The fall of the Tory party

The only way to start to do this is free education for all, paid for from general taxation.

I think the problem with this is that it totally sidesteps any concept of cost-benefit analysis wrt education. I suppose you might say that “any £ spent on education is a £ well spent so it doesn’t really matter”, but I think you have to be more forensic than that.

Making it an individual financial decision works for those kids that end up in the private sector. For underpaid skilled public sector occupations (nursing etc) it doesn’t work, but that could be solved by improving pay…

Lets do childcare. Brits spend an average of 30% of ther income on childcare. The figure is closer to 5% in Germany, the EU average is 12% and several conservative governments in Europe are exploring making childcare free.

I reckon affordable childcare is equally import as basic education in a modern capitalist society.

I think the problem with this is that it totally sidesteps any concept of cost-benefit analysis wrt education.

Do you need to be particularly forensic about it? If it's a matter of principle - that each person should be enabled to have the opportunity to explore their potential, especially if you're drawing education broadly - I don't think you do need to reduce it to a straight cost/benefit.

The figure is closer to 5% in Germany

Yeah, well, they remember how well kirche, kuche, kinder worked out last time

The current system is exactly what the Tory’s would want it to be, totally privatised, but from a brief stint on the parents council of our nursery it’s not like the child providers are making much money, there over heads on staff, heating, food etc are massive. There’s no way the Tory’s would do anything to address it in any meaningful way. I’d be surprised if it was in Labours top 5 give than the Tory’s have run everything into the ground.

Before the pandemic our childcare for 1 child was more than the mortgage.

Apposite from the Telegraph - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/01/01/rishi-sunak-shelves-big-bang-childcare-reforms/

I guess it depends on how you think about public sector financing.

If you live in the MMT world where monetarily sovereign governments have no effective budget constraint then no I suppose you wouldn’t care.

If you think that in the long run gov’t spending is funded by diverting resources from other sectors of the economy then yes you should probably care about the marginal return on those resources.

Before the pandemic our childcare for 1 child was more than the mortgage.

At least Liz Truss flipped that ratio for you :-/

I don't think you have to be more forensic, and the driving force of government shouldn't be how much things cost, it should be how useful are they to society.
Otherwise how do you fund the arts?

I don't think I'm getting my point across very well.

What I am NOT trying to say is that "government should only spend £X if it can be shown to produce £X.01 of GDP". It's totally reasonable for a government to say "I think the Britten Sinfonia is a Good Thing so let's fund it".

But that doesn't mean they should write a cheque for any arts organisation that wants one - which would be the analogue to the "education is a right not a privilege" line of thinking.

If you live in the MMT world

Even in this world, there still ends up being an apportionment of funds between different sectors.

So in my view, decoupling some sectors from the need to subsist from wherever their apportionment of public funds amounts to can be a positive thing.

That was effectively the logic behind HE institutions massively pushing to increase overseas students? If you turn yourself into an exporter then you escape the demographic constraints of how many young ppl there are plus gov funding

Yes.

Importers of students and exporters of graduates.

HE institutions were told to push for as many OS students as possible by the government to offset the cost of teaching uk students as the loan doesn't cover the costs.

How are you going to decide who to find then?

You sort of have two options - (i) let the market decide (which is effectively how undergrad degrees are chosen) or (ii) have somewhat arbitrary councils of elders that apply merit or impact criteria.

Neither is perfect or applicable for all situations. But probably both lead to a better outcome than an open spigot of funding.

How are you going to decide who to fund then?

speaking of which - I wonder what happened to the (renamed) arts festival of Brexit? There were some pretty strange things in that, last time I looked.

seemingly, it's already over:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unboxed:_Creativity_in_the_UK

But probably both lead to a better outcome than an open spigot of funding.

I think we'll have to agree to disagree, I simply don't think this is the case. We'll be a country full of business studies graduates!

Throughout history people have said there is a part of society that doesn't need to be as well educated as the rest - the moves for compulsory primary schooling, secondary schooling and FE have all been pushed back initially.
When has there ever been a solid case made (that doesn't hinge on the cost) that people can be too well educated?

Surely the decision to further their education needs to be made by the people themselves, and that isn't a fair and equal choice when there are any costs attached to education.

Like Brexit it cost a fortune and most people didn’t want it

When has there ever been a solid case made (that doesn't hinge on the cost) that people can be too well educated?

I suppose I don't agree that you can just ignore the cost. To take it ad absurdum, if we spend the UK's entire tax take funding PhDs about Wordsworth (at the cost of the NHS, pensions, social protection etc) that would probably be a misallocation of resources.

This is why I made the point about MMT and how the government funds itself. If you believe that government resources are abundant then it doesn't matter what you spend on education. If (like me) you think that the government does have an effective budget constraint then you need to balance your various areas of spending.

I would rather introduce a £10k pa UBI than give everyone the option to do £10k pa uni degrees indefinitely.

The point is that even if you only look at the financial benefits to the individual, they are more than big enough for the individual to be "net up" after they pay for their own education.

Really depends on the course. A degree in nursing might just end up being "net up" after a long time but this is a massive step down from where it used to be, and that's a massive disincentive for people thinking about taking that course. Then they took away the nursing bursaries.

But, heh, who really needs a load of people with silly "nursing" degrees anyway.

I would rather introduce a £10k pa UBI than give everyone the option to do £10k pa uni degrees indefinitely.

The OU used to represent something similar. The first 2.75 years of my OU degree cost me ~£2000. The final 1/4 of a year cost me £2250.

The prospect of paying pro rata £9k a year for various courses killed off any idea of doing any further OU courses.

If you are having problems attracting people to a job, the fix is higher salaries. Taking a few £k off the price of entry is not a sustainable solution.

A separate debate is whether converting the nursing diploma to a degree course was a good idea.

The prospect of paying pro rata £9k a year for various courses killed off any idea of doing any further OU courses.

I didn't know that OU charged full whack fees. I would have thought that their model worked at lower cost. But I presume they don't (aren't allowed to) turn a profit so the cash must all go somewhere.