There is an irony here: full pay students are often the ones most motivated by the sort of “frills” that seem silly to kids scrapping by. So you pay $X upgrading the dorms to attract the kids who can pay big bucks, but will only go a place with good dorms and a nice gym. Then you use some of that moneyto subsidize the higher-performing kids (because full pay students want to go to school with high performing kids) and the under-resourced kids (at least partially because the full pay kids want a diverse environment). This leaves the under resourced kids thinking “instead of giving me this great dorm and financial aod to cover it, why not a cheap dorm and no need for help?”. But the math apparently works out. Each $1 spent attracting full pay kids raises more than that, fenerally.
I think school should be expensive enough that students take their studies seriously and apply themselves. Many do not. If free, fewer would.
But not so much you couldn’t cover most costs by working as a student or within a couple years of graduating. The economy needs educated people and given what government does subsidize this is a better choice than most.
If I may dissent. If students were consistently shown the door for underachievement (i.e. two consecutive semesters with a below 2.0 GPA, or poor attendance with no valid reason) I think the layabouts would be fairly quickly eliminated or inspired. The education should be offered equally to anyone who wants it regardless of their family’s wealth, but if someone is just treating the place like an expensive resort and taking up a space that could be filled by someone who wants to be there–which is a reality we see today–they can GTFO. Of course, in the pay to play model we currently enjoy, that would mean turning out a money source.
Poor folks can take school seriously, too. But if they ain’t got the brass I guess they don’t get to prove that?
That depends on the country. Canada does a relatively good job at providing education to all and offering loans to attend university to those meeting modest academic and financial criteria who need loans (as I did). It’s probably harder now than it was as some programs have been allowed to charge very high tuitions. Merit, and not means, should be the main measure, mmmkay? I still favour lower tuition, though not zero tuition, for most students.
At a university level, educating those with no hope of succeeding would reduce the quality for those likely to as resources are finite. However, as a strong advocate for education many alternatives should exist including courses which are more general, more practical, online, ungraded or emphasize other qualities such as creativity - also at low and reasonable cost.
Here is a NYT discussion. A $10k forgiveness may be too low?
(I might be okay with charging maximum tuitions of $5000 a semester to those in need, with more subsidies to education in general. Depends on details. Administrations would not like this.)
I would be fine with my tax dollars paying for everything students need, including room and board, textbooks, and even a modest stipend for other living expenses (clothes, phone bill, transportation, etc.) I would also be fine with a system wherein private colleges could charge whatever they want, students who want to attend those schools and/or their parents are on the hook for figuring out how to pay for it, and students who go to public colleges are able to afford the all-in costs for one year with one summer of minimum wage work. In theory, I’m OK with the idea of some level of means-testing to ensure the funds are dispersed according to need. But I don’t want to punish kids who have rich but selfish parents, nor do I want to disincentivize parents saving for college. So in practice, I think it would be simpler to keep that to a minimum and just have everyone be entitled to at least a certain basic level of funding or free access. I went to public schools from first through twelfth grade, an expensive private college that was stingy with scholarships for undergrad, and a public university that gave everyone in the first few classes (including mine) at least a partial scholarship. Based on my personal experiences, I’m highly skeptical of this notion that kids will treat their education with more respect if they’re taking out loans for it.
ETA: Oh, and I’d continue the free ride for as long as they want to stay in school, and manage not to get kicked out. Not everyone needs a PhD but it wouldn’t kill us to have a few folks who know more than their jobs require.