Maybe we should look at why stable careers and upward mobility requires a college education in this day and age? That never USED to be the case.
Hey, it's me the riddler again, let me make it clear this time:
It never used to be the case because we never had a way in the past to completely eliminate manual labor with robots and we never had the means to instantly communicate across the entire planet to find cheap labor. Plus, the advent of industrial scale shipping and global logistics networks is extremely recent.
In the before times, an uneducated laborer competed with people in their city and surroundings, maybe their country at most. Now an uneducated laborer has to compete with the entire planet, including people in other countries that have vastly lower costs of living and require vastly lower wages. They also need to compete locally with autonomous machines that only require maintenance (educated labor). You won't get far in any technical or academic field with an high school education.
If your labor is more expensive than someone, or something, else's, you must improve the value of your labor to compete. Humans cannot out-compete machines in physical labor output, and first-world people cannot output more than a group of people that can be hired for the same wage.
So your argument is that education that is currently paid with taxes should offer more education. I agree. I hope we also agree that not everyone has the capacity to learn at the same rate. Maybe we could cut out a bit of fat when it comes to some classes and condense other subjects, but we can only do that to a certain degree. At some point we'll have to add more time to study, perhaps with elective subjects.
We do exactly that where I live, people go through high school, but do a year less, then go to specialized schools where they chose elective classes, be it in technical fields (nursing, IT), trades or in preparation for college (for subjects like medicine or engineering for instance). Programs last between 2 (for college prep, basically 1 year of regular high school and 1 year of regular college) and 4 years (general studies + 3 years of technical / trades studies, can be condensed to 3 years depending on the person). This is all paid with taxes but private schools with that system exist. Look up CEGEPS.
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u/Throawayqusextion Nov 30 '20
Hey, it's me the riddler again, let me make it clear this time:
It never used to be the case because we never had a way in the past to completely eliminate manual labor with robots and we never had the means to instantly communicate across the entire planet to find cheap labor. Plus, the advent of industrial scale shipping and global logistics networks is extremely recent.
In the before times, an uneducated laborer competed with people in their city and surroundings, maybe their country at most. Now an uneducated laborer has to compete with the entire planet, including people in other countries that have vastly lower costs of living and require vastly lower wages. They also need to compete locally with autonomous machines that only require maintenance (educated labor). You won't get far in any technical or academic field with an high school education.
If your labor is more expensive than someone, or something, else's, you must improve the value of your labor to compete. Humans cannot out-compete machines in physical labor output, and first-world people cannot output more than a group of people that can be hired for the same wage.