tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post7015068108081576799..comments2024-03-29T03:19:09.227-04:00Comments on The Philosopher's Stone: THE SOARING COST OF TERTIARY EDUCATION LAST POSTRobert Paul Wolffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11970360952872431856noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-17914890576790718312011-01-05T07:01:44.753-05:002011-01-05T07:01:44.753-05:00I recommend reading Kevin Carson's thoughts on...I recommend reading Kevin Carson's thoughts on this matter: http://c4ss.org/content/5377?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+c4ss+%28Center+for+a+Stateless+Society%29Scotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02563179015787569536noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-23037017931985375032011-01-05T06:04:20.488-05:002011-01-05T06:04:20.488-05:00I agree with wallyverr
Here in Europe college edu...I agree with wallyverr<br /><br />Here in Europe college education is heavily subsidized, even for the top universities, and access to university is open to everyone. I don't think that people are any less conformist over here and universal university access certainly hasn't done away with unemployment. See New Year's Day's New York Times article on the subject:http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/02/world/europe/02youth.html?_r=1&emc=eta1<br /><br />Why not instead of trying to subsidize education to death acknowledge that too many people are going to college? For most people, 4 years of undergrad is merely a signal: it shows that you were more obedient and efficient than your classmates who dropped out. It's a very expensive signal at that, one that inundates many people with debt. Shouldn't we recognize as a society that college isn't for everyone and that there are cheaper ways to signal that you're a good worker than spending 4 years studying English or Political Science or History?Scotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02563179015787569536noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-77091859391352641422011-01-05T04:43:12.021-05:002011-01-05T04:43:12.021-05:00Because America is a big and important country, Am...Because America is a big and important country, Americans tend to forget that there is world beyond its frontiers. This leads to two kinds of error: 1) adopting a purely AMERICAN explanation for what is an INTERNATIONAL phenomenon; and 2) adopting an INTERNATIONAL explanation for what is mainly an AMERICAN phenomenon. An example of the first kind of error is McCumber’s attempt to explain the rise of a supposedly depoliticized analytic philosophy as due to McCarthyite pressures. This won’t do because very similar kinds of analytic philosophy rose to dominance in countries where McCarthyism was either muted or non-existent. Now I don’t want to be dogmatic about this, but I rather suspect that the Wolff/Halasz explanation of the rising costs of tertiary education is an example of the second kind of error. If the explanation were correct we would expect similar rises in the costs of tertiary education in other advanced capitalist countries besides the USA. Now I may be wrong about this, but my impression is that the increases in the costs of higher education have been nowhere near as spectacular in comparable countries as they have been in America. If this is correct, Wolff & Halasz are trying to explain a phenomenon that is specific to the USA in terms of factors which are common-to-universal in advanced capitalist countries. And since in those countries these factors are not producing that effect, they can’t be responsible for the effect as it occurs in the United StatesCharles Pigdenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01131765562671298571noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-43262165018960432782011-01-05T01:22:23.166-05:002011-01-05T01:22:23.166-05:00I'm not sure I accept the thesis that college ...I'm not sure I accept the thesis that college loans, i.e. debt finance to pay for higher education, leads to making graduates "docile, obedient, interest-paying, risk-averse fodder for the great capitalist machine." Quantitatively, home mortgages (once taken out) are probably greater than student loans for nearly all households. So blame the Anglo-American desire to own one's home, rather than renting in the good Continental European fashion. <br /><br />More fancifully (but hey, that's one of the joys of blogging), debt can itself be a source of class formation. Max Weber agreed with Marx that in the industrial world, class conflict centred on the labor market. But he argued that in the ancient world, the key class conflict was between debtors and creditors.wallyverrhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18358344785499490511noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-51442740076652173512011-01-05T01:01:25.510-05:002011-01-05T01:01:25.510-05:00I would defend the term "human capital"....I would defend the term "human capital". While originating in metaphor, it does make a useful economic-theory connection between investment in physical machinery, equipment, or construction, and acquisition of skills. It also highlights an individual's trade-off between working now for a lower wage and starting work later, after a period of training, for the likelihood of a higher wage. <br /><br />As an aside, from the standpoint of Chicago "price theory" economists who rather enjoy teasing radicals, it has the paradoxical effect of making skilled workers into capitalists. "Every man a capitalist", as Huey Long didn't quite say.wallyverrhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18358344785499490511noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-77009668024871384832011-01-05T00:00:12.956-05:002011-01-05T00:00:12.956-05:00The rise of administrative overhead that you note ...The rise of administrative overhead that you note seems somewhat paradoxical, given cost pressures. Perhaps when "education" becomes a professional object unto itself, rather than the direct imparting of various skills and knowledges, it tends to spawn a bureaucracy that redoubles its efforts futilely as a result of its own failures. But also, maybe, the rise in costs itself has given rise to new management fiefdoms, analogous to the cult of management and the inflation of CEO salaries in the private sector, where the sheer size rather than the performance of the company seems to matter most. Perhaps, given the rise in costs and the withdrawal of public supports, "higher" university administration increasingly is "justified" by its fund-raising function, merging the research function of the university with the needs of its corporate backers,- and thus adopting their "ethos". It's the brave new world of the neo-liberal university!john c. halaszhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06674692969448923049noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-16843728359180665992011-01-04T23:37:49.256-05:002011-01-04T23:37:49.256-05:00The acquisition of debt-burdens together with educ...The acquisition of debt-burdens together with educational credentials, (which debts are un-dischargeable, except through death), serve not just to enforce conformity to the prevailing political economy, but also to "justify" rents accruing to high-end professionals, as compensation not just for unrequited educational labor and opportunity costs, but also for actually incurred investment costs. MDs, for example, tend to assume entitlement to high incomes based on incurred costs, and, further, tend to acquire specializations rather than basic qualifications, on account of such costs. The result is not just that there are too few doctors,- (2.4 per thousand, rather than 3-3.6 per thousand in comparable countries)-, but also too many specialists rather than GPs. And such embedded rents are part of the conundrum of high U.S. health care costs, which are regarded as a "merited" entitlement by those subject to the regime, faute de mieux, if they could even conceive of any alternative. (Though that's just one of many rents embedded in the health care system, which makes it so "unreformable").john c. halaszhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06674692969448923049noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-90662569920650221732011-01-04T23:16:26.681-05:002011-01-04T23:16:26.681-05:00The obvious counter=proposal is that education, se...The obvious counter=proposal is that education, secondary, tertiary, continuing and remedial, ought to be treated like a public good, with costs recouped through taxation on increased earnings, (and allocation through some screening for both ability and need). But then the idea that education serves only the economic function of increased productivity is itself a bit perverse. The old ideas of republican civic vocation and idealist-humanist Bildung fail to register. But then perhaps such a producer-oriented scheme might fail to produce sufficiently agile and avid consumers.john c. halaszhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06674692969448923049noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-16605958498210505862011-01-04T22:59:42.495-05:002011-01-04T22:59:42.495-05:00I'll just add that I really detest "human...I'll just add that I really detest "human capital" jargon. Why should knowledge and skill be accounted to capital rather than labor? In the olden days, such things were accounted, perhaps too naively, as "universal", public, and common "property". Granted skills and knowledge need to be learned and acquired individually, (which, er, is a kind of labor), but also can only be acquired in and through community with others. "Human capital", like "intellectual property", is just an obfuscation of the maintenance of economic rents in the name of "free markets".<br /><br />(In the rear-view mirror, it's rather like the fact that ante-bellum +85% of the entire U.S. capital stock was the notional market value of slaves. But obviously slaves were labor, and though for obvious reasons, U.S. wages were higher than European standards at the time, they paid for workers' subsistence, just as slave-owners had to provide for their slaves' subsistence. So much for accounting categories!)john c. halaszhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06674692969448923049noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-17345563948430656542011-01-04T22:31:18.668-05:002011-01-04T22:31:18.668-05:00Actually, I just thought I was supplying the "...Actually, I just thought I was supplying the "name" for what you'd already indicated in your last post: the relative price effect or "cost disease".<br /><br />And, insofar as it effects gov. expenditures too and they come under budgetary pressure, the parallel cost rise in public tertiary ed that follows are part of the great neo-liberal "risk-shift", privatizing profits and "socializing" costs.<br /><br />I don't know the relation with health care and tertiary ed cost "inflation", but this chart needs to be kept in mind in considering the rise of the neo-liberal political economy:<br /><br />http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Total-US-Debt-As-A-Percentage-Of-GDP.jpg<br /><br />It's not my favorite version qua legibility, just the first one I found on google, and the various versions feature slightly different absolute amounts, but the relevant slopes/trend-lines are all the same.john c. halaszhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06674692969448923049noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-65838313486074675212011-01-04T10:13:14.994-05:002011-01-04T10:13:14.994-05:00Part of the problem is that the government insures...Part of the problem is that the government insures the loans, which means that the lenders are making profits (usually huge profits, on the order of 35% or more) without having to assume any real risk. They will not give up such a cash cow without a fight.English Jerkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14960822939548263926noreply@blogger.com