Ending Education Subsidies

If Con had responded to my question in the comments section about whether he's a college student and has access to an academic journal search engine by simply stating that he isn't a college student, I could have helped him access the sources I'm citing. Source [2] from R2 is available in google books--you can't read the whole book online, but if you search for the quote I used, you can find it. The entire Source [1] from R3 isn't available online without a subscription to an academic search engine, but you can find the abstract, which includes a description of the experiment and its conclusion, on google scholar. If Con really wanted to see the whole study, I probably could have found a way to download it and email it to him. Source [3] from R3 is available on google books--you can't read the whole book, but you can read the chapter I'm citing as well as the citations from that chapter.Apparently Con was unable to transfer his ability to google things to debating.Con's ContentionsI do not concede that college is required for success. I concede that it is correlated with success—but think that Con has the causation backwards. I’m not saying that college shouldn’t result in higher incomes; I’m saying that college doesn’t result in higher incomes—the traits that cause people to have higher incomes result in people going to college.C1: Human Capital“Pro's entire argument on this point comes down to the point that college students should not take breadth courses since it doesn't "teach them how to think" and they won't use those skills in their job.”Here, Con again fails to understand my argument. I am not saying that breadth courses aren’t useful for work; I’m saying that almost all courses aren’t useful for work.Con talks about how someone might use sociology or psychology classes to learn “how to interact with people.” While knowing how to interact with people might be a useful skill, it isn’t actually the subject matter of any sociology or psychology class. “Understanding human nature” might be part of one of those classes, perhaps an evolutionary psychology class, but it’s hard to see how this applies to any actual job. HTML is certainly an example of a useful skill that someone could use in a job after college. But this just proves my point—writing HTML will prepare you for writing more HTML. That is hardly the same thing as expecting someone to transfer the knowledge they acquired about gender conflicts in sociology class to an actual job.“I read the link he provided in round 1”I find that hard to believe. From the sentence preceding the description of the study involving the retarded woman: “Two experiences I had illustrate that the answer to that question depends on your point of view.” [1] The author is illustrating an idea, not proving it. Con’s claim that, “From there they jumped to the conclusion that skills are not transferable” is simply not true—to conclude that learning is not transferable, the author discussed a century’s worth of other studies on transfer of learning theory (mostly done on college students, not the mentally retarded). [1]C2: SignallingCon again fails to support his claim that college makes students more intelligent. He again repeats that it makes them more knowledgeable, which isn’t the same thing. If general transfer of learning doesn’t exist, then it’s hard to see how college classes that have nothing to do with IQ tests would cause people to get higher IQs. Again, I agreed that going to college is better for building work ethic than sitting at home doing nothing, but given the amount of time students actually spend studying, it’s hard to believe it’s better at building work ethic than actually having a job. Con also fails to respond to my argument about college signaling conscientiousness.Con argues that students who never went to college for sociology wouldn’t be able to get a job that requires a degree in sociology. Of course, this begs the question, how many jobs require a degree in sociology? All the people I know with liberal arts degrees got jobs that ask for a bachelors degree in anything—suggesting that the job doesn’t particularly care about the specific knowledge they gained in school.C3: Useful EducationEveryone go to college? Why not have everyone get a PhD? Several PhDs? That way we’d maximize productivity.Comments on Voting:Conduct: Con’s complaint here is basically that my argument was unexpected. The resolution was that educational subsidies should be ended—my argument supports the resolution, it just does so in a way Con doesn’t like. I suppose I should have just argued that college is just as wonderful as Con thinks it is, but we shouldn’t subsidize it because I hate poor people—that way I could let Con win and avoid hurting his feelings by making better arguments than him, which apparently is considered poor conduct now. In the future, I will try to always debate exactly the way my opponent wants me to, to avoid having poor conduct.In addition, I think Con should lose the conduct point for lying. He either lied about having read my Detterman source, or did read it, but lied about what it said.Sources: See my intro. This is how the conversation should have gone:LF-“And are you a college student? If so your university probably has some sort of search engine for those kind of citations.”F16-“No, I’m not.”LF-“My bad, I thought you were. Here, you can use google scholar and google books to get a preview of the sources I use. It won’t show the whole book/study, but it can confirm the parts I quote are there. And if you really want to see the whole journal article, I can just email you the pdf from my university’s search engine.”F16-“Thanks! And since there’s still 2 days left before I have to post, I still have plenty of time to make my argument—there’s no need for me to just rush ahead and accuse you of lying about your sources without bothering to have this quick conversation first.”But no.[1] http://cms.educ.ttu.edu...