Once upon a time people took high level education to learn how to learn, and do stuff at such levels. Though this was many years ago so eh maybe.
How do you propose to handle fuzzy edges? Any number of interesting things come from the collision of slightly different fields, and while learning to learn might not be as much of a thing I would expect many physics types to do well at maths, do well at computers and do well at engineering. Back on the many years ago thing do you know where all those early computer peeps came from? Maths and physics usually.
How do we determine what is legitimate field as well? I am self employed and can call my business whatever I like. If I have a 10 hours a month job somewhere in my field does that count? As it stands as a workaround for the "need years of experience" I knew a few people to set up companies, employ each other in each other's company as a salaried employee for a few years and go out into the world with non self employed type experience for said years as far as anybody was concerned. It would then be trivial to make it work in that scenario, and do a whole bunch of busy work if needs be (what do you think you need in your portfolio? Oh what a coincidence my company needs someone to do just that? Oh wow and your company needs what I can do and charge the same rates?).
The tax payers were similarly not free to decide about what they would rather do when they funded education up to the ages of 18. What changes with tertiary education?
Does specialisation count? High end astrophysics is probably still enough physics and maths to make a dent outside it. I know someone once that did biomedical materials engineering (whole bunch of medical stuff) but at the same time did just fine in the high level engineering classes and could hang there and never had to contemplate making a better bandage again if they did not want, doubt any of the others could have done their biomedical stuff though just from walking around knowledge/what else they knew though.
While I said I learned computers as part of it the amount of computer training I had was actually rather limited. Technically enough to say I did (real programming languages, loops and whatnot) but at the same time you could muddle through that in the first year (which counted for nothing in the final grade and was usually deemed a levelling year to get everybody on the same level -- you rock up with maths, physics and chemistry and it might be a bit different to someone that rocks up with physics, computers and biology) and never have to do any of it again. Computers are also pretty ubiquitous as well -- the finance people don't pay people to sit around twiddling their thumbs but actually do very high end modelling and very in depth programming (prior to bitcoin it was finance people gobbling up every higher end FPGA they could to run their high frequency trading platforms), all of which would be totally familiar to people that had previously spent time modelling atoms or whatever in all but the narrowest strokes.
Basically, if you're going to take my rights away and make me pay for education then you're going have to get used to me telling you what you can do with money. That's how it usually works to begin with. You can't take out a student loan and use it to buy a lawn mower with and then not use it to pay for your classes. The more rights you give up the more restrictions you're going to run into. Maybe the restrictions don't personally bother you, but they may bother someone else.
I don't have all the answers or want to discuss hypotheticals, but it's basically like this. You pick what you want to be your major, say computer science and then when you graduate you have to get a job in that field. That means if you're a Liberal Arts major you get a job in that field. I know some jobs don't produce the same income levels, but who is to say that an artist doesn't contribute to society or that a restaurant worker isn't valued.
The main point is that if you're going to tax and force others to pay for your education you're going to have to deal with them telling you what you have to do,basically your're no longer free to do what you want to do when you give up your rights. Maybe what they tell you have to do is agreeable with you or not, but that wouldn't matter anymore because you involved everyone else when you started using their money to pay for your education. Like, it would nt be any different than other current government welfare agreements. You do realize how restrictive they are, don't you? If not look up the contracts you have to agree to when you sign up for food stamps or section 8 and get back to me.
Stuff like Random house searches or having your bank accounts monitored and risk going to jail if you violate any rules and those are some of the least restrictive stuff. Look it up. When you use government money expect to give up a shit town of rights and forget privacy.
Also if you break the rules you have to pay the money back. So I wouldn't expect free education, which isn't free because everyone else is paying for it, to be any different.
Last edited by cots,