> what about every university should get subsidies per student's head-count and let the universities decide what for the money is used?
From what I understand it usually works better to pay for results rather than effort.
Paying for results sounds efficient, until you start thinking about what those results should be and how you'd prevent policy makers anyone politicizing them and educational institutions from gaming them.
This. So how do you compare physics outcomes with humanities outcomes or creative fields of study versus science or engineering?
"Success" is often neither quantifiable nor immediately obvious.
You may have a point with it's better to pay for results. But that lead to an chicken-egg-problem. Without chicken no eggs and without eggs no chickens.
So, how to achieve good results, if they are needed upfront to get subsidies and subsidies are needed to offer opportunities to achieve results?
It's not always better to pay for results. Paying for effort would also allow the headcount and university size to be regulated by the market. If you are a university no one wants to adhere to, then you also would not get any subsidies and have an incentive to become better in whatever you teach, without questioning first, where to get the money from.
I see it as a try to remove people without money from education. That fits with all the wisdom trump is producing every single day. Stupid.
I don't think that's a logical conclusion, just from looking at your argument.
Universities are pretty much always basically regional-monopolies, while it's true that not every university gets the same amount of applicants, I don't think they're struggling to get students altogether? But I'm not American, so maybe it's different in the USA?
If it's not different in the US, then this kind of subsidy is much worse then the result based one, because their incentive ends at getting people into courses, not successfully finishing them. So from a profit incentive, keeping them an extra year is highly desirable
Ok, I see your point. You may have an argument here :)
The best option is likely a combination of both, a minor payout per head to provide the baseline and then the bulk via results. But hey, we're all just random armchair pundits speculation on things they have no ability to influence ◉ ‿ ◉