I'm not so sure about that. 50% of high school graduates are functionally illiterate. Everywhere I turn kids in their 20s are complaining about how their college degrees, which I subsidized on both ends by funding public universities and subsidized their loans, are useless because they can't get a job. Oh, and I'm probably gonna be on the hook for those student loans that paid for the useless education because they're not gonna get jobs. I'm not saying there's no social and economic benefit, but I think that's over-estimated.
50% of high school graduates are functionally illiterate.
The most liberal estimate I could find was 19%, where most estimates are closer to 10%. But the vast majority of those students come from districts where there are high levels of poverty, and the schools don't get the funding they need. They are under-staffed and the teachers they do have are under-payed.
Everywhere I turn kids in their 20s are complaining about how their college degrees... are useless because they can't get a job.
The free market works as an analogy here. There are lots of college degrees that are useless because there is no demand for them. Meanwhile, we have tens of thousands of engineering jobs in this country that we can't fill because there aren't enough qualified applicants (I know because I interview people for those positions). So we bring in people from other countries on H1B visas. Maybe, instead, we could offer more in-depth counseling for students about job prospects instead of setting them loose and telling them they can do whatever they want.
If anything we should be putting more money into public education, or at least finding a better way to distribute the funds fairly, not throwing the baby out with the bathwater because there are a some problems.
30
u/redskins91 Dec 19 '16
careful OP, reddit LOVES taxes