How to Price Education?

Talking Tuesdays with Fancy Quant

As an educator (content creator), holder of two degrees, and industry practitioner I see the struggle of providing quality education to the right people at the right price. The false narrative that everyone needs a college degree needs to stop. The majority of jobs do not need a college degree. Many jobs need training and universities are not qualified to provide all types of education. Education in the US is very expensive and this is due to many reasons. Some of those reasons are poor spending on sports stadiums, new unnecessary buildings, and over bloated administration offices however there is also the cost of hiring good teachers. One reason I chose not to go into academia was the low monetary compensation. Industry practitioners in specialized fields can make ore money working for a company than a university. Overall, these specialized teachers should make more however that raises the cost of education.
On the flip side of all these costs is the question, who should pay for the education. I've spent a lot of time thinking about if the student should pay for it, the general public (taxes however it only benefits a select few), or companies who need the talent. I've thought hard about how companies can help lower cost for students however due to the advantages of capitalism, it makes the most sense for the student to pay for the education themselves. With the ability of employees to jump between companies, a company would loose significant amount of time and money by paying for the education. Institutions should be providing some sort of on the job training however for specialized jobs it isn't feasible to expect the company to find people who can teach which is a very different skill that actually being able to do the work.
What do you think? Who should pay for the education and how do we reduce the overall cost of education?

Support the show