# Would "free college" work in the US? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 11, 2018, 4:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-free-college-work-in-the-us/808614 "2018-02-11T04:06:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2018, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-free-college-work-in-the-us/808614/101 "2018-02-13T21:58:00Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > What value does a medieval scholar or Holocaust studies major or sociology major add? Yeah, sure, they may be able to get a job, working in HR or advertising or something - but how does anything they were taught help in any way? Teach History. A Government or NGO worker. Write books. ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2018, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-free-college-work-in-the-us/808614/102 "2018-02-13T22:04:52Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > To whom? Part of the deal with capitalism…though it gets violated in a number of large ways…is that while you’re enjoying your swanky dorm and lattes, other people are working. Those people are producing all the equipment to make all the stuff you enjoy, they are protecting you so that the campus is a safe space (for the most part), you’re no doubt receiving tons of services which involve collective bits of time from thousands of people. > > So it makes a kind of sense that you should finish that degree, ideally on time, and be able to work your tail off _creating_ new accomplishments of your own. Whether it be working as part of a large team to make the robots that will change everything, or just planning the wiring runs for factories, you’re doing something useful to the other people who created the resources needed for you to have a nice time in college. And if it’s a good college, the knowledge you learned adds genuine value. You’re doing a better job than someone who just picked it up ‘on the job’. Your robots actually work because you know the math, your factories don’t burn down because you properly designed the wiring runs. > > What value does a medieval scholar or Holocaust studies major or sociology major add? Yeah, sure, they may be able to get a job, working in HR or advertising or something - but how does anything they were taught help in any way? Well, those who do not understand the past are doomed to repeat it. There are those people who believe that there is more to contributing to society than adding economic value. I happen to agree - I have friends who are artists and musicians and writers - often supported by tolerant spouses. However, I am unconvinced if SOCIETY needs to support them. Or all of them. I think having Historians work at the Smithsonian or Holocaust studies majors work with survivors of ethnic cleansing in Rwanda or funding Shakespeare in the park is probably useful to the human condition in a non-monetary sense - but you don’t need nearly as many Historians as are produced through undergraduate programs (or even graduate programs). On the other hand, Historians go to law school and become lawyers - and if we measure economic worth by the size of law firms, lawyers are needed. But just because you majored in Computer Science doesn’t mean that you are going to spend the next 40 years contributing to society in the field in which you studied. During the height of the offshoring phase and the recession, we saw lots of developers out of work. I know lots of systems engineers that are out of work as we move more and more to the cloud/devops and data center automation. I know several former developers who have moved into non-STEM fields - often because they can make more money. Which all brings us back to the question of gating. Say that as a society we somehow manage to agree that to maintain a cultural heritage, we want to get 50 Shakespearean actors and scholars out each year - and we need to get 100,000 CS Majors out each year. And we agree to pay for both of those. How do you pick who gets to study and who doesn’t? And what about the CS major who gets through four years of school and decides that they want to be an artist after two years of writing code? ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2018, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-free-college-work-in-the-us/808614/103 "2018-02-13T22:08:56Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > **Hoene said the high poverty rate in the supplemental report is driven by California’s stratospheric housing costs.** > The economy is fine. The housing prices are incredible. As is the traffic. California is so crowded that no one lives here anymore. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2018, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-free-college-work-in-the-us/808614/104 "2018-02-13T22:23:46Z")
> [@Dangerosa](#): > > Which all brings us back to the question of gating. Say that as a society we somehow manage to agree that to maintain a cultural heritage, we want to get 50 Shakespearean actors and scholars out each year - and we need to get 100,000 CS Majors out each year. And we agree to pay for both of those. How do you pick who gets to study and who doesn’t? And what about the CS major who gets through four years of school and decides that they want to be an artist after two years of writing code? Back when I went to school college wasn’t free, but it was sure cheaper than today, even counting for inflation. Were any of these things big problems? The programmer who now wants to be an artist? Programming is her day job. Or she saves up money to try it out. What if you think you need 100K programmers but only have 75K competent students? Or, as you mentioned, the 100K jobs turn to 50K after the next crash. It happened in 2001, after all. Plus most kids are smart enough to know what the employment situation is. People of my kids’ generation are running scared, far more than I ever was. The best thing about free college is that it lets kids decide what is best to do without crushing debt hanging over them. I know an English kid who is now has a job as a translator, but he never could have gone to college and then on if it weren’t free. His mom is pretty poor. I was lucky enough to be able to pay for my kids, and they both could choose their future paths based on their skills and opportunities, not based on their debt. And despite what **spifflog** thinks they both worked their asses off in college. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2018, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-free-college-work-in-the-us/808614/105 "2018-02-13T22:25:21Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > So if in the US we had a system where someone could be guaranteed a roof over their head, food, health insurance, and retirement **their** would be less need of college. Grammar school, otoh … ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2018, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-free-college-work-in-the-us/808614/106 "2018-02-13T22:32:28Z")
> [@Fretful\_Porpentine](#): > > Just a quick note about the economics of college: Degree programs and general education requirements in the humanities and many social sciences [subsidize the rest of the university](http://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/bottom-line-shows-humanities-really-155771). These subjects have lower faculty salaries and usually do not require expensive equipment (although fine arts programs like music are an exception), while students pay the same per-credit-hour tuition for a humanities course as they do for a science course. The least cost-effective courses, from the institution’s point of view, are usually lab sciences and practicums in pre-professional programs. So any solution that involves either incentivizing more students to major in STEM / pre-professional programs or cutting gen ed requirements is likely to result in _higher_ tuition, not lower. The author of your link neglects something important. A top university, like UCLA, has professors in STEM who bring in more money than just student fees. The grants they have include large amounts of overhead that go to the university, above and beyond the lab facilities they pay for. I’ve reviewed NSF grants and I assure you that these are significant. My daughter is a business school professor and has brought in all sorts of money for her department already. So if you include student fees only he is correct, but that is only part of the story. I recognize the importance of humanities programs, and am fine with them being subsidized from programs where money is easier to get. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2018, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-free-college-work-in-the-us/808614/107 "2018-02-13T22:39:30Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > This would be a huge waste of money. If you let the money on fire it would be better because at least then people would get heat. > The point of college is to certify which students are smart enough to get into college and diligent enough to do the work. If you encourage more people to go to college by putting the costs of the taxpayer then instead of spending four years gaining skills in the work world they will spend it on campus. Many of these people will drop out, having wasted their time and other people’s money. If people don’t drop out then they will graduate with a credential that means significantly less than it used to. Currently more than half of college graduates are in jobs that do not require a degree, what would be the point in spending a hundred billion dollars a year to up that percentage to 75%? The proposal seems to be that we pay for those who cannot get into college, not let everyone into college qualified or not. I’m not sure what your experience was, but in mine - and my family’s - you actually learn things in college, and get exposed to areas that you would not be exposed to at work. Since most companies have dropped their education programs, I’m not sure what skills people will gain. Skilled trades need education too. Responsibility? What builds more responsibility - punching a time card and having the boss standing over your shoulder or being forced to plan your work through self motivation, with crappy grades (and angry parents) the punishment if you fail. When I worked (before email, anyway) I could relax. When I went back to my dorm in college I had five problem sets staring me in the face. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2018, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-free-college-work-in-the-us/808614/108 "2018-02-13T22:42:42Z")
> [@PastTense](#): > > It has certainly been tried in a number of places. I remember the City University of New York had it for several years–but had to drop it because of budget problems. And when they dropped it there was a substantial drop in the number of students. > [http://www1.cuny.edu/mu/forum/2011/10/12/when-tuition-at-cuny-was-free-sort-of/](http://www1.cuny.edu/mu/forum/2011/10/12/when-tuition-at-cuny-was-free-sort-of/) More than several years. My mother went to Brooklyn College free in the late 1930s, and I could have gone to CCNY free in 1969. Many of the well known intellectuals from the '30s went to CCNY, and probably couldn’t go anywhere else. If they had gotten in to other places, which was unlikely because they were Jewish. ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2018, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-free-college-work-in-the-us/808614/109 "2018-02-13T23:28:23Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Back when I went to school college wasn’t free, but it was sure cheaper than today, even counting for inflation. Were any of these things big problems? The programmer who now wants to be an artist? Programming is her day job. Or she saves up money to try it out. > What if you think you need 100K programmers but only have 75K competent students? Or, as you mentioned, the 100K jobs turn to 50K after the next crash. It happened in 2001, after all. > Plus most kids are smart enough to know what the employment situation is. People of my kids’ generation are running scared, far more than I ever was. > The best thing about free college is that it lets kids decide what is best to do without crushing debt hanging over them. I know an English kid who is now has a job as a translator, but he never could have gone to college and then on if it weren’t free. His mom is pretty poor. I was lucky enough to be able to pay for my kids, and they both could choose their future paths based on their skills and opportunities, not based on their debt. > And despite what **spifflog** thinks they both worked their asses off in college. They might be if the government is looking for economic efficiency from the system - if the idea is that this will pay for itself in increased economic gain. By the way, my two cents on this is that we should work to make college more accessible for more people - but that doesn’t mean it needs to be free. I’m just asking questions because as Grim Render pointed out - what do we mean by free college? Until that question is answered - we know what we mean, we know what we are looking for in outcomes - then no, it isn’t feasible in the U.S. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2018, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-free-college-work-in-the-us/808614/110 "2018-02-13T23:47:35Z")
What do you all think of the free college model at [College of the Ozarks](https://www.cofo.edu/)where students can work at on campus jobs and work their way thru college? ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2018, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-free-college-work-in-the-us/808614/111 "2018-02-13T23:54:13Z")
> [@Ruken](#): > > That would be the poster you just quoted 😃 > > Re: Norway costs, I did find this article: [http://sciencenordic.com/norwegian-higher-education-costs-vary-wildly-across-disciplines-and-institutions](http://sciencenordic.com/norwegian-higher-education-costs-vary-wildly-across-disciplines-and-institutions) > > “The average Norwegian university student costs 20,350 Euro a year”, but that varies between €7700 (business admin) and €82,000 (medicine). > > I didn’t see a link to the actual report in the article. > > And, “The study did not include the costs related to the buildings used by students and staff. Analysts said including these expenses would have made the calculations too complicated.” It’s customary the apply a general overhead rate here to account for buildings and grounds. Is it completely accurate? Probably not. But more so than zero. Blame Deloitte. Along with that, a small country like Norway could look at its society needs and put out scholarships accordingly. For example, they could survey industry and find out their is a need for 200 computer programmers, 100 elementary school teachers, 300 plumbers, 100 police officers… and so on. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2018, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-free-college-work-in-the-us/808614/112 "2018-02-14T00:05:51Z")
The idea of the government allocating college majors does not appeal to me. Even if you aren’t paying tuition, there is still a cost to attending college. People will gravitate toward lucrative careers, with some natural gating based on interest and ability. Have too many programmers? They’ll get paid less and attract fewer new ones. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2018, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-free-college-work-in-the-us/808614/113 "2018-02-14T01:18:46Z")
I would like to tell a little story of a man I met nearly 60 years ago. Son of immigrants, he had not even heard of college when he graduated from a NYC HS in the 30s. A friend told him about CCNY and he decided to apply. He just made the 80% average that was required then and graduated as an engineer. When I met him he was working as an engineer in Philadelphia and teaching calculus to night students at Penn. (That’s how I met him; as a grad student in math, I used to hang around at night a lot.) So the existence of a free college had changed his life and benefited him enormously. But it benefited society as well. CCNY started charging tuition during the financial crisis of the 70s and has never gone back. Let me tell you my story, even if it is nearly 65 years old. I graduated #31 in a class of 255, so not in the top decile, but high in the second. My SATs totaled essentially 1300. My subject scores were 722, 722, and 594 (they didn’t round in those days). So high average but not overwhelming so. I applied for scholarships and got 0. Although tuition at Temple was only about $500, my family simply could not afford even that. I would not have gone to college at all except for a real stroke of luck. Looking for a job, I came across a newspaper ad (that’s how you found jobs in those bygone days), for a full-time job as a lab tech at Penn that allowed me to get paid and take night (or even day, when necessary) courses at Penn at half price and, eventually graduate in five years. If not for that, I very much doubt that I could have had a career as professor and research mathematician. ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2018, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-free-college-work-in-the-us/808614/114 "2018-02-14T02:53:01Z")
> [@Ruken](#): > > The idea of the government allocating college majors does not appeal to me. > > Even if you aren’t paying tuition, there is still a cost to attending college. People will gravitate toward lucrative careers, with some natural gating based on interest and ability. Have too many programmers? They’ll get paid less and attract fewer new ones. You actually have a classic problem in control theory here. This comes when you have too much gain (response to stimuli) and too much lag between taking an action and the result. In this case, if you were the government, and you decided that you had too few computer programmers, you might take an action to incentivize training a bunch more. Like paying for their college. But it wouldn’t actually have an effect on the number of coders for about 5-10 years : it would take time for each expanded class of programmers to get through school and graduate, and then it turns out that most employers want 3-5 years experience before they really think someone is competent enough to hire at all. So you get oscillation. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2018, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-free-college-work-in-the-us/808614/115 "2018-02-14T04:19:35Z")
You certainly can get oscillations and my nurse friends tell me they see it their profession. But it’s not like the only source of new coders is now 18-year-olds. And the exit of older programmers can be delayed if the market incentivises it. Business that want people bad enough _will_ train them. I’m seeing this now with “data science.” It’s not like the point of college is to train you in some narrow and unbending career path. Hell, I’ll hire that apocryphal french lit major to do comms or project management. Probably smarter than a comms major. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2018, 7:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-free-college-work-in-the-us/808614/116 "2018-02-14T07:13:58Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > What do you all think of the free college model at [College of the Ozarks](https://www.cofo.edu/)where students can work at on campus jobs and work their way thru college? It’s how I paid for graduate school. Many of my friends there were working for the university, both grad and undergrad students, in multiple fields; one of the people doing research in our lab was a secretary who’d asked “so what is it you guys _do_, with this ‘chemistry with computers’ thing? I thought chemistry was done in labs!” After a year of puttering around with us she signed up for some undergrad courses; she could get a certain amount of credits with no tuition because of being a university employee. I think that in principle it’s a perfectly fine model. Like any business model it can be applied well or badly, but the idea is sound and in fact widespread under different names. ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2018, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-free-college-work-in-the-us/808614/117 "2018-02-14T13:05:17Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > What do you all think of the free college model at [College of the Ozarks](https://www.cofo.edu/)where students can work at on campus jobs and work their way thru college? That in addition to work, like Harvard, its heavily funded by outside donations and isn’t a sustainable model on a large scale. Its acceptance rate is close to a school like Tufts - at 14% - it hasn’t been able to scale itself - its only 1500 students which is tiny for a college. And it isn’t “free” - the average cost of attendance is $13k a year according to Niche. And out of that, you get a subpar earnings post graduation for a four year school. ---
**Author:** ![Grim\_Render](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a87d85/32.png) [@Grim\_Render](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grim_Render)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2018, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-free-college-work-in-the-us/808614/118 "2018-02-14T15:29:17Z")
I just want to make a quick post about something I’ve heard before. The US has been slipping for many years in what’s known as social mobility. The ability to rise due to your own determination and hard work. Once, the US was the undisputed champion of this. Now, its near the bottom of the developed world. The top nations are the Nordics, mostly. And the reason I’ve heard is, free college. There are other factors, but that is the 800-pound gorilla. The more your education depends on your parents wallet, the more stratified a society gets. ---
**Author:** ![spifflog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c5a1d2/32.png) [@spifflog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spifflog)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2018, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-free-college-work-in-the-us/808614/119 "2018-02-14T15:40:20Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > I was lucky enough to be able to pay for my kids, and they both could choose their future paths based on their skills and opportunities, not based on their debt. > And despite what **spifflog** thinks they both worked their asses off in college. We’ll everyone’s kids are the best right? Just ask them. 😃 As has been pointed out, first and foremost what must be ascertained is if this is actually a problem. Are we short college grads? Do we really need more? If so, is it true that people can’t go to college due to finances? There are many scholarships, loans, grants and companies that are willing to pay for college. Is that not enough? My father was a brick layer and my mother was a housewife. I worked my tail off and still had to take a year off to earn more money. I didn’t get my dream school, I went to a state school and I waited until I had a job to get my Master’s. I don’t drive a Tesla not either but such is life. Free ice cream for everyone is nice. But is it better than free healthcare? Free food? Housing? A free Tesla? ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2018, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-free-college-work-in-the-us/808614/120 "2018-02-14T15:55:49Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > The proposal seems to be that we pay for those who cannot get into college, not let everyone into college qualified or not. > I’m not sure what your experience was, but in mine - and my family’s - you actually learn things in college, and get exposed to areas that you would not be exposed to at work. > Since most companies have dropped their education programs, I’m not sure what skills people will gain. Skilled trades need education too. Responsibility? What builds more responsibility - punching a time card and having the boss standing over your shoulder or being forced to plan your work through self motivation, with crappy grades (and angry parents) the punishment if you fail. > When I worked (before email, anyway) I could relax. When I went back to my dorm in college I had five problem sets staring me in the face. If you made college free then more people would use it, college is no different than anything else. How are you going to restrict the people who get the free tuition? Free tuition just means more people with no purpose wandering around college trying to figure out what to do with there lives. There is already a huge problem with fly by night colleges hoovering up government tuition assistance and providing no benefit. I learned alot in college but see no reason people who have never met me should have paid my college 25K per year for me to do so. Trades need training, not college. Work builds alot more responsibility than college, 26% of college students report skipping at least one class a week and the average student studies 17 hours a week. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-free-college-work-in-the-us/808614.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-free-college-work-in-the-us/808614.md?page=7)