I think yes and no is a legit answer to the degree question. As far as the invisible, all those who's doing it questions apply at the college level. Another quote from Larry Burkett: "Bob Vila is not building your house". He said that in setting expectaions for prospective home buyers. It applies to college as well. My professor that I'm paying to teach me may be the best in the system or the worst. I haven't looked but I imagine I could get reading lists off the internet posted by top teir programs I could never attend. I could join a local book club for discussions or a facebook group. I could listen to recorded lectures on the internet from the best instructors in the world. I could submit my essays to AI for grading, which I'm pretty sure a lot of profs are already doing, along with making AI generated assignments. Like bass cabs, there are always trade offs. Based on some of what I'm seeing at some of the most prestigous institutes of higher learning I'm not sure the college experience is necessarily producing people with a head in reality. Also, we say "college education" as if it's all the same. My school experience sounds very different from yours.
I looked at your links, breifly, as I'm not here to engage in an elaborate study of education funding, though it is interesting. I wouldn't say it's demystified. In general, the bigger the pot of money, the greater the mystery. You took it from 2/3 to 16% based on one chart.
This chart puts state higher ed funding at 73%:
View attachment 7244278
Still a mystery to me, and the answer may be easy to find, is how much of the tuition category is actually paid by the state through scholarships.
Somebody mentioned being jealous of GA and HOPE and the lottery. Sure, it's great when you get the money. But a full 2/3's of the money collected by the lottery does not go to education. A tax on the williing could be one way to put it, but when they were putting it up for a vote way back when I voted against it. Gambling was illegal in GA and if it was illegal for everyone in the state it shouldn't be legal for the state. I referred to it as a tax on the poor so middle class kids could go to college. That may not be true either. But when I go in a gas station and see who's buying tickets, they don't look like doctors, lawyers and CEO's. Maybe they give at the office. The colleges love it. I've never bought a ticket and my daughter got her tuition covered.
Even still, when I read people complaing about the education system and it's cost I wonder if their solution is going to be to export their crappy system to my state. People often complain about teacher salaries, but a GA teacher makes a pretty good living for the amount of time they have to work and gets a pension, which almost no one in private work gets anymore. But even that varies greatly from system to system. That property tax money I pay means our city teachers make more than teachers in ajacent systems. Maybe people working on the one size fits all solutions should take an interest in their local communities and see what kind of change they can effect.
Not mentioned is whether the extra money we spend vs NH is yeilding better educational outcomes.
I guess it's good those rich foreigners are dumb enough to pay big bucks to send their kids to our crappy ed system. You'd link they'd go to one of the countries that has great ed for free. It also adds to confusion, if they are included in what the what the "average tuition" a student pays. What does an average GA resident pay out of pocket for college? I could argue that in state tuition subsidized by the state charging higher rates to out of state students is in fact state funding. Which section of the graph does that fall under?
GA, IMO, has a very good university system. If you don't go to tech or UGA you can still get an affordable, good education. Or you can send your kid out of state and pay a lot more. Which IMO is why a lot of people are paying too much for college. They seem to think their kid won't make it if they don't go the "best" college. Most CEO's didn't attend ivy league institutions.
I think I could probably get a reading list from a top teir program off the internet. I could probably figure out which commentaries they use. I could read the commentary from a top expert on the subject myself or I could pay someone else who was once assigned the commentary to assign it to me to read myself. Would I finish my self imposed learning program? Who knows? But there are lots of lottery scholarship students that don't finish either. Sounds like I need the degree if I want to teach others who want to teach others.
Which brings up another notion about teachers. I've had it in my mind that when I retire I might go into teaching to share what I've learned. I have a engineering degree, a 30 year career in aviation involving flying, teaching, maintenance and running small businesses and a 20 year career in industrial/commercial water treatment. You might think I'd be qualified to teach middle school algebra, physics, chemistry or a business class. But I'd have to go back to school get a degree in education. But a person right out of college with an education degree is qualified yet has none of that experience. Who would be a better teacher? Could go either way. My wife is working with a lot of brand new teachers. I think I could hang without the ed degree. But the people in the business of issuing ed degrees disagree.
There's an educational lesson in there somewhere.
