Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums College Escalating American Public University Tuition

How about we don't turn this into an in-depth exploration of the US Constitution and how Old Dad's view of it has become untethered to objective reality?

Actually I never said that Val. If we want to change the role of the federal government there is a process in place to change it. Our founding fathers made sure that was possible. Those are what amendments are. You're welcome to pursue that type of change, however, please don't attempt to state falsely what the purpose of government CURRENTLY is as outlined by our Constitution and it's Amendments.

I'm fine with that Dude, it wasn't I who brought the government into the discussion, I was simply replying to someone else who did.

It's difficult to discuss college costs without including the federal government as they, by your own admission, have greatly affected the price of college in numerous ways.

As far as objective reality, I think the Constitution, it's amendments, the list of enumerated powers, and the Declaration of Independence, are pretty real and objective.

The student in future. Val's addressed the payment of tuition costs at the time of their expenditure. She's assuming some future stream of debt financing that will be assumed by the student, but that the outstanding debt at graduation won't financially incapacitate the new graduate.

This isn't a question of an adultolescent wail of "do it for me! I'm entitled! I wanna go!" Instead, it's a statement that the cost of university education should have some tenable relationship to the earning power generated by such a degree.

Let's also not artificially segregate the notion of "tuition aid recipient" and "taxpayer". The two are the same individual, at different points in the individual's tax paying life cycle.

Perhaps it would help for you to think of your own children's public (presumptive?) K-12 education as being a time of you making net withdrawals on the education portion of your tax remittances. Were you unfairly requiring other taxpayers to subsidize your family's personal decisions?

Likewise, if you need to call the police to your home to intervene for a burglary, and you engage in public prosecution of the criminal, you are withdrawing--on average--from local policing budgets. However, both services are acknowledged to be valuable to both the individual and society, which is why they're funded. What makes these individual transfers fiscally sustainable is that they operate on a pooled insurance basis. No one individual is constantly withdrawing these services ad infinitum.

I agree, so if one can't use the degree of their pursuit to pay for that degree, then it's an unwise decision and one should pursue a different degree. While we'd all love to pursue what tickles our fancy, unfortunately, not everyone's fancy is strongly marketable and decisions have ramifications.


Except that everyone pays taxes, not everyone goes to college and only roughly 33% of HS graduates also graduate from college. So no, they most frequently aren't the same individual.


Once again, not everyone goes to college, and only about 33% of HS graduates also graduate from college, the mass majority of people DO go to public schools K-12, you're comparing apples and oranges.

An important difference is that K-12 are children. Colleges students, though there are a few exceptions, are over 18 and adults. As a child you're the responsibility of your parents / guardian, as adults one becomes their own responsibility.


The police are a local, county, and state service, I'm referring to the federal government in relationship to college. Additionally, protecting a citizen's rights is what government, according to the Declaration of Independence, is instituted for, the same cannot be stated from public education.

OldDad, you're treating every taxpayer as equal on a fiscal basis. They aren't equal. Public spending is a continuous variable, not a binary one, sourced from a multitude of payors over time.

A median high school graduate earns about $700/week compared with $1,100/week for a graduate with a bachelor's degree. Due to progressive marginal personal income tax rates, that degree holder generates a much larger stream of public revenues than the high school graduate. Data from the BLS show that the top 20% of earners contribute 77% of tax remittances, so it's specious to suggest that university graduates are somehow dragging down other taxpayers. They're the greatest contributors to public finances on the personal side of the equation!

So, while not everyone goes to college, everyone receives the benefits of those who do, even folks such as yourself who think they shouldn't.

As to jurisdictional boundaries for financing of different activities, who do you think pays more municipal taxes? The people who earn more who, on average, have attained higher levels of education and have higher average property valuations on which municipal tax rates are based.

Source- weekly earnings
https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2015/m...on-gender-race-and-ethnicity-in-2014.htm

Source- tax remittances
https://www.bls.gov/spotlight/2015/consumer-expenditures-tax-estimates/home.htm

Once again aquinas, simply because something is beneficial doesn't mean that it's the purpose of especially the federal and perhaps not even state or local government to provide. If your state or local government wants to provide for college funding, so be it, however, as I've mentioned numerous times, this isn't a purpose outlined in our Constitution or it's amendments. What isn't outlined the Constitution and it's amendments falls to the states and the people by direction of those same amendments.

Nobody is stopping anyone from contributing as MUCH as they want to the pursuit of their fellow citizens to gain a college degree, you're all free to sell everything you own and contribute it all and so am I. What I am not free to do is require you, by force if necessary, to fund another adult's college pursuit. With that in mind, how about you contribute what you deem appropriate to charitable and/or worth wile pursuit's and I'll do the same. In that way I'm not trying to put my priorities and preferences on you and you're not trying to put your priorities and preferences on me. Sounds quite equitable doesn't it?

Didn't we agree not to do this?

Simply responding to other people's posts with "this" as the topic Dude. I'm happy to stop responding when people stop bringing it up.

Oh, please. She's pointing out to you that your arguments are invalid on a financial basis, not on a constitutional basis. She's an economist and she's going to eat your lunch on this one, but if you want to try arguing that it's more fiscally responsible to not finance education, it's at least within the topic at hand.

I, on the other hand, am such a US History geek that I recently read the full text of the Treaty of Ghent and the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo (except the bits establishing boundaries, that's too dry even for me) and could easily compile 200 quotes from Founding Fathers discrediting the absurd notion of strict constructionism, but that's not really related to the topic.

I'll leave you this from Alexander Hamilton (underline added, caps are his):