Trent Shipley wrote:
....
Hi. It's interesting. I wonder about the last bit,
though. How does one tell whether or not a profession
is "essential"? (I can certainly name some that I feel
are NOT essential, but let's get beyond our personal biases.)
One answer may be "a profession is essential as long as
people in it manage to find work". Markets certainly
don't solve everything, but may be giving information
about the relative importance of various kinds of work. : )
---David
Taxpayers tend to see the Universities exclusive mission as training
(not educating) their kids to get a certificate that will let the kid be
middle class. In short we pay taxes for undergraduate education NOT
research or grad school. I imagined the state department of education
defining some professional level degrees like Medicine, Master of
Nursing, M.Ed. and D.Ed., Masters of Engineering, MSW as essential for
Arizona. Others, like Law, MFA, or a PhD in Astronomy would be elective
and unsubsidized. Some, notably the profitable hard sciences, like
geology, biology, or chemistry, might qualify for partial subsidy.
Trent--
So you're not big on the "wisdom of the market"?
Your post did mention libertarians a bit, but I
was unclear where you stood. Why should "profitable"
hard sciences need a subsidy? I'd hope that the
state money would go towards fields that we worthwhile
yet underfunded. : )
My daughter is in law school, and is paying for it
with a pile of student loans. It's reasonable that
she not be subsidized, since she'll (hopefully) wind
up making enough to pay back the loans.
We're in New York state, which has fairly high barriers
to entering K-12 teaching. The teachers who come to my
school to get the Master's they need for permanent
certification tend to be making enough money that
they don't need subsidies.
As for subsidizing a Masters in Social Work, why not
just pay social workers a bit more?
---David
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