Comment by sam_goody
5 days ago
Off topic, but _why_ is it good that the gov gives hundreds of billions of dollars [if you include grants] to higher ed.
I work in a startup where none of the programmers have been to college, and they seem to get along just fine.
I volunteer in a youth group that teaches "soft" sciences, and I am sure that groups like ours do a better job at that with a lot less funding.
Trade schools cater to the lower income, are much more effective dollar for dollar, and get a lot less federal funds. If that money were to be poured into trade schools instead of universities, it would help create a better middle class.
Why should Harvard be so entitled?
EDIT: IMO, The reason youth go to college is to have fun. The real reason the parents are willing to pay, is because their children will forge connections with other wealthy families that is worth the money. It may be good for the wealthy that the money stays in their circle, but IMO this is not something the Gov should subsidize.
Nearly everything you use on a daily basis came from university research. Heck, most of what we know about the universe comes from university research.
Every piece of technology is because of collaboration between taxpayer funding and universities. It is relatively rare nowadays for a private business to create anything truly new without some form of university support. Or it's built on top of university research.
If you like new knowledge you like these types of programs. They make modern life possible.
Universities provide staff, equipment and expertise while the government(and often private enterprise) provide the funding.
the money is for research not education.
A lot of modern industry started as academic research. Things like semiconductors, EUV lithography, mRNA vaccines, or AI originate in government-funded academic research.
The health effects of smoking and leaded gas were established by academic research, allowing government programs to massively improve our collective health.
Climate change has been recognized, diagnosed, and its solutions invented mostly by academic researchers, an effort that may save all industrial civilization.