If the students of a particular course of study are consistently unable to find employment in their line of work, the Chinese government reduces the funding for academic efforts in that discipline. This is a market solution, sort of. Market in the sense that the Chinese gov relies on the signal of available employment for people with particular skills. Not market in the sense that the government determines when/how much to cut the funding. In a full market, people would study, struggle finding jobs, new students would see/hear that students with certain skills were struggling to find jobs and avoid those disciplines so as to avoid the hardship, the dearth of students would directly reduce the funding for those academic topics.
Now, in the US, we have many areas of study with little discernible market value, yet with many students. You have seen this particularly highlighted by various OWS protestors saying that society owes them a job in their area of study/"skill". The US is (mostly) a market economy. Yet we do not see the market correction mechanism I outline above. Why?
I think it is because our society goes to great lengths to not only facilitate education, but also to reduce the pain if the topic of that education is chosen unwisely. My question: We are told that public support for higher education is important for the general social value of everyone. But is that social value still net positive if some amount of the educations we support commence people who then do not give/add to society, but take?
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