There’s a philosophical argument to be made on this and many other topics. To wit, that only the users of the product should need to pay for it. This is why some highways have tolls. Anybody who wants to seriously argue that college should be tuition-free needs to have a counter for that argument.
My counter is that the country will be better with more opportunities provided to a larger segment of the population, leading to more higher paying jobs and even more tax revenue, something which is infrequently taken into account.
But yeah, I definitely have a different philosophical viewpoint on these kinds of issues.
For me, the issue is two fold. There is nothing wrong with the goal of a free college education but:
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Where does it fall on the priority list? We have so many big problems that are going to take resources - a crumbling infrastructure, a broken healthcare system. Global warming. Those resources need to be allocated first. Likewise, there are so many people that need help - when 20% of kids of color don’t graduate from high school (in my state of Minnesota its 30% - as opposed to 10% of white students) why would we put money at mostly white middle class kids getting college degrees? There is a problem that needs to be addressed at a lower level - or all you are doing is creating a new method to enforce systemic racism.
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There is a huge amount of scope creep in this discussion. I’d support two years worth of community college before I’d support four years of a public college. I’d support four years of a public college before I’d support four years at a private not for profit. And I’d support four years at a private not for profit before I’d support any money going to “Bob’s Fly By Night For Profit Truck Driving School” or “Trump University.” Someone else said they’d support learning something useful, but not being willing to pay tuition for Philosophy majors - but I’d rather have half a dozen Philosophy majors than another person with a degree in Marketing (You can hire a Philosophy major to Market, and you KNOW they took an Ethics course). Define what you are asking for before you can have any meaningful conversation…and then see point 1.
So do you believe in a big carbon tax and tax on all other forms of pollution? All streets and roads should have tolls?
Stupid people make for a stupid country.
So you believe that the country the elected Trump is the smartest population the US has ever had. It’s the highest percentage of college degrees. It certainly seems the like political discourse has been going down hill as more people get college degrees.
One thing I could see making free in certain situations is the first semester of college. There are some students who would do well in college but for various reasons may not think college is for them. Like if the student’s family has never gone to college, the student may not have been encouraged to go down the collegiate path. Removing the financial barrier of the first semester will mean more students will give college a try and find out if a college education is right for them or not.
I agree that we need a better system to guide our high schoolers into the best paths for their future. Right now, the approach seems to be to set everyone up to be competitive and strive for college and a professional job, with any sort of trade or blue collar job being viewed as a failure to achieve that for whatever reason. This is wrong; there should be plenty of respect for trades and non-college educated jobs, and we should incentivize people going down those career paths.
I’m not sure that testing 13 year olds and deciding their future at that point is going to do it either; at least not with today’s testing methods that confuse prior preparation and family educational attainment with actual innate ability.
Maybe we only incentivize certain fields via the free college education, and even then with stipulations? Like if you meet certain academic standards and are accepted to a college with certain accredited programs, then you qualify for the free college. In other words, if you are a good student, and want to go to your local state university to study electrical engineering, then the government may foot the bill. But if you get out of high school with the gentleman’s B average, and want to go to a high dollar private school for Russian literature, then you’re free to do that on your own nickel.
Best solution is probably middle of the road. Make college far more affordable than the abominable $40,000-a-year cost of Duke or Harvard today, but still cost enough to deter people from frivolously going to college just for the sake of going to college.
I think conceptually, the largest problem is that a bachelor’s degree itself is almost becoming of little value because so many people get them (with the accompanying debt load–this proposal would solve that) but that would just shift everything upward.
Just like how a high school diploma used to be an accomplishment 100 years ago, if we make four more years free, then a certain portion of the population will distinguish themselves from others by getting a master’s degree. Then students will go into large debt to get a master’s degree and Bernie Sanders IV when running for president in the year 2100 will propose making master’s degrees “free.”
Something has to address that and I think an ideal solution would be identify bright young people according to their talents and then provide assistance whether through grants or loans to help those people on a chosen career path. Leave the “broadening the horizons” traditional college education to the idle intellectuals.
Hey @aruvqan where you been? Welcome back!
This sounds like a pretty good start. Many state schools should be able to graduate well trained people. Also, with many businesses it’s the having the degree, not where it’s from.
I think a two year community college shoudl be next to free, less than $50 per semester.
State colleges and Univ shoudl be subsidized to the point where they aint free, but no one has to take out a big student loan for them.
Can we say $1000 per semester?
I think the question is how to winnow out the incoming students into buckets of “govt. pays for”, “govt. subsidizes”, and “pays their own way”.
Right now, it seems to be a combination of need and performance that drive that, without much regard for what they’re actually looking to do. Which is likely a less effective expenditure of government money than we could achieve.
Basically we need to maybe revamp the student loan program to be less pervasive, and come up with a government subsidy program that ranges from almost nothing, to almost everything, and have the loan program fill in the gaps for students who need it. And the subsidy program would actually take field of study and where you’re going to school into account. Getting a worthless degree from a rinky-dink school is probably not something we need to fund very vigorously. Nor is funding mediocre students to go to community colleges, except perhaps as a bridge to a university.
When anyone says “we can’t afford that”, what they often really mean is “we have other priorities for our money.”
In this case, folks are prioritizing spending 730 billion dollars per year on a military that is already the largest in the world.
The money is there, it’s just that some folks have different ideas on what to spend it on.
I’d still rather tackle health care first. And then systemic poverty - which IS NOT the result of having to pay tuition as many people who come from poverty - particularly POC - don’t make it out of high school. And then maybe our deteriorating infrastructure. And maybe our impending environmental doom. And then, if we’ve done all of that, we still have money left over, sure free college for everyone!
Yes, those are all valid places to focus on.
We can agree that the folks saying “we don’t have enough money” for these as well are simply not prioritizing health care, poverty, infrastructure or the environment.
Often they are prioritizing the military, police, prisons, or alternatively prioritizing no spending on anything whatsoever (Libertopia)
Yep…its just one of the things that bugs me talking to my more liberal (I’m pretty liberal) Facebook friends. I am not AGAINST the government funding college, there are just a whole bunch of things I am MORE FOR. (Tax cuts for the wealthy and increased military spending are NOT on my list). College Tuition comes in the “and then I’ll get a pony” end of problems I want solved.
China has the largest military, India is #2.
But what is given away free is not valued.
College needs to be affordable, not free.
Define “largest.”
Number of soldiers/sailors/airmen? Yes, China has the most.
Number of ships? The US Navy has 10 aircraft carriers; the Chinese have 1. The USN has more than three times as much gross tonnage as the PLA Navy, and close to ten times as much as the Indians.
Number of planes? The USAF has about twice as many military aircraft as the Chinese and three times as many as India.
Size of budget? The US spends about $730 billion annually; China spends about $270 billion and India around $72 billion.
Number of main battle tanks? Russia has everybody beat: around 22,000, versus around 9,000 each for the US and China and 6,000 for India.
What’s your metric?
Most personell, which is generally how "largest" is measured. As opposed to most powerful, best navy, best tank force, most expensive, etc. All of which are OK metrics, but the term used was largest.