ता से मानना है कि जो भी समाज गैर-लागू विज्ञान को छोड़ देगा, वह लंबे समय तक कम हो जाएगा।
शिक्षित समाज से सभी को लाभ होता है।
गैर एसटीईएम क्षेत्रों में भी एक शिक्षा वाले लोग अधिक उत्पादक होते हैं: बस वकीलों, शिक्षकों, विज्ञापनदाताओं, डिजाइनरों, व्यावसायिक अधिकारियों, मानव संसाधन पेशेवरों और अन्य सभी सैकड़ों अन्य डिग्री स्तर की नौकरियों से पूछें जो मौजूद हैं। एक डिग्री, कोई भी डिग्री, आपके बेरोजगार होने के अवसर को आधा कर देती है।
एक शिक्षा वाले लोग स्वस्थ होते हैं, कम अपराध करते हैं, और उच्च स्तर पर नागरिक भागीदारी करते हैं। व्यक्तिगत लाभ उस समाज में होने से होता है जहाँ लोग शिक्षित होते हैं।
वास्तव में यह व्यक्तिगत या सामाजिक पूर्ति का एक संकेतक खोजने के लिए कठिन है कि शिक्षा में वृद्धि नहीं होती है।
मैं थोड़ा अलग सौदा करूंगा: सरकार के लिए विजेताओं और हारने वालों के लिए यह एक बुरा विचार है। लगता है कि एक बिंदु पर "योग्य" डिग्री चालू हो सकती है ताकि बाद में ऐसा न हो।
मैं एक STEM पृष्ठभूमि से आता हूं। मेरा नया साल, हमारे पास केमिकल इंजीनियर्स का एक बड़ा स्नातक वर्ग था। ऐसा इसलिए, क्योंकि 4 साल पहले उनके लिए बाजार लाल-गर्म हो गया था। तब तक, रसायन उद्योग में मंदी आ गई थी और आने वाले स्नातकों की एक चमक थी। लगभग 25% रसायन। एक प्रतिष्ठित स्कूल के ई। ग्रैड्स ने अपने अंतिम सेमेस्टर में नौकरी की पेशकश की थी।
आप करों और वित्तपोषण को मोड़ना चाहते हैं, उदाहरण के लिए पैसे उधार लेना आसान कर सकते हैं और कुछ थ्रेसहोल्ड तक पहुंचने वाली कर योग्य आय पर पुनर्भुगतान सशर्त कर सकते हैं। आप STEM करियर को बढ़ावा देना चाह सकते हैं, खासकर ऐसे लोगों को जो आमतौर पर उनका पीछा नहीं करते। संभवतः अधिक लाभप्रद छात्रवृत्तियाँ भी निर्धारित की हैं। विश्वविद्यालयों को विनियमित करें ताकि वे डिप्लोमा मिल (बास्केट वीविंग 101) न हों। तकनीकी 2-वर्षीय कॉलेजों को बढ़ावा देना।
लेकिन, एक मुक्त बाजार में, सरकार को स्नातकों की आपूर्ति को नियंत्रित करने की कोशिश नहीं करनी चाहिए। एक शिक्षित कार्यबल, यहां तक कि "अवांछनीय" क्षेत्रों में, उच्च विद्यालय डिप्लोमा वाले लोगों की तुलना में बहुत अधिक कमाई की शक्ति और लचीलापन है।
नियोक्ताओं के वेतन को उन संकेतों को चलाने दें जो छात्रों को बताते हैं कि किस करियर को आगे बढ़ाया जाए। इसके अलावा, "सॉफ्ट" डिप्लोमा आम तौर पर "कठिन" वाले की तुलना में सस्ता होगा।
Last, one possibility to address the concern of "frivolous" diplomas is to make people have "skin in the game". Rather than fully free college education, make it extremely easy to finance at low interest, with repayments tied to minimal earning thresholds. That essentially allows anyone afford secondary degrees, but people are more likely to take into account expected earnings if they have to pay it back. If they never make enough money, so be it.
Here are some:
- Golden Rule: I'd like my tuition to be paid even if I don't know whether it's profitable, and in return, I'd pay my share of someone else's tuition that I don't know will be profitable.
- Innovation means exploring every possibility, not just the ones that some rich CEO thinks are profitable. I think you don't have to explain why the most innovative societies are best in the long term.
- Cultural value doesn't mirror financial value. We pour money into the Large Hadron Collider (but not too much!) because we'd like to unravel the mysteries of the universe, not because it's profitable.
- A more economic argument: if someone would be otherwise unemployed, then the country loses nothing by paying them to work on some project with public utility. They're going to get food and housing one way or another - someone ends up paying for them, no matter what - so why not get some research in exchange? If you didn't pay for unemployed people in taxes, you'd pay for them in increased crime, for example.
Many sound arguments have been made why such a policy would be wise if it were in fact true, but in reality the premise of the question is largely mistaken.
While there's much discussion around the fraction of the tax burden which should be carried by the wealthiest taxpayers vs those merely a bit above median income, the clear reality is that the overwhelming fraction of the overall tax burden is carried by those in the upper 50% of income distribution, and only a tiny part is carried by those in the lower 50%.
Traditionally there have been non-degree jobs such as skilled trades (often in industries with strong unions) which could result in a solidly middle-class income, quite possibly well exceeding the national median income at the peak of a career. However, these have been rapidly vanishing over the past two generations - a comfortable family existence supported by a single non-degree career is now exceedingly rare.
In recent decades, there are fewer and fewer workers without college degrees whose incomes put them above median income and into a tax bracket where they are asked to contribute even as much as (never mind more than) a per-capita share of national expenditures. Even cutting government expenditures back drastically and removing anything remotely arguable as a "subsidy" would not really reduce taxes in the lower half of the income distribution by much. While lower income taxpayers are still very much taxpayers, in the sense of federal taxes they are not really subsidizing anyone else, but rather only paying a well below per-capita share towards what even the most barebones government would have to expend on the fact of having citizens and territory. (And that's as it should be - we have tax brackets for a reason).
A small and shrinking number of exceptions do exist, in the form of those who either from entrepreneurial efforts, or by holding surviving union style or skilled trade jobs do end up paying a higher than average share of taxes without a college degree. But they are rarities; and most would not recommend that their own children enter the workforce without a degree, because they see through their own experience how uncertain such a path has become.
In reality, the cost of higher education subsidies is overwhelmingly carried by medium to upper income workers with college degrees, and this is becoming more and more true every year.
(Things like local property taxes are payed by almost everyone - either directly or as a pass through from rent; but with rare exceptions of city-owned colleges these fund only primary/secondary education. Subsidies of higher education are mostly federal, and to a much smaller degree state. In the latter case there may be a limited input from flat - which is to say effectively regressive - sales taxes)
Because some of them pay off enough to make the rest worth the risk
There aren't that many places who'd want an art historian. However we do have galleries and auction houses who need them. We have some artists who make a fair living, and we have some superstars who make millions. There's a decent amount of money in the art industry. By Sturgeon's Law (90% of everything is crap) we need to train 10x as many artists as could actually turn a living, and then those who are good enough can sustain this industry.
Of course there's a balance to be struck. But so long as course fees for all the artists in school are less than taxes paid by artists and architects, and by related industries such as building which rely on them, there's a rational financial reason to keep funding them.
The same is true in STEM as well, of course. Theoretical physics seems pretty obscure, but there are parts of it which directly contribute to engineering and new innovations. So we train lots of physicists so that some of them will be the pioneers of future technology - but again, only as many as is reasonable.
You don't.
A lot of the other answers have been suggested by other people here, with varying degrees of success, but noone's addressed the elephant in the room. You don't try to convince them to fund these degrees, because you don't need to fund them to begin with. When the government is funding the education sector, the government will fund the sections of it that it believes will improve the country's well-being, and that means that unprofitable and unneeded degrees like Fine Arts and English will have their funding cut so that it can be redirected to degrees that are tied to functions that the government values, such as STEM, Education, Nursing, Law, and similar degrees that are likely to lead to employment.
The fact of the matter is that any government has a finite amount of resources, and one of the primary jobs for them is resource allocation, and areas that the government deems less important will receive less resources. If you want to see this in action in the real world, look at how the Australian government cut funding for Arts degrees to give it to (primarily) STEM degrees.
Most STEM majors don’t use their specialisms in productive employment. Some do, but most don’t. And yet, the university experience of studying something in great detail and exercising insight, creativity, and skill, all under the pressure of high-stakes exams while networking with aspirational peers, turns out to be a valuable and transferable skill in its own right.
So in some sense it might not matter what you study as long as you study it well. You’ll be a more valuable and productive and enriched member of society at the end of it.
Additionally, smart people are valuable and it pays to have them engaged and empowered in society, regardless of their specific interests. If you only educate math-passion smart people and exclude art-passion smart people, you’ll have strictly fewer smart people overall participating in society.
Now of course smart people might well do just fine without a university education, or acquire one themselves through non-university routes, but I think an argument could be made that the university system is a reasonably efficient way of inducting smart people into productive society and setting them on course to maximise their potential.
Citation: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/32379/11-771-stem-graduates-in-non-stem-jobs.pdf
Excerpt:
Within the workplace, few graduates interviewed used their specific degree subject knowledge a great deal (even those in STEM Specialist work), although their degree subject was perceived as vitally important in gaining such jobs. On the other hand, almost all the graduates – irrespective of employment sector – used the general and broader skills learned while doing a STEM degree to a much greater extent.
(Although more importantly the paper supports the notion that STEM=employment is an oversimplification).
The OP seems to be under the impression that universities care about students employment when really they don't. If you want a job then you go to a trade-school. A trade has an almost guarantee of a job. If you want an education then you go to university.
A university trains a countries politicians, the success of a religion or worldview in a country depends greatly on the success at the academy. The attitude of the academy, has a trickle-down effect on the attitudes of its people. The pursuit of knowledge, a better understanding of the world we live in. You really cannot put a financial metric on a education.
Yes, there are degrees which people just do to gain access to a profession, but generally these have been in the minority. Understanding our world better is a noble pursuit regardless of the employment opportunities. You seem to have a very narrow-minded view of a education, something which is as common as it is unfortunate.
I have been working basically for the past 10 years as a music teacher. My job basically was finding a final solution to the heathen problem. Parents with a bit of money really don't want to raise barbarians, for nearly 10 years I have been helping them with that.
Am I now to be told that my job was unsuccessful because I did not make a scientist salary? Yes, I know the pay for teachers is poor, I don't need a physicist to tell me that. I'm perfectly able to gauge the earning potential of my profession myself.
That is why I have been teaching myself web-development for the last couple of years, but still that has not taken away from my 100% distinction record or in any way taken away from the teaching I did.
There are answers about how all these unprofitable educations are actually profitable in a way. They're really answering the question by implicitly reframing as being about justifying funding education that is profitable, which makes an answer obvious...
There is no objective/rational justification to pay for something objectively unprofitable. However, not all decisions revolve around tangible, objective, or easily measurable things.
So the justification is that in the eyes of people doing the decisions for funding, these things are profitable for various reasons, which may come down to subjective personal preferences.
Quite a lot of graduates from non-STEM majors (teaching, health professionals, social workers etc.) end up in jobs where their value for the society is not reflected in their salaries, because their services are guaranteed by the state (provision of "free" education, medical and social care). If you as a citizen want to keep these services on a certain level of quality, you want those people to get a university degree.
I do not personally believe it is justified for the government to subsidise such degrees, but those who do seem to justify it in the following ways:
- A more educated society indirectly benefits us all (supposedly, a more well-educated society will have less crime, elect better politicians, care more about global warming, justice system reforms...)
- A too narrow focus on STEM is not good, we need a holistic set of skills in society
- STEM is a hype, if we allow free market to allocate degrees we will end up with a lack of historians/philosophers in 10-20 years
One claim that is not factually wrong (just that two wrongs do not make a right) is to point out to the person you are convincing that they probably get a lot of benefits other people do not, for example their kids get educated while even people without kids pay for education, public roads are also funded by people that do not own cars or travel a lot, etc