"Josh Freedman at Forbes Magazine proposes a graduate tax-funded system of higher education, under which students would pay nothing to attend college upfront. Instead, once they graduate and move out of their parents' basements, they would begin to pay an additional income tax (say, for example, three percent) on their earnings that would fund higher education. 'In other words, the current crop of college graduates funds the current crop of college students, and so on down the line. "
There seems to be a lot wrong with this proposal, at least in my mind, but there are two objections that immediately come to mind:
First, I am not sure it's economically sustainable. The US is one of the few first world economies with net population growth. This means that every generation would be financing an ever larger class of college graduates. This would inevitably lead to either the program going bankrupt or extremely onerous taxes. At least as I read the article that's the way it appears to me.
Second, I'm pretty sure this would lead to a huge proliferation of junk degrees (more than exist currently) just to push people through the system and generate the tax revenue. It would do more harm than good.
And I just thought of a third. What about all the foreign students in the American educational system? How would they be handled? It's not like they have to pay the IRS when they return home to the PRC or wherever.
These are just the immediate objections I had in the few minutes I spent reading the blurb on Slashdot maybe they are addressed in the main article, but I am on my way to work and don't have time to plow through it this morning.
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