> Education is ripe for disruption. There’s a commonly believed fallacy right now that technology companies, specifically VC-backed technology education companies, are going to disrupt education. That’s bullshit. Instead, Harvard, Yale, MIT, and Stanford are the favorites to disrupt education when they fall under heavy and sustained government pressure over the irrational and immoral hoarding of their mammoth endowments. Harvard claims it could have doubled the size of its freshman class last year with no sacrifice to its educational quality. Good. Do it. More students, paying no tuition, at the best schools will disrupt the system.
Harvard matriculates a teeny, tiny fraction of all university students. Doubling that number is not a solution. Even doubling that number at all ivies and elite universities is not even remotely close to a solution.
UBI may not be the correct solution, but even UBI isn't this out of touch.
Maybe I'm just cynical, but I have a tough time believing that the preference for graduates from "top" colleges is entirely because they produce the best results rather than just a way to (necessarily) artificially limit access to a scarce resource. Just for the sake of round numbers, let's say there are enough quarter-million-dollar-a-year jobs for 1% of the population, but 10% of the population, with a bit of training, could step in and do those jobs. What do you do? You set up some semi-artificial, but still realistic, hurdles to limit the applicant pool. Doubling the applicant pool isn't going to solve the "problem" (if you even see it as a problem); it'll just necessitate an extra hurdle.
> Maybe I'm just cynical, but I have a tough time believing that the preference for graduates from "top" colleges is entirely because they produce the best results rather than just a way to (necessarily) artificially limit access to a scarce resource.
This is not really relevant. The author of this piece suggests that the path to affordable higher ed in the US is elite institutions doubling their full-rides. But that's a drop in the bucket; "everyone go to an ivy on a full ride" is not a sustainable or realistic way of decreasing the cost of college.
> Just for the sake of round numbers, let's say there are enough quarter-million-dollar-a-year jobs for 1% of the population, but 10% of the population, with a bit of training, could step in and do those jobs.
This is also not a problem. Most people who go to college would be perfectly happy with a stable 80k. Or even 60k. The problem is not that folks can't get 250k. The problem is the massive amount of money they have to spend to get certain jobs that pay those wages, even at lower-tier universities. And more Harvard scholarships aren't going to solve that problem.
Harvard matriculates a teeny, tiny fraction of all university students. Doubling that number is not a solution. Even doubling that number at all ivies and elite universities is not even remotely close to a solution.
UBI may not be the correct solution, but even UBI isn't this out of touch.