A liberal society has no long-term ability to maintain basic services,much less higher education and other luxuries.We don’t live in a perfect world where higher education,given what it entails,can be all that cheap or free.
I honestly feel for the very young students caught in this,less so for uh professional learners who want to stay in college forever and who knowingly vote for some of the most corrupt politicians on the planet,just because they happen to have a D next to their name.
Again though a socialist society such as California,is not going to produce the surplus needed to keep higher education affordable.
“A liberal society has no long-term ability to maintain basic services,much less higher education and other luxuries.We don’t live in a perfect world where higher education,given what it entails,can be all that cheap or free.”
Higher education is a racket in the US and could be so much cheaper than it is today. The reason for the high costs are easy to identify:
1. Accreditation, in order for your degree to be worth anything in the job market or in order to get a professional license you must get your degree from an “accredited” school. Most classes could be taught on-line for literally free (MIT even has them available on-line for free you just don’t get credit for them) but because this would not be an accredited school you would not really have a degree that would be worth anything. The accrediting organizations don’t really enforce quality so much as quantity, by making sure there are limited accredited schools they ensure that tuition remains high and they will never accredited some on-line school that offers classes for free or very cheap.
2. Tenure - Another total scam, who ever heard of a job that you can’t be fired from except in the teaching profession. You would be amazed at how many professors teach only one or no classes every term yet are full time employees that can never be fired.
3. Federal government - The explosive grow in administrative staff at most universities is mainly driven (well not mainly but a good percentage) by an insane amount of federal/state regulations. This plus the natural tendency for admin to hire assistants at the drop of a hat.
4. Federal student loans - Right now the only organization giving out student loans is really just the feds, with no limit on the amount. This is basically free money to the colleges and because they know the feds will loan any amount there really is no real reason to control costs, so they don’t at costs have been going up at incredible rates (~10% per year).
5. Public employee unions - Most colleges are run by states and so all the employees are usually part of the public employee union which means fat salaries and even fatter pensions.
Given the cost drivers it is relatively simple to control costs but politically impossible, for now.