Free Education

It finally happened to where the current (46th) president of the U.S., Joseph (Joe) Biden forgave $10.000 (and and additional $10.000 for Pell Grant recipients) of the student loan debt. There’s a lot of arguments to be had in regards – both for and against student loan debt forgiveness. Personally, I think all education should be free – that is, paid for by the government – and as easily accessible as possible. Sharing is caring, long live open source!

Historically, education has always been linked to affluence and generally being well off. And then often the well educated looked upon the rest as uninformed dumb masses, completing a vicious cycle. Unfortunately, this kind of belief seems to persist to this day and even amongst progressive (or at least left-leaning) individuals, not everyone is in agreement on this. In his very last show Bill Maher joked about “those bullshit liberal arts degrees now being paid off” and, later on, his insistence that colleges are just a scam and are not really needed.

It’s very easy to dismiss education as unnecessary, or sometimes with conspiratorial view even evil. Another option is to just claim that each person is on its own and if someone wants education they better pay for it (literally and figuratively). The whole mentality of “why should I care, if it doesn’t affect me” is pervasive and seen in many different areas of our lives (just from my blog, check out the empathy twice removed and kids these days).

In this blog post I want to do my part in talking about why education should be in everyone’s best interest. In fact, affordable (ideally free) education is downright essential for our wellbeing as a species and it ends up benefitting everyone – although it can take years or decades to see the practical usefulness of certain topics and research. 

In order to not get lost in various details, I’m going to keep it straightforward: without worrying about implementation details, just imagining that everyone who desires so can get any education they want (mind you, not just limiting to theoretical studies – technical schools apply here as well). And on top of that, there’s enough money to go around to where people don’t get forced out of research in order to pay the bills.

So, in such a utopia, what do I think would change if everyone actually got a chance to get any education?

I will try to answer that by talking about the long term benefits and short term ones. The former will venture in territory of (possible) science fiction, with a lot of optimistic guessing – I mean, if I dream, might as well dream big! The latter will instead be more down to Earth.

1) Long term benefits

To start this with a bang, ask yourself this: how many brilliant kids never got a chance to excel due to their financial background? Or instead of staying in research and inventing marvelous new things got into the private sector, limited by the bullshit patents and copyrights? I firmly believe that if we gave everybody in this world a chance, then by now, we would’ve found the cure for cancer, PTSD and many other problems afflicting our society. And, best of all, they wouldn’t be locked behind some paywall. Various companies would be able to implement the cures in financially reasonable solutions.

Another long term outcome would be getting rid of the annoying parts of work. Jobs that literally nobody wants to do? Instead of outsourcing them to poorly paid individuals (including illegal or unethical working conditions), we’d fully be able use robots and automation instead. Tasks that people enjoy, but are incredibly hard or even dangerous? Make them safer and less demanding. Virtually anything that you can think of, if we had enough people dedicated to the wellbeing of a nation, or better still, humanity as a whole, every single person would be better off.

I also firmly believe that if research would be available and shared for free – say in a united database, instead of behind paid sources and various scientific magazines, we could effectively eliminate spread of misinformation. Instead of having to search through ads and corporate media, anyone would be able to just go to this centralized research database and look for the topic they’re interested in. Vaccines, illegal votes, global warming … no matter the topic, anyone should be able to go directly to the source of the things and at least understand the abstract. It’s easy for misinformation to spread when the peer reviewed research costs to access.

2) Short term benefits

To be absolutely clear here, I still think even the “short term” benefits would take some years to get into full effect, but I can easily see them happening within the next 10 years or so.

This one is the most obvious in the U.S. although to some extent it could apply to other countries as well. If education cost less, and in fact, if there were more scholarships to cover indigent people, there would be a bigger abundance of doctors, specialists of various kind, pilots, and so on and so forth. As a result of that, the overall prices of various professional visits would be lower and more manageable – and for the professionals in turn, if they didn’t have a humongous student debt (or, lack of finances because they chose school instead of job), they would be just fine.

Similarly to the point above, there would be more providers all over the place, especially various rural areas that are otherwise struggling. Ideally, with education available for everyone, that would drive down the prices of construction, different technologies, prescription medication, etc… etc… Which means, people who would love nothing more but to get back with their community and work in a remote place, they could actually do that. And yes, there are some grants available, but it’s kinda sad. Seeing for the U.S., I highly recommend watching The G Word by Adam Conover to learn more on the topic.

And lastly, if we normalized education and different professions, people could get along easier. I was never the person who gave much of a shit on what clothes someone is wearing, or what school they went to and the level of education they achieved. However, I am in the minority here; most people will either automatically have respect for someone who went to a certain university, or, go the other route and reserve nothing but disdain for that person, thinking of them as the “elite”. By leveling the playing field, I believe that even in the span of a few years, people would start treating each other as just people. Play off of each other’s strengths instead of going against each other.

Conclusion

Forgiving part of the student debt is, in my opinion, a step in the right direction. Is it perfect? Not by a long shot. However, it is a good starting point towards a more equitable society. And when it comes to complex topics it is important to remind ourselves that even if we can’t think of any direct advantages to us right away, there might be tremendous benefits for us down the road. Often it is the unexpected that propels us forward. A random seemingly insignificant iteration could change our life forever. And nobody, no matter what they claim, can predict the future. There are lucky guesses at best but even then, chance can strike and upend everything.