really?
I see them as public institutions, largely funded by the public, to benefit the public. In the most part, that is exactly what they are doing. Sometimes, however, this is not the case. In terms of the expenditure required, it simply isn't worth society as a whole funding an education that will probably never be used. I applaud your ideals, but in the face of a grim economic situation, and a public debt that probably makes the IMF wet itself in fear it makes no sense to to teach a large collection of people research and scholarship skills that will then go to waste while they spend the rest of their lives in a dead end job, scratching unmentionable bits of themselves makes no sense. While I think that every discipline should be studied, and that every avenue to understanding should be explored, I also understand that it has to be tempered with the knowledge that someone is paying for it. No-one likes to pay for anything without a direct and obvious benefit to themselves.
( DarkSon a time and date will follow this username on, Fri 15 Oct 2010, 14:16, 1 reply)

I'm not sure what your standard of value is, though.
Even if we allow that the cash in: cash generated ratio is unpromising, that tacitly assumes that the value of higher education is wholly financial. That's not something I'd accept easily: I'd want more argument.

And while I accept that noone likes to pay for anything without a direct and obvious benefit to themselves, that's just because we have a natural and understandable tendency to discount the public. It's a tendency that post-war politics has exacerbated. The cuts in the university sector are, to some extent, symptomatic of an atrophied public sector, and a pervasive ideology that ignores the public in favour of the private at all times. And that's disastrous - not just for education, but in all ways.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 15 Oct 2010, 14:24, closed)

I'm not saying it has to be of a financial benefit. I've always felt that the best product of society is the spare production, both in time and resources, that is necessary to allow that society to continue to learn, grow and prosper. When it comes down to it, though, part of that society has to create more than they need or want to allow that to happen, and that's in the nature of an investment by that society. All investment carries risk, but you look to minimise that risk. Th current educational system, I sometimes feel that this has been forgotten - that it is by the toil of others that education is possible. You say it's good for society, and I agree in most cases - but what good to society is an educated individual not fulfilling all the promise that that education brings with it? And you only need so many experts in latin before they stop being experts and become insurance salesmen.

I'm probably being boring and pompous and a whole host of other things, including retarded, but for a lot of the graduates we have today, the cost/benefit ratio doesn't work out for me.
( DarkSon a time and date will follow this username on, Fri 15 Oct 2010, 15:47, closed)

But I didn't say that it was good for society.
I mean: it probably is, but that's not what carries the weight. It's a public good - that is, a good that I think a properly functioning society ought to preserve just because it's good.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 15 Oct 2010, 16:19, closed)

how can waste ever be good?
( DarkSon a time and date will follow this username on, Fri 15 Oct 2010, 16:27, closed)

It isn't.
But I'm denying that it's waste.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 15 Oct 2010, 20:48, closed)