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I'm curious what kind of arguments one could give to justify to someone without a college education that they would have to pay for someone else's education that they themselves never received.

With majors where it's expected that people will be more capable of producing value than without such as with STEM majors the argument is that long term, they will be able to pay more taxes allowing the original taxpayer to retire more comfortably.

But that's less of an argument when its about a major that has no guarantee of a high paying position as a result of it. In fact you are losing out on tax revenue that they could have paid if they spent the same time working.

So how would one convince someone to pay for a less profitable major for someone else?

Rick Smith
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user2741831
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  • Related: https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/23485/are-there-any-developed-countries-where-the-government-doesnt-spend-money-on-sp – JonathanReez Dec 30 '20 at 23:23
  • Comments deleted. Please don't use comments to debate the question matter. If you would like to answer, please post a real answer. If you would like to discuss, please use the chat function. Please try to limit these comments to suggesting improvements to the question. – JJJ Dec 31 '20 at 06:21
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    Why is this restricted to STEM? I can think of many unprofitable STEM fields and many profitable nonSTEM one, even if profitability was somehow a goal of education – Azor Ahai -him- Jan 01 '21 at 01:45
  • I think that you need to redefine your question and decide what you want to include as "useful" and "non-useful" majors. E.g. teachers, lawyers, historians, anthropologists, musicians, dance, sculptors. – Sherwood Botsford Jan 02 '21 at 01:37

12 Answers12

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After one generation, you would have lots of engineers and lawyers and few, if any, teachers.

After two generations, you would have neither engineers nor teachers.

Our culture is more than just engineering. It might be possible to ignore that on the short term, but not for long. So one could say that we're systematically underpaying kindergarten teachers and art historians, and you want to add insult to injury by defunding their departments?


Follow-Up: There have been debates in the comments and also some actual comments about me mixing teachers and art historians. The former are seen as useful by some commenters in producing the next generation of STEM graduates, the latter are seen as useless. But I stand by my belief that culture is more than just engineering. To clarify, I firmly believe that any society which abandons non-applied science will be diminished on the long run.

o.m.
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  • Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. – JJJ Dec 31 '20 at 06:28
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    If there would really become a shortage of teachers, wouldn't that result in their pay rising to the point that their education would become financially profitable (if it isn't already)? This answer seems to criticize a straw man (defunding non-STEM education for all time), neglecting the dynamic aspect of price signals. Yes, we certainly need some number of teachers, but that doesn't rule out that we could currently have an excess, and that the financial evaluation could be a signal to tell us when we have an optimal number. – nanoman Dec 31 '20 at 13:06
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    @nanoman The simple supply and demand argument can only work if "production" is immediate. Since it takes several years to study for a degree, raising the wages will not magically create new teachers out of nothing. Also much more common reactions to a lack of teachers instead consist of increasing the number of students per class, the teaching hours per teacher or simply lowering the standards for new teachers. All of which are cheaper on the public budget and will only have consequences years later, when the people deciding these are no longer in office. – mlk Dec 31 '20 at 13:38
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    @mlk You are presuming that every single individual in society be completely incapable of anticipating future needs. Furthermore this answer assumes that public funding is the only possible means of there being any further education, which is a false premise. – pluckedkiwi Dec 31 '20 at 14:05
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    @pluckedkiwi We can discuss philosophy for a long time, but this does not change the fact that historically this has been the government's response and the long term effect in some sectors are sadly apparent now (e.g. see the shortage of doctors in Italy now, wholly unrelated to the current pandemic although of course it makes it more evident). Unless you give people (e.g. politicians) strong incentives to pay attention to long term consequences the reality is that they don't, capable or not. – Denis Nardin Dec 31 '20 at 14:15
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    @DenisNardin The short-sightedness of politicians is a great reason why they shouldn't be involved. Government mismanagement of healthcare is not a strong argument that government should be involved in all aspects of life - quite the opposite. Public funding of higher education is costly and distortionary, the effects of which are not a good argument for further entrenching such distortionary activity. While you may be incapable of anticipating future needs, fortunately there are ample people who can and do, certainly better than relying on politicians to do it for us. – pluckedkiwi Dec 31 '20 at 14:30
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    If I can present what might be a useful analogy: during WW2 there were plenty of men who were "long-hairs"- mathematicians and the like- who while being far from the stereotypical "fighting man" made enormous contributions towards keeping allied fighting men safe and making life unpleasant for the opposition. There were also physicists, cryptographers... – Mark Morgan Lloyd Dec 31 '20 at 14:37
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    @pluckedkiwi That's not fair on politicians - why do you expect the ample people to do any better? There are many "correct" policy decisions, but they can't all be implemented at the same time. The politician's job is to synthesise opinions from their experts, choose a balance of outcomes, and finally sell it (in a democracy) to the voters. Of course they aren't correct every time, but there's no way that any other "labelled" group would be either. An expert could possibly "get it right" for their field, but how is that balanced with other needs? – awjlogan Dec 31 '20 at 16:32
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    Many engineers are perfectly capable of teaching, and not just STEM subjects. Indeed, a good many people in STEM fields are also fairly well educated in various Liberal Arts fields as well, though (at least from my personal observation) the reverse is seldom true. – jamesqf Dec 31 '20 at 18:12
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    As someone who lived in an area where a single occupation was flooded, I'm going to disagree with this Answer. There may be a ton of people with engineering degrees, but they wouldn't be engineers, since there wouldn't be enough jobs for them all. Inevitably, some of them would become teachers so they could continue to use the skills that would otherwise disappear with non-use. And as someone who has seen a massive increase in engineers in the past generation, that's not slowing down any time soon. In fact, due to technological advances, we need more engineers than ever. – computercarguy Dec 31 '20 at 21:04
  • "any society which abandons non-applied science will be diminished on the long run." This is a brilliantly concise response, and the beauty of it is that it fulfills the utilitarian component of the question as well. – joshstrike Jan 05 '21 at 09:25
  • @jamesqf That is much more common in the US where we often have a liberal arts education, that is much less true of STEM graduates in many other places. While many engineers may be capable teachers, there are also a great many that definitely aren't. – ttbek Apr 29 '21 at 23:35
  • @ttbek: You really have two distinct things there. One is the ability to teach, which (at least in my experience) is a talent entirely separate from knowledge of a subject. The other is that, at least for me, the useful and/or interesting parts of the liberal arts are things I do for pleasure, rather than expecting any great utility from them. – jamesqf Apr 30 '21 at 16:25
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Everyone benefits from an educated society.

People with an education, even in non STEM fields are more productive: Just ask Lawyers, Teachers, Advertisers, Designers, Business executives, HR professionals, and all the hundreds of other degree level jobs that exist. A degree, any degree, halves your chance of being unemployed.

People with an education are healthier, commit fewer crimes, and have higher levels of civic involvement. The individual benefits from being in a society where people are educated.

Indeed it is hard to find an indicator of personal or societal fulfilment that education doesn't enhance.

James K
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    Note that "employed" doesn't equal "productive". Perhaps the non-degree-having people would've been just as productive as the degree-having people, if they'd been hired. – Reasonably Against Genocide Dec 30 '20 at 21:51
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    This is a list of basic fallacies. Go back only a few decades, and none of those groups got degrees. Instead they gained professional qualifications in their area of work, which directly benefited them. It's not true that people doing these jobs are any more capable or productive than before. – Graham Dec 30 '20 at 22:42
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    ... As for unemployment, this confuses cause and effect. Entry to higher education requires more academic-oriented intelligence. The degree and employment are both effects of intelligence/ability; employment is not an effect of having a degree. And all the positive attributes you list again are linked to employment, not to education. – Graham Dec 30 '20 at 22:49
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    I think this is a fallacy. Are educated people generally better, or do better people generally get an education? Is it the education that makes people healthier, keeps them from crime, etc., or is it the fact that they have more money? Arguably, the people on the bottom would be better if they kept their money instead of spending it on education taxes which primarily benefit the people on the top. – Truth Dec 31 '20 at 01:59
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    @Graham I can't comment on the past, but today's world is very much degree-focused. Getting a degree is the expected way to get your career started in many/most fields in today's world, and not having one would close a lot of doors. – NotThatGuy Dec 31 '20 at 02:02
  • @Truth A good tax system wouldn't put an unreasonable financial burden on anyone, especially not the poor. – NotThatGuy Dec 31 '20 at 02:06
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    @NotThatGuy - But that's the premise of the question. Any burden placed on a person with no degree to pay for someone else to get a degree which will not be profitable is (in my estimation) an unreasonable one. – Truth Dec 31 '20 at 02:14
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    @Truth The question seems to only mention not having a degree, not being poor (even if they're correlated). Whether and how much tax poor people should pay is a different question entirely. We live in a society and, as such, we're expected to contribute to the betterment of society as a whole (as defined by those in power), in as far as we're capable of doing so. Being poor means you pay less/no tax, of course, but not having a degree doesn't make any difference here in my mind. You don't get to pick and choose what you pay taxes for (except by electing people who will change the tax system). – NotThatGuy Dec 31 '20 at 02:31
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    @Truth Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but your argument seems to be roughly "my life was hard, so I won't help anyone else to avoid that same hardship, despite having the means to help them". That's a terribly selfish and unkind way to live. – NotThatGuy Dec 31 '20 at 02:34
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    @NotThatGuy - I haven't made an argument from my own experience. If I made a good one, it would be much more complex than can fit in 500 characters. I'd love to sit down with you and tell stories sometime. Here though, all I've said is that the argument proposed in this answer is faulty because it wrongly relies on correlation in presuming that degrees have benefits which they do not in fact have. – Truth Dec 31 '20 at 03:02
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    Lawyers are basically a cross between a English major and a philospher, both humanities subjects BTW. – Neil Meyer Dec 31 '20 at 09:51
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    @NotThatGuy That's not true though. Lawyers and teachers require specific training to do their jobs, and you can enter that training just as well without a degree. (The UK government actually had a drive to get ex-soldiers into teaching, by the way.) You need a degree for teaching some subjects at secondary school (11-18), sure, but that's because you're teaching at a level which needs you to prepare your students for starting a degree. Practical subjects need other skills, and a degree is worthless there. And the other jobs on your list don't need a degree at all. – Graham Dec 31 '20 at 11:50
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    @Graham What's not true? That having a degree helps you get a job in many fields? It's pretty hard to disprove that one, and I've heard plenty of anecdotes about the importance of degrees for just about any corporate job. I never said a degree is required to work in those fields, and it kind of proves my point that you said some teaching roles require a degree (so not having one would indeed close those doors). I also know of some schools that don't hire teachers without a degree. (And it's not my list) – NotThatGuy Dec 31 '20 at 12:31
  • @Graham, the reason for a degree is to learn in 3-5 years what it used to take over a decade to learn before degrees were made popular. Also, the world has significantly changed in the past few decades so that the same things that worked then don't work now. Not to mention that people would tend to "start in the mail room" and spend 15+ years to get where a fresh uni grad can be now. And that grad would be able to do what only a vastly experienced pro did "back only a few decades". Not to mention that the experienced pros back then still continued their education to stay pros. – computercarguy Dec 31 '20 at 21:13
  • -1 just because correlation doesn't imply causation. Also, even if the overall odds of productive employment were indeed doubled by possessing a degree, that does not imply that the same holds true for each major individually. – reirab Dec 31 '20 at 23:03
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I'll take a slightly different tack: it is a bad idea for a government to pick winners and losers. What seems a "worthy" degree at one point may turn out not be be so later on.

I come from a STEM background. My freshman year, we had a large graduating class of Chemical Engineers. That's because, 4 years earlier, the market for them had been red-hot. By then however, there had been a downturn in the chemicals industry and there was a glut of incoming graduates. About 25% of the Chem. E. grads, from a prestigious school, had a job offer in their last semester.

You may want to tweak taxes and financing, for example make it easy to borrow money and make repayment conditional on taxable income reaching certain thresholds. You may also want to promote STEM careers, especially to people who'd not usually pursue them. Possibly even set up more advantageous scholarships. Regulate universities so that they are not diploma mills (Basket Weaving 101). Promote technical 2-year colleges.

But, in a free market, the government should not try to control the supply of graduates overmuch. An educated workforce, even in "undesirable" fields, has a lot more earning power and flexibility than people with just high school diplomas.

Let employers' wages drive the signals that tell students which careers to pursue. Plus, "soft" diplomas will typically be cheaper to supply than "hard" ones.

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.

Italian Philosophers 4 Monica
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    This same argument can be used for not subsidizing college at all, though, so I'm not sure that it accomplishes the OP's purpose. – reirab Dec 31 '20 at 23:05
  • @reirab the OPs question was, at least partially, about choosing which diplomas to subsidize or not, from the POV of a non-college graduate. my answer is not about subsidizing in general, rather the false premise of a government favoring particular degrees for subsidies. – Italian Philosophers 4 Monica Jan 01 '21 at 01:21
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    My (major R1) uni president once answered a very similar question. Her example was Middle Eastern studies, which was dying in the early 2000s but then interest spiked after 9/11. But if they had shut the dept down in 95, no one would be there to answer that need. – Azor Ahai -him- Jan 01 '21 at 01:50
  • (or some similar example) – Azor Ahai -him- Jan 01 '21 at 01:50
  • This doesn't seem to answer the question? – gerrit Jan 01 '21 at 11:41
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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.
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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)

Chris Stratton
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    While you are generally correct, you still acknowledge that there is a minority of people who don't have degrees but who, through their efforts and not their papers, have risen to the top. Those people are the subject of the original query. How do you justify to those people - people who didn't get an education and who did the hard work of getting ahead - that they should pay for someone else to get an education that won't even be profitable? – Truth Dec 31 '20 at 02:06
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    No. The question is stated in terms of impression and belief, it makes no attempt to limit its scope to the shrinking number of non-degree taxpayers who are actually making a net contribution to public expenses (the distinction being one of the classic misdirections of politics...). But note also that in acknowledging that a small and shrinking number of non-degree taxpayers actually contributing towards subsidized higher education exist, I specifically pointed out how most would not want that path for their own children, as they've seen firsthand how uncertain non-degree careers are. – Chris Stratton Dec 31 '20 at 02:36
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    @Truth I imagine that one need only remind them (the “traditionally” uneducated) about survivorship bias — those people are where they are because of their exceptional circumstances. – ARich Dec 31 '20 at 02:37
  • @Chris Stratton The scope is limited to non-college-educated taxpayers. Your response presumes that the overwhelming majority of those who aren't college-educated aren't taxpayers because they don't earn enough. Those people are irrelevant to the question. You need an answer that convinces that taxpayers - the people who didn't get a degree but who did earn enough to succeed. – Truth Dec 31 '20 at 03:32
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    @ARich - The question presumes that the degrees in question are ones which are not economically viable. We aren't talking about degrees that will help people excel to the point that they're part of the survivor class. We're talking about the degrees that will do no good, and which are in fact detrimental, because they will drain time and resources from the unwary students without ever giving them anything back. Those people will also need exceptional circumstances to survive. – Truth Dec 31 '20 at 03:35
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    @Truth I was responding to you, not to the question. You asked what one would say to the minority who has excelled/succeeded despite not having been educated through upper education. The answer is survivorship bias. “Degrees that do no good” is highly subjective. There are several answers on this question that demonstrate the benefits of education in general. Having presented those to the “unbeliever”, survivorship bias is a way to help them explain that they are exceptions, not the rule, of uneducated people. – ARich Dec 31 '20 at 03:42
  • @ARich - I think I see what you're saying now. I will point out though that there are several answers here which have supposed a benefit of education in general, but none that demonstrate those benefits. My experience tells me that formal education as it is done today is detrimental more than helpful, rare cases excepted. – Truth Dec 31 '20 at 03:49
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    @Truth Wrong again, my answer addressed all taxpayers without degrees, only a small number of whom fall in the category you are speaking of. Your mistake is in forgetting that low income taxpayers are still very much taxpayers - they simply cannot be in any reasonable sense said to be subsidizing anyone else. Only a small fraction of taxpayers without degrees earn enough to be meaningfully subsidizing others. – Chris Stratton Dec 31 '20 at 04:04
  • @Chris Stratton - I suppose that depends on what we mean by "low income," or "meaningfully" subsidizing. We might also have to think about the difference between a "taxpayer" and a "net-positive taxpayer" who gives more than he takes. But I think that might be too far into the weeds for the comment section. – Truth Dec 31 '20 at 04:06
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    @Truth The entire lower half of the income distribution together pays only about 4% of the total taxes collected. Erase any practical set of programs you like from the budget, and the government is still spending more per capita on base necessities than it is collecting from these taxpayers. But they are still taxpayers. And that is the fundamental error of the question - in seeking to justify something to someone who actually isn't paying for it at all, but has been sold the idea that it's something being taken from them. – Chris Stratton Dec 31 '20 at 04:08
  • I don't see how a non-degree tradesmen has a problem supporting a family. I think you would be surprised what the earning potential of a plumber is, and just BTW, that is a 5 year program. I don't see houses geysers stop breaking anytime soon. – Neil Meyer Dec 31 '20 at 09:56
  • "a comfortable family existence supported by a single non-degree career is now exceedingly rare." This is a very extreme over-estimation of the situation. There are indeed fewer such jobs than there used to be (thanks to both automation and outsourcing,) but they're very far from being "extremely rare." Plumbers and electricians are a couple of examples that come immediately to mind, but there are plenty more. – reirab Dec 31 '20 at 23:13
  • They're really aren't, as you can see for yourself by pulling data on skilled trades in today's world, but go ahead and believe a fairy tale if it makes you happy. – Chris Stratton Jan 01 '21 at 00:01
  • I kinda disagree with the premise here, that being that who pays taxes gets to decide. By that token the net-contributors to taxes get to decide what get money gets spent on and poorer people don't have a say. Operas and dog shelters bloom, homeless shelters and halfway houses wither. A country has a tax structure, true. But letting only the better-off decide where the spending goes can be a trap, if it generates stable poverty over time. As it is, government spending in many countries for secondary education is already much more of middle-class perk than it helps poorer people. – Italian Philosophers 4 Monica Jan 01 '21 at 01:31
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    @ItalianPhilosophers4Monica: I don't think that's the premise of this answer. The question asks, "Why should I have to fund someone who's better off than me?" This answer says, "Don't worry -- you don't. Rather, people who are better off than you are funded by other people who are better off than you." Of course, people can (and should!) still weigh in on how public money is spent; but they shouldn't think of public money as "their tax money", because only a tiny fraction of it is. – ruakh Jan 01 '21 at 09:45
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    Can you clarify whether this question is intended to apply world-wide, or only to specific areas of the world? The Meister system is still quite strong in Germany, and afaik skilled tradesmen don't live in poverty in the UK or the US either. Not all countries have destroyed the middle class by destroying unions. – gerrit Jan 01 '21 at 11:45
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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.

Graham
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    I think this would justify funding only-as-many-as-necessary. So, if 10 out of 100 artists can succeed, only allow federal funds for the 10 best applicants. Those 10 aren't relevant to this question. The question is "how do we justify funding unprofitable majors"? In your example, the 10% of artists are profitable, so their funding is presumptively justified. – Truth Dec 31 '20 at 02:10
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    @Truth the problem is that you don't always know up-front which ones will be the successful ones. – Paŭlo Ebermann Dec 31 '20 at 02:37
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    @PaŭloEbermann - Agreed. But if you give out a test and only accept the ones who pass it, those are the ones most likely to succeed. It might be a good idea to fund 11% if you expect 10% to succeed, or maybe have a sliding scale of funding based on performance. – Truth Dec 31 '20 at 03:37
  • Well the issue is complicated by the fact that the top 10% of artist would probably not go to public academies. Institutional autonomy is a very important issue in the education sector. – Neil Meyer Dec 31 '20 at 09:48
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    @Truth You have a test capable of predicting which artists are most likely to succeed!? – user141592 Dec 31 '20 at 10:47
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    @Truth You're missing a major factor here. The point is that you may have 10,000 applicants for a course with 100 spaces. As you say, the university then sets entry requirements which (on average) gets the 10,000 applicants down to 100 possibles. Of those 100 possibles you can't tell which will be the successful ones, but you've improved the odds to the point where the successful 10 will more than pay for the unsuccessful 90; and if you don't fund all 100 then you wouldn't get anything from the successful 10. – Graham Dec 31 '20 at 12:02
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    @Graham But then the question becomes, "Why don't you provide enough funds to fund a university program for all 10,000?" In a market system, the market will sort out how many of them are actually needed. In a subsidized system, some bureaucrat and/or politician has to make the call. – reirab Dec 31 '20 at 23:18
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    @reirab That's not the OP's question though. And actually as we can see in the UK, the market does not work this way. Music technology is a great example - there are at best double-digit jobs available in recording studios, but tens of thousands of seats on courses. A few selective courses do radically limit numbers based on ability, and their alumni generally do get those jobs. I've no objection to people spending money on courses to develop their hobbies, sure, but that's not what the OP asked. – Graham Jan 01 '21 at 09:01
  • @reirab The market does supply what is needed. It supplies what is wanted by those with money, but that is very poorly correlated with need. – gerrit Jan 01 '21 at 11:48
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    @gerrit I'd argue that it almost always supplies needs first, but, at any rate, the discussion here is with regard to preparing people for jobs and what is needed and what the market will fund are pretty much a 1:1 correlation there by definition, since "people willing and able to purchase x" is the literal definition of demand. – reirab Jan 02 '21 at 06:42
  • @reirab That's the definition of demand for courses *by undergraduate students*. It is almost entirely disconnected from any industry demand for graduates of those courses. (Even in engineering, my head of department said, exact words, "this course is not intended to teach you what you need for your job".) The OP explicitly asked for a case to justify the majority of courses which have no relevance to what the graduates end up doing for a job, not the minority where a degree translates directly into a career. – Graham Jan 02 '21 at 10:41
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    @reirab "People willing and able to purchase x" is very poorly correlated to need (and such a narrow definition of demand that it's almost useless). Thousands of homeless refugees in Bosnia today need shelter and food, millions in Yemen need shelter and food, yet the market is more likely to supply for a second yacht for billionaires. The question here considers universities in a narrow economic sense, which shows a misunderstanding to what universities are for. Universities do not educate for the job market — vocational schools (by definition) do. – gerrit Jan 03 '21 at 12:29
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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).

gerrit
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jl6
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    Most STEM majors, really? I could accept that for humanities majors. But STEM? (The closest part of STEM to this would be mathematics) – Reasonably Against Genocide Dec 31 '20 at 20:10
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    [citation needed] for the claim in the opening paragraph regarding most STEM majors not using their specialty education in productive employment. I have seen no statistics that agree with this assertion, but rather quite the contrary. – reirab Dec 31 '20 at 23:22
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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.

nick012000
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    STEM degrees can also be a lot more expensive than arts degrees (with the exception of mathematics). – gerrit Jan 03 '21 at 12:35
  • If there is a lack of available funds, then by all means allocate them to STEM. But if the government is able to raise enough funds to pay for both STEM and arts, the question is: why should they pay for arts, instead of returning them to the taxpayer? – Reasonably Against Genocide May 02 '21 at 12:07
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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.

krenkz
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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.

Neil Meyer
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    I mean if you have to pay for something in taxes, its not unreasonable to expect something in return – user2741831 Dec 31 '20 at 10:49
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    "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." The Australian government disagrees. To quote an official statement by the Australian Education Minister: "It’s common sense. If Australia needs more educators, more health professionals and more engineers then we should incentivise students to pursue those careers." – nick012000 Dec 31 '20 at 13:55
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    @nick012000 infrastructure has been languishing a bit in most Western countries... – Reasonably Against Genocide Dec 31 '20 at 20:11
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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.

user
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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

F1Krazy
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NoSenseEtAl
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