by thenewgreen

President Obama’s call for community college to be free for those who are “really working for it” could be a good idea and it could also be a bad one. The public policy really spins on the economic point of what, actually, is a college education for? If college is simply a way of educating people so as to make them more productive then it’s a great idea. If, however, possession of a degree (even an associates degree) is really just a piece of signalling then this could prove to be only an expensive mistake. What complicates matters is that education is obviously, in part, both of these things, both an improvement in the productive capacity of labour and also a signalling method. So which side of the answer you come down on will really depend upon how you think the proportions work rather than there being one and only one true and logical answer.