
Against Tulip Subsidies - evanpw
http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/06/06/against-tulip-subsidies/
======
Moshe_Silnorin
Everyone who's looked into this issue knows the solution is to use
examinations rather than education - a degree should be given if you can pass
some stringent examinations regardless of how the knowledge got into your
head. You separate instruction from assessment and the incentives work out
much, much better. And the cost goes way, way down.

However, we are stuck in this horrible equilbrium and I don't see much hope of
getting out. Scott has a post on these awful equilbriua called Meditations on
Moloch that's pretty
depressing:[http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-
moloch/](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/)

I can see one way of maybe getting out of this. If one nice country was to
implement this examination-based approach and then offer citizinship to those
who score very well on a "general degree examination" (basically an
intelligence test) they might be able to setup a brain-drain dynamic that
would maybe push us out of this awfulness.

Said country could even subsidise the very brightest with the equivalent of a
signing bonus. Even a permanent no-strings-attached basic income for the
brightest of the bright would be very cheap as they're so rare, and may be
worth it for the positive externalities as they're the type of people who
build new industries. "We'll pay you to live, work, learn, and be credentialed
here" may be enough to dull the luster of the ivies.

~~~
Turing_Machine
Examinations are just a proxy measure (like grades in general). They have
historically been used for logistic reasons, many of which no longer exist (or
are much less compelling). They stick around for the same reason that
everything else sticks around in academia: Because It Has Always Been So
(another example: lectures).

A portfolio of actual work is much better than an examination. A github repo
with a bunch of actual working code in it is much better than an hour of
writing pseudocode on a whiteboard.

~~~
Moshe_Silnorin
Of course they are a proxy, but they are much better and cheaper proxies. I
was assuming that credentialism would remain - examination-based degrees make
credentialism much less costly.

~~~
Turing_Machine
Cheaper? Certainly. Better? That's debatable.

I don't see any compelling reason for thinking that the degree of knowledge
that can be measured on a one hour (or even a five hour) exam is comparable to
the degree of knowledge that can be measured from a larger body of work
(whether that work represents continuing interaction between an instructor and
student over the course of a semester, or a self-directed large-scale
portfolio project).

I'm probably showing my age here, but in the heyday of Novell there was a
phenomenon called the "paper CNE". The military has long referred to those
who've gone through an abbreviated officer training process as "ninety day
wonders" (not a compliment). Other examples abound.

------
white-flame
I take a more classical view on University: It never should be "job training".
It should be about general life enrichment, beyond-industry research,
philosophy about the world and its workings, and broadening horizons.

Sure, people who went through that (ie, independently interested in, was
recommended in or could afford it, and succeeded) tended to be more capable
people. Let's roughly compare it to becoming an Eagle Scout or a Navy Seal in
terms of a generally impressive life accomplishment. Shuffling _everybody_
through the same system is useless, wastes everybody's time and money, and
devalues the magic paper gotten in the end.

Many skilled professions require training, and specific training institutions
are all well and good. But let's not confuse training to become a mechanical
engineer or doctor as being equivalent in an employment eligibility sense to
more enrichment-oriented university degrees. The latter being required to get
a sales/front-desk/entry-level position is a burgeoning and absolutely
needless weight on our entire society. Conflating the former with the more
heady University worldview is also odd, and eliminates eligibility for those
who would be great in their field but are not that compatible with academia.

~~~
mrestko
He somewhat address this in the article. Would as many people pay the
substantial cost of college merely for the "life enrichment".

~~~
pjscott
His argument on this point is short enough that it's worth just quoting
entire:

> (Yes, it is nice to have college for non-economic reasons too, but let’s be
> honest – if there were no such institution as college, would you, totally
> for non-economic reasons, suggest the government pay poor people $100,000 to
> get a degree in Medieval History? Also, anything not related to job-getting
> can be done three times as quickly by just reading a book.)

~~~
rnprince
Personally, I'd say yes to his question - and indeed, this is a question, not
an argument; and it's a question that presumes a knee-jerk reaction against
Medieval History majors...

Gross world product has been growing along an exponential function for some
time, and machines are threatening to allow us to be comfortable even if we
don't work as much as we physically can. Maybe giving everyone some years in
their youth to enrich their lives would be a good way to organize the economy
once it's a viable option. Maybe a lot of people agree with this, and in
wealthier nations it's ~just~ now close to being within reach, but it isn't
quite there, so what we're feeling would be considered friction in the
transition.

------
salmonet
I seldom refer to knowledge I gained from university classes. It was an
important signaling device and a great time socially, but it was not an
efficient use of my time as far as preparing to be successful in my career.

I would be surprised if there isn't a good alternative to higher education for
bright kids 10 years from now, but I don't think it will have anything to do
with legislation.

~~~
ThrustVectoring
I still get a lot out of the systems approach to engineering from my
university classes. Still, this is something that could be taught in weeks
instead of years.

------
andrewvc
People have a hard time separating the value of an entrenched institution from
whether it's a good value. More school is often good, but that doesn't make it
a good deal.

Every time the discussion of cs degrees comes up here it's followed by an
avalanche of people saying how college gave them this and that and then a
story about the one idiot they used to work with who didn't go to college.

I went to two years of community college and have never had student loan debt.
I've worked on harder problems than many cs grads have. I've gone farther and
actually retained more knowledge. I got a great deal taking the path I've
followed.

------
BashiBazouk
So, this whole thing is an attempt do argue against Bernie Sanders proposed
universal free college tuition by comparing it to a country that offers free
college tuition and is used as an example of a better system by the author?

~~~
logician76
Yeah and his analogy is plain wrong. Bernie Sanders is saying to make the
tulips free, not to give everybody enough money to buy them..

~~~
throwaway342526
It's not wrong. Making something free means paying for it in a transparent
fashion.

Bernie Sanders is not talking about changing the institutional structure of
college such that it somehow has no cost to provide. He is talking about the
government paying that cost on behalf of students.

I agree with free education, by the way. We currently spend our budgets on
much less useful things. But let's be honest about what it means and how it
works.

~~~
logician76
Yes it is wrong, paying the cost of education at cost (for a government), or
paying students to pay market prices (inflated by perception of value) is a
huge difference. Which do you think Bernie Sanders was implying?

~~~
throwaway342526
Bernie is not suggesting nationalizing all american colleges. That would be
absurd.

~~~
logician76
In real life there are more possibilities in between 0 and 1.. Also look at
how its done in other countries. Apparently americans can go to Germany to
study for free in a recent article. Absurd indeed.

~~~
throwaway342526
You do understand that all of those options require someone to pay for the
services? I don't know why we're still having a conversation about this. An
institution with employees costs money, unless the institution is entirely
comprised of volunteers (in which case the volunteers are paying with their
time).

Germany pays.

Bernie's plan is to pay institutions.

That's all well and good, but that's what it is.

------
Nomentatus
I've just searched what are now 58 comments for the phrase "prisoner's
dilemma" and got zero hits. WHAT!

Higher Education is now a prisoner's dilemma, and that's really the point of
the tulip article, even if he didn't use the phrase. Rational actors will want
their children to have a college education and then higher degrees, even
though everyone choosing that makes society worse off, not better off. Classic
prisoner's dilemma. (Also a "Tragedy of the Commons", I would argue.)

Perhaps the most profound argument against our present system of higher
education is that despite his philosophy degree (and I'm guessing at least 70
or 80 other degrees amongst the commentators) neither the author nor anyone
else has said the two words "prisoner's dilemma." It's a simple concept,
taught in every University, most undergraduates supposedly know what it is,
and yet nobody can manage to recognize a gargantuan real world example! (I
have yet to see the term PD applied to this subject in other media, either.)
Time to scrap them crenellated white towers.

~~~
SilasX
The top post [1] mentions the "Meditations on Moloch" post, which is basically
a generalization of the PD/Tragedy of the Commons/arms race. I assume most
posters are aware of the relevant dynamic.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9671686](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9671686)

~~~
Nomentatus
PD shows up as one of ten examples of traps in that long article. Note too
that not every local minima is going to be a PD, or even close! Equilibria are
sometimes now confused with PDs, due to the publicity given to Nash's
Equilibrium, but that's a popular confusion.

------
Futurebot
We could try the "Unincorporated Man" (aka equity-based) approach to paying
for higher ed: [http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/04/unincorporated-
man.htm...](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/04/unincorporated-man.html)

Instead of paying with loan money or hoping for grants, anyone could go if
they will give up (for example) 10% of all future income (this is not the same
as "income-based repayment.") Instead, a system like this would have whoever
is buying the shares (I'd prefer it be universities themselves) give you a
_full ride_ (not just tuition, but books, room and board, transport, food,
etc.) and you'd pay them out of your gross income after you graduate. The big
difference is that just about anyone who is willing to give up the percentage
could get it. Sticker shock and rising bills do not come into play. Right now,
you're at the mercy of the financial aid system and all its fickleness
(relatives make too much/too little, you have too many/too few assets, you are
in a high CoL area and loans don't cover anywhere near what you need, the
amount they're willing to give you shifts with the political winds, etc.)

The advantages of this system are that you would never have to worry about
your relatives being able to fund you; you wouldn't need to work while going
to school; you would not need to reapply each year and hope you get enough;
and there's no issues with bankruptcy or anything else (the obligation would
be non-dischargeable, just like now, but since it's a percentage, the sting is
much less.) Instead, the money would all be there the whole time.

On the investor side, it would be like VC: most people would produce standard
returns (let's say 5-15k a year), while a few Elon Musks and Larry Ellisons
would return _billions_ \- I'm sure many universities would be happy to
occasionally get one of those.

In any case, there's no way it could be /worse/ than the system we have now.

~~~
nmrm2
_10% of all future income_

The general idea is interesting, but this is an insane amount of money for
most college graduates, who would be far better off with even unsubsidised
loans.

~~~
Futurebot
Percentage is definitely up for debate. Maybe MIT/Harvard/Stanford could do
8-10% and University of Whatever could do 4%. Or maybe they could vary it
based on projected likely future earnings or some other factors. In any case,
if the option was there, I'm sure many would take it. I would.

------
fredkbloggs
The author was doing great right up until the last paragraph. His proposed
solution is silly because it makes no distinction between jobs for which a
university education is essential and those for which it is irrelevant. Then
there is also the large grey area in between, in which a university education
in certain fields might be useful but not essential. What he would do is
abolish the right of those professions in which such an education is essential
from applying the same standard he lauds earlier: that physicians must attend
medical school. For engineers, a university education with a specialty in
engineering is exactly what medical school is to physicians.

Many people here believe that a university education is not required to be a
computer programmer, and I agree. But programmer is a vocation, like plumber
or firefighter; it requires specialized skills and experience to do well but
does not require a university education. If you spent 3 months learning one
language and one or two common frameworks for making e-commerce sites, you are
reasonably qualified to work on e-commerce sites for companies that use that
language and framework. However, being a programmer and being an engineer are
not the same; an engineer has been educated both more broadly and more deeply,
and should be capable of solving larger and more difficult problems, designing
whole systems, and in general should have the education and experience to
understand new problems more thoroughly. It's the difference between the
architect who designs a building (or one of its systems) and the construction
crew who erects it. Both are essential, but they have (properly) different
qualifications.

There are many other fields where some sort of education is required. I agree
that many of those fields conveniently piggyback on university education
(usually with a particular field of study requirement) when other similar
mechanisms might do as well. But the notion that such an education is
universally irrelevant is absurd.

If the author wants people without university education to be paid as much as
people with it, the solution is not legislation. Instead, he should hire them.

~~~
randomdata
_His proposed solution is silly because it makes no distinction between jobs
for which a university education is essential and those for which it is
irrelevant._

His solution is to evaluate people as people, not by external indicators. If
it so difficult to tell if someone has a university education or not without
having to explicitly ask, then perhaps it isn't as essential as you seem to
think?

~~~
nmrm2
_> If it so difficult to tell if someone has a university education or not
without having to explicitly ask, then perhaps it isn't as essential as you
seem to think?_

It is trivially easy to think up questions that _any_ Computer Science student
from a non-crappy university will be able to answer, but someone without a
degree probably will likely not be able to answer. Just pick a particularly
challenging problem off of an Algorithms or Linear Algebra final and hand them
a textbook and an hour.

The question is how to ask questions that _matter for a particular job_. If
the job is hacking out an e-commerce site, it's really easy. If the job is
designing a distributed system for real-time processing of data at 100s of
GB/s of data that nobody has tried processing at that speed before, the single
set of questions that tell you whether this person is competent is far less
obvious. What you really need is to engage with the person in weeks or months
worth of examinations on various subjects. Fortunately, university courses
have midterms and finals that do _exactly_ this.

~~~
greenyoda
_" If the job is designing a distributed system for real-time processing of
data at 100s of GB/s of data that nobody has tried processing at that speed
before, the single set of questions that tell you whether this person is
competent is far less obvious. ... Fortunately, university courses have
midterms and finals that do exactly this."_

But solving problems that nobody has solved before is the kind of job that's
usually filled by senior developers, not by recent graduates. By the time you
have 5-10 years of work experience, the things you learned during your working
career probably play a much more important role than the stuff you learned in
college. If I've spent the last ten years actually designing distributed
systems, why does it matter whether I've gone to college or not?

~~~
nmrm2
> But solving problems that nobody has solved before is the kind of job that's
> usually filled by senior developers

> By the time you have 5-10 years of work experience, the things you learned
> during your working career probably play a much more important role than the
> stuff you learned in college

I submit these two quotes are not contradictions, but are at least in tension.

In general, 5 years hacking out code doesn't prepare you to write code that's
mathematics heavy or design systems that require careful mathematical
analysis.

 _> If I've spent the last ten years actually designing distributed systems,
why does it matter whether I've gone to college or not?_

It doesn't. But I bet I can pay a fresh CMU/MIT grad less, and that they'll be
able to figure things out.

~~~
greenyoda
_" But I bet I can pay a fresh CMU/MIT grad less, and that they'll be able to
figure things out."_

Sure, but it could take them much longer to figure it out. College work
doesn't really prepare people to work on cutting-edge problems that nobody has
solved before. Problems assigned to undergrad CS majors are generally
straightforward applications of what was taught in the course, and the
professors already know the solutions and how much work they involve (e.g., an
assignment due in two weeks is known to be possible to complete in two weeks
of effort).

 _" In general, 5 years hacking out code doesn't prepare you to write code
that's mathematics heavy or design systems that require careful mathematical
analysis."_

How many CS grads have had experience with mathematically oriented code? The
only math I remember doing in my CS classes was in theoretical courses like
Algorithms, and that mostly involved proving things rather than writing code.

------
morgante
> App Academy graduates compete for the same jobs as people who have taken
> computer science in college, a four year long, $200,000 undertaking.

No they don't. I have never once considered a recent bootcamp graduate to be
equivalently talented and knowledgeable as a recent CS graduate. Their
earnings difference certainly reflects this. (Try getting a job at Google as
an "App Academy" graduate vs a fresh Stanford grad.)

~~~
ThrustVectoring
>Try getting a job at Google as an "App Academy" graduate vs a fresh Stanford
grad

I know of an App Academy graduate who went on to a job at Google.

~~~
morgante
> I know of an App Academy graduate who went on to a job at Google.

I'm not saying it's impossible. But it's significantly less probable.

~~~
ThrustVectoring
"Less probable" is still competing for the same jobs. Perhaps not as well, but
competing nonetheless.

~~~
nmrm2
I call this the Einstein fallacy. It says that quality Q is of questionable
relevance/utility/value because there exist people without quality Q that do
X, even though the vast majority of people who do X have quality Q. But that
argument is kind of insane.

If you want a job at Google, you're much better off getting a degree from a
good university. Anyone who says otherwise is delusional.

(EDIT: And no, App Academy graduates do not -- _on balance_ \-- compete for
the same jobs as recent Stanford graduates. On balance, they compete for very
different jobs and have far lower starting salaries. The existence of
exceptional outliers is not a good basis for policy or decision making.)

(edit2: whoever just downvoted every single post I made on this article: the
reply button is there for a reason :-) Otherwise, the early career salary for
Stanford is $97,100. Are you saying that the average app academy graduate
makes ~6 figures right after finishing the academy?)

~~~
ThrustVectoring
>Are you saying that the average app academy graduate makes ~6 figures right
after finishing the academy?

Yes. I know of a/A graduates who have accepted offers at $90k, $100k, and
$115k. The $90k was their first offer, and the general reaction was that
declining it in favor of continuing the search was probably higher value.

~~~
nmrm2
_Average_ , which has been hammered home in three posts now. Anecdotes are
non-answers.

Edit: Incidentally, according to App Academy's own numbers, they're about $10k
behind Stanford in average salary (and, I'd argue, the comparison is apples
and oranges to begin with. Stanford graduates are much more geographically
distributed, that's noise. Many Stanford graduates will go on to graduate
school, that's noise. Some a/A graduates already have a college degree or
experience in another industry, that's noise. And so on.)

------
knagra
Requiring a degree for a job that doesn't utilize the information the
acquisition of which the degree is meant to connote is clearly untenable.
That's a given. The author is on point about market demands for higher
education being inflated but is way off base about the value and role of
education in society and economy, and his dismissal of Bernie Sanders's
proposal for free higher education is similarly untenable. The main failing in
the author's argument is a poor framing of the issue. The author assumes that
the economy and society can be planned without acknowledging the social harm a
planned economy and society will necessarily cause. Furthermore, the author
assumes that our economy and society can be planned - a false assumption - and
that the government's primary role is in planning the lives of its citizens
rather than assuring their lives, liberty, and opportunity - a very dangerous
one. The author frames education as a doorway to a career, when in truth it is
more akin to a hallway allowing access to many more doors than are available
without it. Worst of all, the author is completely incorrect about the main
pressures causing a rise in the price of education.

Take the argument not to allow free education as per the Sanders proposal. To
reduce it to absurdity, what impetus is there for us to educate plumbers
beyond middle school (8th grade)? From what I know of the profession, most of
the education they will utilize has already been acquired. What impetus is
there for us to educate fast food workers beyond elementary school (6th
grade)? From what I know of the profession, most of the education they will
utilize has already been acquired. What reason at all is there to educate
police officers? From what I know of the profession, they aim at POC
regardless of whether there's a multiple homicide or a birthday party in
progress; such simple instructions require no education.

The impetus is that we don't live in a planned economy and society. We don't
know who will be what when, and we don't want to enforce that such decisions
be made once and for all at any point in a person's life. A kid might want to
be a fast food worker, like his dad, in 1st grade; a firefighter, like the men
who recently saved his little sister from a house fire, in 6th grade; a police
officer, to eradicate the drugs ruining his neighborhood, in 12th grade; a
lawyer, to protect the poor renters like his parents from being evicted due to
gentrification, as an undergrad; a software engineer, to his account book back
into the black, when he fails to get into a law school. Individual lives are
very chaotic and our expectations of what we want to do change throughout our
lives. And in facilitating our ability to dynamically change course, education
is the cornerstone. It's easy to look at the current occupation of a person
and say, "You're a software engineer. You didn't need any of those Legal
Studies courses or History courses or Latin-American studies courses.", but to
do so is to dehumanize the person and her life experience, it is to discount
her earlier hopes and dreams and ambitions, her current regrets and pains and
struggle, it is to shrink wrap a person inside her professional title and
place her on a supermarket shelf, deriding her "extra, useless" ingredients
while doing so.

In this the author is also incorrect in distilling the value of education to
the knowledge a degree or diploma is meant to proclaim. Education is also an
experience. It's a breather while we choose course. Our economy is becoming so
dynamic and unpredictable for such large sectors that during our middle years
(30s-50s) and even soon after college, many of us change professions to more
profitable sectors. And that's nothing to say about what we want to accomplish
with our time on this planet. Those questions loom forever large on the
horizon for much of our lives. College allows us to interact with thousands of
others in a similar lost state. A college town is filled with mapmakers trying
to see which way to go to "get there." Interacting with them gives a person
the ability to see a little bit more of what her possibilities and potential
can be. College helps those of us who are still lost after high school to get
unlost. And even college is proving insufficient as a compass and square.
Many, if not most, of us are still lost after college.

Moreover, we don't want to be living in a planned economy or society. We have
done that before in the developed world, and much of the 2nd and 3rd world is
doing that now. And along which lines would be plan our economy? Would we tie
down youngsters to what they want to do at age 22? 18? 14? 12? 6? Would we
force them to pursue their parents' profession? Answers to such questions are
the basis of a very draconian government.

The "waste" of extra education is the price we must pay to allow ourselves
varied opportunities and possibilities. Sanders is correct in urging the US to
universally pay for higher education. Sanders's call is especially urgent to
us as we are finding that many of us must go back to college or night classes
much later in life to work for the remaining 10, 15, 20 years before the
government will allow us to retire with enough in Social Security to live
comfortably. Many middle-aged workers are finding themselves without work
after the effects of the ongoing high tech revolution. Going or returning to
college at the government's expense would allow them to take time and
resources to direct their lives in a direction more desirable for them. In
fact, Sanders's proposal, if it were to include living expenses as well as
tuition, would be an excellent solution to homelessness. Not only would we be
providing food and shelter, we would be providing a chance at a more
meaningful life for those who deem it more meaningful and can't afford it.

The tech industry and its moguls are quite taken to pointing to a few outliers
and saying that college is not essential, and to encourage college and high
school students to drop out and pursue their dreams, entirely dismissing that
those dreams might change in a year or even a month. The underlying assumption
is that we magically know what to do with our lives at all times. But the
truth is closer to most of us being lost throughout our lives. Dropping out
and pursuing your life dream is great for those few for whom it works
(Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos comes to mind), but the plan fails for a much
greater number of us who end up going back to college anyway to improve our
station in life at least.

I am suspicious as to whether the rising, oft frivolous degree requirements
for many professions is due in part to a higher availability of such degrees.
Why hire a high school graduate when you can get a more woman who graduated
with a BA in History to do your firefighting? The woman holding the BA has
demonstrated that she is smart and gets things done - at least enough to get a
BA in History. If History BAs are applying, it should increase the
requirements of getting the firefighting job. To turn the author's argument on
its head, I assert that there is higher demand for education not because some
jobs are requiring education when it is unnecessary, but because more of us
are pursuing higher education to direct or re-stabilize our lives and some
jobs are requiring education when it is unnecessary because it is becoming
pore plentiful and readily available in our economy and society. And that's a
good thing. People should be better educated, especially in the Liberal Arts
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts_education](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts_education))
and Humanities. It would dramatically increase the quality of life for all of
us. Or at least it would stop repeated isolated incidents of young Black men
getting shot in this country.

As a last thought, I'm reminded of a recent NY Times (?) article posted on HN
which ended with something akin to "Everyone is sure college isn't right for
everyone, except their own kids."

Long post. Sorry for any mistakes.

------
grendelt
Yeah, no thanks. I prefer doctors and lawyers that have gone to school rather
than watching MOOC videos on a bus.

~~~
white-flame
You missed the point. Doctors in the US take 4 years of generally medically-
unrelated undergraduate schooling before they're allowed into medical school.
Why not just allow them into medical school?

~~~
BashiBazouk
Actually the author forgets to mention that you can have any major to get in
to medical school but many medical schools still require quite a few core
courses you are expected to complete while in undergrad including two years of
Chemistry, a year of math, physics and writing.

