riks@sri-unix (10/27/82)
I wouldn't go so far as to assert that it is a right, but I feel that it is one of the best investments an individual or the society can make. It is reasonable that people who want the education compromise (as many of us have) by working, begging, and taking loans. But I do feel that student loan programs are an excellent use of my tax money. I suspect that the total payoff (not just principle+interest from the recipient, but increased income tax revenues, less crime, etc) to society is very high. Currently, some money is disbursed via 'pacts with the devil' in the form of repayment with time. A good friend of mine is doing 2 years of indentured servitude to repay costs of medical school to the Public Health Service Corps. She has the option of practicing where they put her, or repaying triple the amount they loaned her. I can see that this is the only way to get physicians to practice in some underpriviledged areas, so I am NOT blasting the program. In fact, it does not seem like a bad idea in other fields. "So! You want to be a programmer. Just sign on the line and get your degree. We pay tuition, room, board, and buy you a PC. Then you will have to write COBOL programs for the army." (tongue out of cheek). Rik Smoody Tektronix Labs MS 50-384, PO Box 500, Beaverton, OR 97077 (503) 627-6192 decvax \ ucbvax | cbosg > !teklabs!riks ihnss | chico | pur-ee /
bc@sri-unix (10/29/82)
The idea of allowing the repayment of educational loans with work in the area of education is very appealing. It has two major advantages over the technique of expecting repayment in money only: 1) The cost to the student can be reduced because the actual value returned to society is higher, thus allowing more people to get expensive educations. 2) The value to society is higher because a good deal of skilled labor can be had which would normally be far more expensive (how much would you people out in netland charge per hour for contract consultant or program work?). In addition, at least as things are now, much more such labor would be available to institutions like schools, hospitals, and local governments which can't afford to pay the way the Fed can. Just to start a loud argument, I'll make the observation that the suggestion is not unlike the often mentioned idea of universal national service (I *did not* say 'military service'). I think such a service could make a lot of difference to the current plight of local governments, required on the one hand to do everything for everybody, but the easily visible scapegoat when the taxes get too high. If anyone knows a good news group to put that discussion on, let me know; I'd love to get into it. uucp knows my name anyway, Bruce Cohen ...!hplabs!intelqa!omsvax!bc ...!pur-ee!intelqa!omsvax!bc
soreff (11/01/82)
In response to Bruce Cohen's suggestion of
(a) Some sort of skilled national service as a way to pay back higher
education costs for those who cannot now afford them.
(b) Said national service providing a pool of cheap skilled labor for
local governments, schools, hospitals etc.
I think that the idea of having someone pay back educational costs with
post-graduate labor is a reasonable and feasible one, but you can't do it
with labor at institutions which cannot now afford skilled labor. The
costs of education are ultimately real dollars paid for salaries, equipment
, maintenance of buildings etc. Those dollars must be paid by some institution
that has the dollars in the first place. If the person being educated is
paying back his/her loans with labor then the institution that is getting
this labor is presumably paying the market wage for the person, but paying
it back to the educational institution from which the person came. This is
a simplified view, omitting intermediate loans, tax effects etc.
-Jeffrey Soreffmark (11/02/82)
Bruce Cohen has an interesting point. Let me go him one further and propose a solution to our problem of not enough trained computer professionals, not enough jobs, and too high taxes. We've got all these auto and steel and lumber workers out of work. Lots of computer jobs open and not enough faculty to train enough people to take the jobs. Suppose Reagan were to create the notion of a "free university" in every major city (or at least in cities in areas hard hit by unemployment). First priority for enrollment would go to the unemployed, possibly with an aptitude test for screening. The classes would be of a technical nature, e.g. computer programming classes (although other areas would be fair game as well). The teachers would be volunteers, teaching one class per week, probably at night. To be a teacher, you would have to meet reasonable standards, such as a BS in Computer Science (or a higher degree for upper division classes). The incentive for the teachers would be a tax break, for example being able to deduct the value of your time while teaching the class. Classes would be taught in otherwise unused classrooms in college or high schools. Computing facilities would be donated from some company who gets a tax break for them, or perhaps students would buy their own PC. Nobody spends any money, except the students for books and transportation. By having classes at night, people with daytime jobs could still attend, and classrooms would be available. The "free universities" might grant degrees, although they would probably not be accredited. They would provide training, which (I hope) is the main thing employers require. Is this viable? Would people reading this be willing to teach one class each night for a tax break? Would the existing 2 year schools be put out of business? By the way, there is a (long silent) newsgroup net.cse (Computer Science Education) in which this discussion should probably continue. Mark
wmartin (11/02/82)
Re repaying educational loans by work: This sounds great at first. The idea of loaning (for example) $60,000 to a med student, and getting back not $60,000 plus an artificially-low amount of interest, but, say, $200,000 worth of services (at retail prices) sounds just wonderful. But exactly how is the accounting to be handled, and how does the student loan fund get its money back? Consider this scenario: Person "X" is loaned, over his/her student years, $60,000 to pay for a medical school education. In return, X agrees to what is essentially two years of indentured servitude in medical service to a community assigned by the governing bureaucracy. This sounds like what has been described on the net. OK, so X is assigned to work in Sleepy Hollow for two years. Let's assume that housing is provided, but we still have to pay X enough for him/her (and a possible family) to eat and clothe themselves over that two years -- say we pay them $20,000 per year and the provided housing costs the government another $2,000 each year. So far, X has to do $244,000 worth of medical work (at retail cost) to pay back not only the $200K loan repayment, plus the costs of support during that time. So far, no problem -- those figures are not unrealistic at current medical-care costs. But how does this work get back to the student loan fund to provide more cash for the next student waiting for a loan? Does the state where Sleepy Hollow is have to pay the fund the $200K? If so, what incentive is there to go with the bureaucratic route; why not just hire a private physician with that money? The people using the services of "X" are probably not paying cash; they use public-provided health services because they are on welfare or some form of assistance. There isn't $244,000 cash coming IN from anywhere! I am convinced that all this is just going to boil down to the government paying out here, paying out there, etc. It pays for the loan, then it pays for the support costs, then it pays for the medical care via Medicare, and ALL the time it pays for the administering bureaucracy. In other words, I am paying for it. I am sure that the response from those advocating this will be that the "social benefits" do the repayment. Even though tax and deficit revenue is continually used to restore the loan fund, pay for the support of the indentured physicians, and pay for the facilities and materiel of the health care, and pay for the supervising bureaucracy, the intangible benefits of getting a doctor to Sleepy Hollow are worth it all. I doubt that. If we decide that it is important to get doctors into small towns, or any other skill into any location where there is not enough incentive or reward to attract them normally, there is a simple solution; it still requires some bureaucracy, but there is much less hypocrisy and overhead -- draft them. Two years of assigned service in the "Medical Service" or similar non-military organizations could be required of everyone who doesn't enter the military. I had friends do such things because they were CO's; it's nothing new. It could be a cost of citizenship. With the economies involved in such mass service, the cost of support could drop, and the continuity of services provided be improved. The net result is the same, but it certainly seems simpler than trying to trace benefits through a maze of governmental agencies at various levels. Will
furuta (11/03/82)
The notion of a "free university" to provide retraining is not as far fetched as some might think. An NBC television program of a year or so back made the point that it is somewhat an American notion for companies to view their workers as interchangable components--to be discarded when no longer needed. The program contrasted this notion with the view apparently taken by European corporations (I think that the example given was in Germany) which consider retraining of employees to be a part of doing business (and a moral obligation to their society). At the time of the report, there were about as many unfilled electronics-related jobs in California as there were unemployeed manufacturing-related workers in the midwest. --Rick
bukys (11/04/82)
Companies might be more inclined to consider people NON-interchangeable if people were to consider companies similarly. Re-training is a poor investment if the newly-trained employee jumps ship immediately. This is particularly a problem in the "trendy" "high-tech" industries such as electronics and computers. My point is that if there really is a difference in corporate attitudes between here and There, then it isn't because American corporations are deep-down mean, but because of the social climate (among other things). Enough "social climate". This means YOU! Have you been duly grateful to your employer when it has done something for you? Does this sound naive? If you don't want to be naive, then why should your employer? If there were a net.ethics, I would be interested in hearing about people's conceptions of employee-employer obligations and vice-versa.
tjr (11/04/82)
Re: student loans and "national service" One article here suggested "drafting" doctors (and everyone else) for "national service" in lieu of military service. Folks, I cannot sit back and let someone advocate slavery without rising up in anger. Such "national service", and the military draft in general, are diametrically opposed to the fundamental goals of this country (supreme-court rulings notwithstanding). The revolution of 1775 was particularly in protest against such oppressive measures of the British Crown; this seems to have been largely forgotten during the past 200+ years. We have deliberately saddled ourselves with precisely the same abuses from our government that we rebelled against originally; the list is long, but surely the draft is the most repulsive example of government intervention in its citizens' lives. Our government is supposed to be the servant of the people, not their master - that is the central difference between our way of life and most others on this planet. Let's not blow it, fellas. Tom Roberts ..ihps3!ihnet!tjr
furuta (11/05/82)
Concerning newly trained employees jumping ship: Actually the TV program (which I referred to in my earlier message) that indicated that European companies were viewing retraining of displaced employees as an obligation, mentioned that these companies weren't all that concerned that the retrained employees would leave for greener pastures. The general philosophy seemed to be that even if the employee left, the company would be able to get someone who had been retrained by another company (no net loss) and even if they didn't, the retrained employee would be earning more at the new job and would be spending more therefore supporting the economy and therefore the company. --Rick
soreff (11/05/82)
Will points out the difficulties in financing student loans via community service (basically the money isn't coming IN to the system at any point, except possibly through government support, which means the taxpayers ultimately pay). He then proposes a form of universal national service. I don't see how this helps to solve the original problem of financing student loans. I also don't see universal national service as a desirable idea. Doesn't government take enough effort, time, and money out of the average person's life already? Why take two of years of everyone's life on top of the burdens already imposed. -Jeffrey Soreff
bc@sri-unix (11/12/82)
When I mentioned national service, I NEVER mentioned conscription, which I am also opposed to, both in principle and in practice (draftee armies, pyramid construction crews, whatever, just don't work well). I was suggesting a means by which people wanting extended educational benefits could repay the society as a whole in a more immediate manner than paying off a loan. I like the idea of "universal" service in the sense that some basic political or social priviledge can only be earned by such service (see Heinlein's "Starship Troopers," but please don't send me any flames about militarism; that isn't the subject of the discussion). I don't think that it is unreasonable to *ask* every citizen to spend some effort and energy in helping the society as whole for a sort period of time. By the way, I do not consider voting a right, nor does our own country (and it never has). I cite the fact that there are minimum standards of competence and acceptance of civil obligation (those adjudged mentally incompetent, and felons, are denied the *priviledge* of voting). If you want to bring up the question of who decides a person's competence or what constitutes sufficient criminality for the loss of citizenship, why that's another question entirely. It is in fact at the heart of the liberal/conservative debate, and I'm going to chicken on that one for now.