Ending Education Subsidies

First off, any books cited by Pro cannot be taken seriously. I don't have the books available and without an online reference, that can be checked by the voters, voter are not to consider Pro's books a reliable source. Every source that Pro cites, I am contesting as invalid. Therefore, voters please only consider Pro's sources valid if you have personally gone to the library and verified Pro's sources.CONTENTIONSC1) College is required for successPro concedes that college is required for success. He says that it should not. He argues for an ideal scenario rather than the actual one. The essence of the debate is the Pro is saying that the government should end subsidies in education. He has the burden of proof to show why. How does he show this? By saying that college should not result in higher incomes. It doesn't matter if Pro thinks that. It is not true. He admits that it is not true. Ending educational subsidies will not make it so. I am not arguing about whether college should or should not result in higher incomes but rather that it does.C2) College is unaffordable to the majority of studentsCollege, which my opponent admits is a path to success and higher income cannot be afforded by the majority of students. My opponent concedes this point as well.C3) Unsubsidized loans do not fill the needPro does not address this contention. A dropped contention in a debate is considered to be conceded. Conclusion: Education should be subsidized.With all the premises true, the conclusion holds true as well.Summary of my casePro has conceded my entire case. The rebuttal that he provides merely voices his opinion that college should not lead to higher income and a successful career which is not the case. Pro's only standing argument now is that there should be less college education because it costs a lot and doesn't increase productivity. I agree that it costs a lot but argue that college is in fact beneficial. This is the reason I am defending subsidies. So, now the only point of disagreement is whether college is beneficial. If I can prove that it is, then I win the debate since my opponent has agreed with every other point that I made. My rebuttal to Pro's case below will prove this point.PRO'S CASER1) Human CapitalI must admit that Pro had an unorthodox way of arguing the resolution. His main argument for why education should not be subsidized is that education is not beneficial at all. So, let's get to the arguments that Pro makes in order to back up his claim.Pro's main argument seems to be that there is no transfer of skills, i.e. Calculus won't help you in a job that has nothing to do with Calculus. However, if your job does involve Calculus, then it will help you in your job. That part is fairly straightforward. 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. I don't claim that a sociology major taking classes in Algebra "teaches them how to think." It merely provides them with knowledge of Algebra so that after graduation, the college students ends up well-rounded and knowledgeable in a wide variety of fields. In the future, if their job requires Algebra, they would be able to perform it. If they want to change careers or decide after graduation to persue a career that does require a fundamental knowledge of Math, it benefits them that way too. This is the reason why schools and to some extent colleges have basic requirements for graduation which often involve taking breadth classes. Pro is essentially arguing for vocational education which is not beneficial precisely because of the points I mentioned above: lack of options if you change your mind.Pro's next argument here is that classes that aren't exactly the same as your job are useless to your job. To back this up, he cites a study where students were made to do word problems. When the word was changed, Pro claims there was no evidence of transfer. This is completely unrelated to college classes. Classes are intended to provide knowledge of the subject matter, not specific transferable skills. This knowledge is used on the job. For example, someone who wants to be a Sociologist or psychologist must learn how to interact with people and understand human nature. This makes them more knowledgeable about the subject and better able to use this knowledge on the job. They don't need to do exact problems that they are doing on the job but need to learn the general content.Here is another example. If a student wants to be a web designer, they need to learn how to write HTML. They can learn this in college. After they graduate, the pages they might have to design may not be the exact same pages that they did for homework in college. However, without a fundamental understanding of HTML, they can't design web pages. Pro's source is absolutely irrelevant and have flawed methodology. I read the link he provided in round 1 (Detterman). In page 2, the author gives examples of how skills are not transferred. Essentially, the people conducting the study taught a mentally retarded women to give the correct amount of change to a cashier when she bought something. They then made her try it in the real world where she failed. From there they jumped to the conclusion that skills are not transferable.R2) SignallingPro's first paragraph argues that college students are smarter than high school students. I argued that college students are smarter and harder working because they go to college so obviously, we agree that college students are smarter and harder working, the question is why.In his second paragraph, Pro argues that this is not the case since general transfer of learning doesn't exist. However, all Pro has argued for so far was an isolated word problem which did not affect how students responded to different word problems. My argument is that college makes students more knowledgeable (has nothing to do with Pro's study) and it helps them meet deadlines and promotes hard work. Pro would have students working right away but if a job requires a degree in Sociology, how will the students get the required knowledge that is gained by a degree in Sociology?R3) Useful Education Pro says that for degrees like Sociology, investing money in it is not worth the cost. However, as I pointed out, the ideal scenario is that everyone goes to college. The government should be encouraging this. The way to do that is by offering subsidies.Comments on Voting:I usually don't make comments on voting but in this case, it is imperative that I make these comments while Pro still has the chance to respond to them.Conduct: If Pro wanted to argue that skills are not transferable, he should have made a resolution as such. I may or may not have accepted. However, he makes a resolution that educational subsidies should end. This while technically correct wastes his opponent's time debating something that may not be what they intended to debate. My intention for instance was to debate the benefits of subsidies, not argue about transferability of skills. However, I did take the time to argue it and negated Pro's arguments while providing better ones. Sources: Pro cites books. So, the reader is left wondering which page the studies are mentioned. The fact that Pro cited books should be enough to penalize him for sources since books cannot be verified. Only one of the claims he made is backed up by a study that can be accessed online.