I'm curious about your opinion of the states' decisions to reduce funding for public universities.
Neither the state collectively, non-parent residents of the state, nor the in-state parents get any future economic reward for funding higher education if the student leaves the state, so reducing the state's costs in that regard seems rational.
But that reduction in funding was part of the rise of the student loan industry, which subsequently seems to have completely deranged higher education funding.
What is the reason to have higher education organized by geography instead of by industry? Shouldn't the medical industry be responsible for medical education, for example? Then you don't have a state or a city wasting investment on a student who will bail, and you don't have students who are disadvantaged for being born in the wrong state or city.
A longer answer is that I suspect it's a bad idea in the long term. For one thing, I don't see how you wouldn't have "students who are disadvantaged for being born in the wrong state".
>Neither the state collectively, non-parent residents of the state, nor the in-state parents get any future economic reward for funding higher education if the student leaves the state
That seems to presuppose that the students don't benefit from the education and/or there's no interstate commerce.
Neither the state collectively, non-parent residents of the state, nor the in-state parents get any future economic reward for funding higher education if the student leaves the state, so reducing the state's costs in that regard seems rational.
But that reduction in funding was part of the rise of the student loan industry, which subsequently seems to have completely deranged higher education funding.