The thread about Ted Cruz and his plan to replace student loans with indentured servitude raised a lot of questions.
In the United States, public education has always been seen as a civic responsibility. Most places in this country have an elected school board which is independent of municipal and county governments. This board and all it's activities are funded by local taxes. Everyone pays, whether they have children or not. The principle is straight forward. Letting a generation of children who can't read, write, add or subtract, loose on the world is bad for everybody. Everybody would suffer, so everybody pays to prevent the problem.
But, do we really have to?
Why not let families provide what education they can, or care to, and let the chips fall where they may?
If we are going to be paying for other people's kids, when do we cut it off? Why at 12 years? Should it be less, or just go ahead and cover the 4 years after that?
When a person makes an investment, they don't expect an immediate return. That only happens in Ponzi schemes. So, what's the problem of putting out money for other people's education? Is there no return, or a poor return. Maybe it's just too far in the future for people who already received their education, to look forward. After all, a person who retires today may well be dead before today's first grader makes it all the way to college.
What should we do?
In the United States, public education has always been seen as a civic responsibility. Most places in this country have an elected school board which is independent of municipal and county governments. This board and all it's activities are funded by local taxes. Everyone pays, whether they have children or not. The principle is straight forward. Letting a generation of children who can't read, write, add or subtract, loose on the world is bad for everybody. Everybody would suffer, so everybody pays to prevent the problem.
But, do we really have to?
Why not let families provide what education they can, or care to, and let the chips fall where they may?
If we are going to be paying for other people's kids, when do we cut it off? Why at 12 years? Should it be less, or just go ahead and cover the 4 years after that?
When a person makes an investment, they don't expect an immediate return. That only happens in Ponzi schemes. So, what's the problem of putting out money for other people's education? Is there no return, or a poor return. Maybe it's just too far in the future for people who already received their education, to look forward. After all, a person who retires today may well be dead before today's first grader makes it all the way to college.
What should we do?