When I was in college, I spent a year in the northeast of England (Hull, to be exact) on an exchange program. I had a blast. I also learned a lot about the British educational system. My peers also learned a lot about our system in the US – and were shocked to learn how much we paid for higher education. Most of them paid little to nothing for their education. That may be changing.
According to a report in the Guardian, an idea is being tossed around that would tie the cost of an education to wages. The “graduate tax” would basically allow lower wage earners to pay less for their degrees than high wage earners over a period of time.
Vince Cable, the Secretary of State for Business, said about the plan, “It surely can’t be right that a teacher or care worker or research scientist is expected to pay the same graduate contribution as a top commercial lawyer or surgeon or City analyst whose graduate premium is so much bigger.”
Changes to the fee system aren’t universally embraced with worries that tying the cost of education to wages may cause students to reconsider what they study – or where they study. One concern is that students would flee to cheaper studies and jobs abroad.
Alternatives to the plan, including simply raising fees across the board, are being considered.
It’s a pretty interesting scheme, though. As educational expenses skyrocket in the US, I wonder if we’ll consider anything similar. Would it make sense to replace a flat fee tuition with a tax on earnings?
A fee vs. a tax isn’t the angle we should be looking at. Too many employers have been brainwashed into believing that a degree trumps everything. Employers see a degree as being more relevant than work experience or actual skills. A degree means knowledge, true. But knowledge isn’t the same as life experience or actual ability. I’ve worked in education the last two years and in politics for the previous 8. I beat out other applicants because I had a degree and they didn’t. My degree is not in poli-sci or education. It’s in…accounting. Somehow my degree in accounting makes me qualified for fields I’ve had no training or experience in. Point is, perhaps tuition wouldn’t cost so much if workers weren’t given so much pressure to produce that piece of paper for employers who mistakenly believe a degree trumps all.
In your example you make a comparison between a degree for education and a degree for being a lawyer. Their are plenty of lawyers that make less than some teachers and they paid a lot more for their education. Value of a degree and skill sets change, for example I have a friend who had an enviromental degree but wasn’t making a lot of money so he became a pilot. Now the pilot job isn’t paying that well and their are alot of opportunities in the enviromental area. Tax based on degrees would be almost impossible to regulate since the value of degrees change with politicals and the economic demands.
I don’t understand the argument. If you wanted to redistribute, in general the best way would just be an income tax & some sort of minimum income payment or EITC. To argue for this particular policy, it seems like you’d have to say there’s some reason we should transfer relatively more to those who went to college but for whatever reason aren’t paid very well, and relatively less to those who didn’t go to college at all. Why would that be?
(I suppose the argument could be that the returns to education are too high, or there’s too much education … but in either case, a more straightforward, and more budget-friendly, policy would just be to cut net education subsidies in general.)