Right now we have opportunity costs for having antiquated infrastructure, regressive health care funding, and backwards education.
In health care alone tens of thousands or avoidable of deaths per year due to for-profit insurance has to be a drag on the economy, aside from the human misery entailed in people putting off or denied medical care because they ‘can’t afford’ it.
Please cite this, because when I went to school, I didn’t see any of this. I had great scores and it cost a fortune*. Can you please explain how I could have used them to make college free/cheap, and where, and in which states, and what race or gender I needed to be, and how many of my score group would have gotten this deal?
Basically I think you’re woefully mistaken but maybe things have changed.
*I went to a subsidized public school and it cost $80,000.
You didn’t have scholarships when you went to school?
K9, I hate to make this a personal criticism, but have you ever applied to a scholarship? Are you aware that just meeting some academic requirement doesn’t mean you’re going to get it? That there’s only a small amount of that scholarship money. The vast majority of students with good grades and standardized test scores will not get a scholarship of any significance. (I got $1500 one year)
Also, a lot of scholarship money is earmarked in some way that leaves you ineligible for it. (you have to be under-represented, you have to want to do some oddball major or program that isn’t a good bet, you have to be an athlete…)
My daughter is in the acceptance letter phase of high school. She’s gotten scholarships from every school she applied to. None of them have come close to making college free or cheap - and she had a good GPA, excellent test scores, a bunch of AP tests at 4 and 5, and a fairly impressive leadership resume that includes camp counseling since middle school and tutoring homeless kids after school.
Now, she is applying to “par” schools - schools where the student body has similar test scores/grades and high school resumes. Its possible she would have gotten more money from schools looking to get their average test score/GPA up - but it wouldn’t be as good of a fit. And she is applying to private schools - but generally private schools have better funding for scholarships. And we aren’t looking for outside scholarships - its a lot of time for an uncertain outcome and we don’t need the money - in fact, we’ve been funding the high schools theatre scholarship for the past three years (its just two $500 scholarships, not a full ride anywhere - the theatre kids are going to miss us with her graduating). But I doubt we could get enough money to make things free.
Planning on funding your kid’s college through scholarships is not a good bet. Its like planning on funding medical care through a GoFundMe campaign.
And yet, for some reason, you do.
Yes, I have.
Harvard disagrees with you.
Did you not actually read the link? Here’s a larger expert.
And then there are grants that are based on financial need.
Uhh…K9b you said you didn’t finish college. Even if you did, you don’t know anything. Harvard is the elite of the elite of the elite. Yeah, they have great scholarship programs, for the tiny percentage of all college students who get in. Out of 370 million Americans, only a few hundred k will have ever attended Harvard.
For the *rest *of the population paying for school is tough. Also, even Harvard doesn’t give full rides to more than a tiny fraction of all students. The rest have the school chip in some, their family has to make an “expected family contribution” which can be unaffordable, and the rest has to be student loans.
Also I might note that between legacy admissions, admissions because you have connections, and the fact that test prep courses, impressive extracurriculars, and well written essays all are much easier if your family has lots of money, many Harvard students are wealthy and their families are paying the full tab.
Their annual cost is $63,000 a year. You what, wrote an essay and got a $1000 scholarship? Good luck.
So, first of all, the vast majority of high school students, even the top 1%, will not get into Harvard or any other school with an endowment that will cover all need. Harvard in fact, specifically does not give out merit scholarships - its all need based.
Two, federal GRANT money is extraordinarily limited. Most federal grants go to students whose families who make less than $20k a year - and the maximum award is less than $6k. Federal Grants - Scholarships.com
If you are fortunate enough to get into Harvard, you probably won’t need to worry too much about aid. But it has something like a 5% admittance rate. Even a 4.0 and a near perfect SAT score are not a guarantee of admission.
Another bit of perspective. We’re about to enter an era where it’s probably gonna be mostly jobs that require a degree, with robots taking most low skill positions. A high school diploma is worth very little in the job market.
If we agree on state funded education at all, why stop at high school? For those who disagree and think the money should go elsewhere, why should the state pay for high school?
It just feels extremely arbitrary to stop there. 50 years ago the skills you’d pick up from graduating high school (and I guess doing metal shop or the auto shop, etc) might be enough to get a decent job somewhere. Basic clerking tasks, basic math, cashier jobs, you could work in a factory. But things have changed.
From that link:
Not exactly in line with:
So, you can’t go to every and any college of choice. What you can do is go to community college as I did, and it was mostly paid for by scholarships and grants. I did have to pay a bit of tuition out of pocket, but the majority was covered. Books were extra, as obviously was room and board (I lived on my own), and so is not so easy. The fact that I had to wait until I was 25 so my parents were no longer part of my Fafsa applications sucked, but if they had actually been poor and not just assholes, then I would have gotten those grants at age 18. Had it played out that way, and I didn’t have to work 2 jobs to support myself along with all the homework assigned, I probably would have been able to complete my degree.
But I was originally responding your claim that they were full of shit (which you did change upon edit), that college can be cheap or free to those with good grades. This is true. If your counterpoint is that you cannot get into any and every college that you want to go to for cheap or free, that is true as well, but is not a response to the point made.
And, my point about harvard was that yes, if your grades are good enough, and your need great enough, you can in fact go to a good college for free. That was something that you were indicating you never saw at all, even to the point of originally saying that the poster was full of shit because it was something that was outside of your experience.
Not quite free. There was no tuition but of course the books and student body fee.
I think that almost free college would be a good idea.
Just enuf fees to make sure they take it seriously, without getting into massive student loan debt.
I absolutely agree that college education should be considered a part of our public education system like elementary, secondary and high school are.
We can certainly have private institutions, but there should be a way for everyone to get at least a 2 year associate’s degree.
You do need to get good marks and high scores in order to get into Harvard.
Yes, you can get into a community colleges for pretty damn cheap. Some work plying the grants and scholarships, and pretty much free. Sure. And, this is actually a great idea, and should be a requirement if you cant afford college- you cant take out student loans until you have finished two years of community college, and any scholarships outside of what you need to CC will wait for you.
But no, you can’t “go to a good college for free,” not in general. Maybe a very tiny % can, but it is not a solution for the vast majority.
Harvard is not a good example for common practice by most colleges, for several reasons, among them:
The number of universities that meet these criteria can be counted on one hand. Using Harvard as a model for the state of college education is an egrigious mistake, and one that frankly you should acknowledge.
For the vast majority of students, even those with good grades, college will not be free. Cheap will depend on the circumstances of the kid - is $20k a year cheap? Is $50k a year cheap?
Here in Minnesota if you live near enough to a Minnesota State school, in state tuition is only about $8k a year. And they are pretty open enrollment. So if you don’t need to pay for room and board, you could get a four year degree for $35k (its a little more than $8k and you’ll need books). Which is pretty cheap to me, but may not be when your household income is $52k a year - too high for Pell Grant. And your degree is from a Minnesota State school. My degree is from a Minnesota State school, it isn’t exactly a huge selling point on my resume. Its a college degree, it isn’t a respected one. By the way, this is interesting (from looking at the Minnesota chart, its averaging - the University of Minnesota system is much more expensive than the Minnesota State system) Trends in Higher Education – College Board Research
Beckdawrek’s point was that if you have good test scores and good grades, college is free or cheap. There is no evidence to support that this is true. There is evidence that if you have good test scores and good grades, for a few students college is cheap or free. Within the context of this conversation, free college has a broader meaning than “a few students who are both talented and lucky will get free college” - the current status.
The idea is to start with high school to better prepare kids for college. Meanwhile, phase in free CC, then state universities, then a high percentage of state-paid grants to private universities. It does nobody any good for students to start college for free and fail out because of piss-poor previous education.
About 2000 students will join Harvard’s Freshman class. There are far more than 2000 students with good marks and high scores in the U.S. alone - and as one of the premier Universities in the world, Harvard admits about 20% of its student body as international. A number of other spots are legacies, people with important connections, and Jared Kutchner (apparently his marks and test scores weren’t great shakes, his father’s contribution to Harvard however was). There are about 36,000 high schools in the U.S. alone, and about 15,000 national merit scholarship finalists (people with really high SAT scores).
Good marks and high scores are neither necessary nor sufficient.
I am not talking about Harvard. But, The lil’wrekker got 3 offers for full rides and 3 partial scholarship offers. We compared and visited and got it down to 2 schools, we decided on the school closer to home. She wasn’t the Top student in her highschool, she was in the upper third. She tests really well. Her ACT scores were very high, so that put her on some lists. She’s has no sports skills. She is minoring in theatre and music, so theres is actually money for a good resume. She is working on that. She would like be a full theatre/music major. But for now it’s English/lit. That’s the only cite I can provide. You will have to take my word on it or not.
I have taken courses at a local community college. I will say you’re correct, those are much cheaper. The problem is the degrees that you need to be competitive in this modern world - engineering, computer science, even accounting - aren’t typically offered by a community college. The ‘big time’ degrees are usually offered only at 4 year universities. The other issue is that employers for these type of jobs would rather hire someone from India with a Master’s degree instead of your 2 or 4-year degree from a Community college.
I am sorry your parents were assholes. I had the same ones. They refused to give the financial information needed to even fill out the form, as if somehow ‘the government’ was gonna screw them if it knew. This is one of the reasons I am somewhat in favor of socialism, I think our social structure where each of our individual successes is about 80% due to the actions of our parents is deeply flawed.
I joined the military, that was a way around that rule, btw.