There are many interesting points RSJ makes in his critique of the student loan forgiveness in the US, but I feel there were many misfires as well.
For example, he reflexively attributes the high cost of college to a lack of supply due to regulations. In my experience, this is just not true. If anything, there's been so little regulation, we had a Trump University that literally bilked students. There are numerous other examples of this (Devry?) that the loan even tries to address: private universities with huge advertising budgets that were formed easily and, in the end, committed daylight robbery on students. Second, he casually inserts that high cost of college tuition apparently somehow helps fund research. Again, just not true. The major funder of University research by far, by institutions like the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) (gasp, the government), as well as various industrial grants that tend to be for more targeted research in applied fields (engineering, management). (The Internet is famously the creation of DARPA; major drug innovations owe to NIH.) Tuition fees is almost never a source of research funding. Heck, as someone who once got faculty offers, I can say that faculty are usually paid for 9 months with the expectation that they will get external research funding to help cover their "summer salaries", so that tuition fee doesn't even actually cover faculty pay!
Yes, a major reason US Universities pay their faculty more is to hire good professors. And one of the most important reasons why that is costing more is because industry pays so much more, so the universities have to compete to attract talent (faculty salaries are always lower, but try to be in the ball park where a candidate can say, with all these benefits and the invaluable "intellectual freedom", I can put up with the pay differential). However, a number of studies have shown that tuition increases have far outstripped even these salary increases. (Don't get me wrong: industry _should_ pay well, whatever the other effects.)
All this to say, the implied ease of other solutions to decrease tuition is simply unbelievable to me. You can argue that a subsidy is not so great, but pretending as if there are slamdunk solutions to reducing the high cost of tuition doesn't seem right. The US attempt at a solution to this problem has been to have state universities that subsidize tuition for local residents (e.g. UCs offers a tuition of $14k for residents, while private colleges like Stanford cost $60k or more), and most public universities stand head to head with private ones in college rankings and quality. Could the subsidies be better targeted at those who went to public universities (so made an honest attempt at reducing cost)? Sure. Would that be palatable in the US today? I'm not sure.
There's another point that RSJ slides over, making it seem like it's some sort of deserved fruit for lack of persistence: that 40% of loans are for degrees that were never finished. Why are degrees not finished? I don't have the data for this, only anecdotal and observed cases so take this with the skepticism it deserves. Undergrads in the US often do multiple jobs, racing to classes in between, and catching up with homework and labs late into the night. An undergrad working while studying is not at all an aberration in the US (like it is for the most case in India). Add to this a suddenly sick parent or child in the US system of privatized health care, or any other slight tweak (you car breaks down?) in a system with no social support (e.g. no public transport) means having to drop one or more things one is doing. And it's often college that gets dropped because you need the jobs to keep food on the plate, pay the bills and keep the house going. Sure, you can increase social support structures, but that will involve (yikes!) taxes and government. But does such a person need to carry along the added burden of the college loan she incurred as a you-deserve-it? I'm not so sure.
I think acronym is not as much of an issue as tricky subject of dealing with a highly emotional yet potent issue of political, economic and social issue of subsidy, MSP, agriculture and democracy. What you suggest (further increasing the grant on PMKY) can very well lead to farmers not working on the field efficiently enough to produce enough grains for feeding the country. As it is farming is back breaking work in absence of technology, low capital investments for automation, low and uncertain returns and small landholdings without complicating it further. There is no easy solution for this and definitely increasing grants under PMKY will be a far worse option.
I never noticed that Pradhan Mantri Bhartiya Janurvarak Pariyojana becomes PMBJP in acronym.
All political parties are having fun with tax-payer's money. I think we have to choose the lesser evil.
One of the dialogues in the movie Kingsman The Secret Service is "Those idiots who call themselves politicians have buried their heads in the sand and stood for nothing but reelection".
How very apt. Although, I am not sure who the idiot is. The politicians or we the people.
There are many interesting points RSJ makes in his critique of the student loan forgiveness in the US, but I feel there were many misfires as well.
For example, he reflexively attributes the high cost of college to a lack of supply due to regulations. In my experience, this is just not true. If anything, there's been so little regulation, we had a Trump University that literally bilked students. There are numerous other examples of this (Devry?) that the loan even tries to address: private universities with huge advertising budgets that were formed easily and, in the end, committed daylight robbery on students. Second, he casually inserts that high cost of college tuition apparently somehow helps fund research. Again, just not true. The major funder of University research by far, by institutions like the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) (gasp, the government), as well as various industrial grants that tend to be for more targeted research in applied fields (engineering, management). (The Internet is famously the creation of DARPA; major drug innovations owe to NIH.) Tuition fees is almost never a source of research funding. Heck, as someone who once got faculty offers, I can say that faculty are usually paid for 9 months with the expectation that they will get external research funding to help cover their "summer salaries", so that tuition fee doesn't even actually cover faculty pay!
Yes, a major reason US Universities pay their faculty more is to hire good professors. And one of the most important reasons why that is costing more is because industry pays so much more, so the universities have to compete to attract talent (faculty salaries are always lower, but try to be in the ball park where a candidate can say, with all these benefits and the invaluable "intellectual freedom", I can put up with the pay differential). However, a number of studies have shown that tuition increases have far outstripped even these salary increases. (Don't get me wrong: industry _should_ pay well, whatever the other effects.)
All this to say, the implied ease of other solutions to decrease tuition is simply unbelievable to me. You can argue that a subsidy is not so great, but pretending as if there are slamdunk solutions to reducing the high cost of tuition doesn't seem right. The US attempt at a solution to this problem has been to have state universities that subsidize tuition for local residents (e.g. UCs offers a tuition of $14k for residents, while private colleges like Stanford cost $60k or more), and most public universities stand head to head with private ones in college rankings and quality. Could the subsidies be better targeted at those who went to public universities (so made an honest attempt at reducing cost)? Sure. Would that be palatable in the US today? I'm not sure.
There's another point that RSJ slides over, making it seem like it's some sort of deserved fruit for lack of persistence: that 40% of loans are for degrees that were never finished. Why are degrees not finished? I don't have the data for this, only anecdotal and observed cases so take this with the skepticism it deserves. Undergrads in the US often do multiple jobs, racing to classes in between, and catching up with homework and labs late into the night. An undergrad working while studying is not at all an aberration in the US (like it is for the most case in India). Add to this a suddenly sick parent or child in the US system of privatized health care, or any other slight tweak (you car breaks down?) in a system with no social support (e.g. no public transport) means having to drop one or more things one is doing. And it's often college that gets dropped because you need the jobs to keep food on the plate, pay the bills and keep the house going. Sure, you can increase social support structures, but that will involve (yikes!) taxes and government. But does such a person need to carry along the added burden of the college loan she incurred as a you-deserve-it? I'm not so sure.
I think acronym is not as much of an issue as tricky subject of dealing with a highly emotional yet potent issue of political, economic and social issue of subsidy, MSP, agriculture and democracy. What you suggest (further increasing the grant on PMKY) can very well lead to farmers not working on the field efficiently enough to produce enough grains for feeding the country. As it is farming is back breaking work in absence of technology, low capital investments for automation, low and uncertain returns and small landholdings without complicating it further. There is no easy solution for this and definitely increasing grants under PMKY will be a far worse option.
I never noticed that Pradhan Mantri Bhartiya Janurvarak Pariyojana becomes PMBJP in acronym.
All political parties are having fun with tax-payer's money. I think we have to choose the lesser evil.
One of the dialogues in the movie Kingsman The Secret Service is "Those idiots who call themselves politicians have buried their heads in the sand and stood for nothing but reelection".
How very apt. Although, I am not sure who the idiot is. The politicians or we the people.