Would "free college" work in the US?

Great Debates
61

So I see two questions in the OP. How does this work elsewhere, and how do we think it’d work in the US?

For the first one: I am from Norway. The government here has set up, and had certified a number of universities. Tuition is free. For most degrees, you only need to pass high school to qualify. You take classes at your own pace, and can work next to your studies. Most people take up student loans though, because while tuition is free, living while you study isn’t.

Some classes are very popular, and some only admit a limited number of students each year. Admission to these classes are competitive based on grades. It has always struck me that this system is more American in its pure competitiveness than the actual system in America. You can also get fractional bonus points from things like relevant work experience.

These degrees tend to be vocational degrees leading to in-demand jobs. Medicine, law, engineering and finance. Medicine tends to be the most heavily competitive. I believe it is very rare for a student to enter the 6-year medical study straight out of High School, it is so heavily subscribed an A+ average does not always get you there. Most physicians in Norway have several years of other healthcare jobs before they can enter the study.

You can also attend certified universities outside of Norway. The student loan scheme is very generous for people who do. We are such a small country, we need to take steps not to get insular. Financial advisors, in fact recommend paying off your student debts last, if you can. All other debts are more expensive.

I am not sure how this would work in the US though. Our setup means that a degree isn’t the ticket to a good life in the same way as in the US. You get good healthcare regardless, you don’t need a college fund for the kids, etc. You can work as a cashier all your life without it being a disaster. And if you are the sort who likes working with your hands, university may just be wasted years compared to an apprenticeship and career as a plumber, carpenter, mechanic etc. About 20 % of each year go to Uni.

I think the numbers would be much higher in the US because a degree is so much more necessary.

On the other hand, I always thought that universities spend so much money on sports in the US as a PR thing, to attract more students. Our universities are not that concerned with sports. And I think that saves big money compared to the US.

62

There is a lot here already to digest.

Overall, I’m not a fan of free college for a couple of reasons.

First, when I went to school, by the time I was a senior, I bet I could guess with 90%+ certainty who was working their way through college, and who had mom and dad paying for school. From my experience, if you don’t have some skin in the game, you’ll just have bunch of kids going though the motions.

Second, I think the big failure in our school system is that our high schools graduate kids who can’t even read, or do many of the basics. If that doesn’t get fixed sending these same people to college, and lowering the standards there isn’t going to help.

In my hometown, there is a community college that has an annual tuition, with room and board for $15K, with the average student getting $4k in grants or scholarships. While I understand $11K isn’t nothing, it’s not the end of the world either.

College is an investment, IMHO just like the stock market or any other investment. If you think that your art history degree from Yale isn’t worth $260,000 when you go to look for a job, perhaps you shouldn’t go there. Everyone doesn’t have a God given right to go to some way cool, pretty college campus for $50K a year for social work.

Lastly, as others have pointed out, there is an opportunity cost. With enormous budget deficits on the national, and to some degree state level, is this where we want to spend our tax dollars?

63

Its not been my impression that this happens here or elsewhere, where tuition is free. This is a fairly well established setup in many nations.

Free tuition does not mean everyone can go to college. Grades-based competitive admission generally ensure that the people who go to college are the best set up for it.

While the student loans are very generous, the bottom line is… well in the black. The government does make a profit off them. The alternative would be a lot of the same people swelling the unemployment ranks and drawing benefits instead.

64

yes, it is because it IS an investment and just as much so for the country as a whole as for the individual.

as for the OP’s question it has already worked in this country, many times. the GI bill is a big example.

back in the 70s my brother when to a “votech” (vocational technical college) for free and it was a great start to his career. he is now retired but he paid a lot in taxes over the years.

it is a very good investment for all

65

We’ll many nations aren’t the U.S. I’m not sure that’s a good comparison at all. Hell, there are a lot of people in college now who don’t see all that committed. As for the G.I. Bill, that was a vastly different group of people, with a completely different life experience, level of age and maturity. The people that the G. I. Bill funded I’d argue are largely going to college now.

Goodness no.

How is the government going to make a profit off a free college education for all? Why do we think that all good ideas are free? There is clearly a cost of this - a big one. Someone has to pay for this, and it’s either going to be more taxes or something else not getting done, especially if it becomes a state funded issue. And I fail to believe that the only two choices are a free college degree or welfare.

66

It depends on how you do it. It is certainly possible to lose money on it. Maybe profiting from it is pretty hard, at lest short term.

But student loans, do make a profit over many, many years. I am not sure if that profit is greater than the cost of running the Universities. I think it is quite possible that it is. There are far more people with student loans than people in university at any time after all. We have certainly reaped enormous profits from extending maternity and paternity leave to a year.

If we introduced tuition fees, college attendance would plummet, and a percentage of those people would end up on benefits. That would be an additional double whammy, because they’d go from assets to liabilities.

67

I looked up some of the figures. As far as I can see, they do not in total make a profit. The interest from the student loans can be said to offset some of the costs of higher education, but most of them go to bursaries etc.

68

Thank you, Grin Render, for sharing. Do you have a sense of cost? I’m not sure what the denominator should be – maybe per class or full-time-equivalent to account for part time students. That’s overall cost, since obviously the students aren’t charged.

It sounds like room and board are on your own? Any other fees? Text books?

Sorry about the slew of questions but I and many others have only experienced schools here in the US.

69

Total cost of higher education is about 37 billion Nkr. That is for a population of 5 million and should be adjusted for cost of living. About 20 % of each cohort gets a degree. Total outstanding student loans is about 164 billion, interest income is about 2,5 billion. About 1,7 billion is paid out as bursaries at the moment. It should be noted that the interest rate is exceptionally low at the moment and at a 10 year average I think the income would be closer to 6-8 billion.

There are sponsored student rooms for international students, first-years etc, but most people have their own living arrangements, normally with other students. The bursaries have not been adjusted for many years and I do not think it is possible to live on them alone if you also have to cover rent. You can live at home, take a loan, or work besides your studies. that is common too, since you set your own pace.

Text books are not free and can be quite expensive, although they often get sold on to the next lot of students. there is a registration charge of about 100 $, that is about the closest we get to tuitions fees. It was introduced because people would sign up just for the student card for the discounts.

70

First, I want to let you know of one college model, the College of the Ozarks in Branson Missouri, which is free. BUT, the cost is the students work at various jobs on campus and at campus businesses. So that is a possible model of how a college could be free.

Second, lets say free college becomes a reality, what about all the people who are paying off college loans, would they get a refund?

Third, what about all the scholarships out there? if college was free, where would they go?

Finally, I just dont see the logistics of how such a “free” college would be run. Would a college get say “x” amount of money and then run the college they want? Would all the students just send the check to the government and they cover for whatever or just a certain amount of the cost? Also just what costs would be covered. Tuition yes, but what about housing? books? food?

71

Especially with the meritocracy way of looking at it.

Only kids with good grades - you know the ones most likely to go to a four year school. More likely to be middle class or better and more likely to be white.

We need plumbers. We need machinists and electricians and welders and heavy equipment operators and lab technicians and EMTs and dental hygenist and two year bookkeepers. Trade school tuition is often cheaper, more accessible and takes less time than a four year degree, and adds immediate value.

We’d probably be better off changing the paradigm for what sort of education jobs require. Yeah, 4 year engineers and computer scientists are great - and I want my doctor and my vet to have spent a lot of time in school, and I want my kids’ teachers to be well rounded, but you can learn a lot with a two year degree - assuming that your high school courses were rigorous enough, to make you a good entry level programmer, a decent bookkeeper or entry level accountant, a project manager or business analyst. You really don’t NEED a four year degree for a lot of jobs, its just become a checkbox.

I love and value my liberal arts education with multiple classes in History and Art History - as well as Economics, Political Science, Law, Accounting, Biology. I value being well rounded, and as my daughter goes off to college next year - at a liberal arts school - I’m telling her that she will never again have the opportunity to experience an intellectual life like you can at college. But its a luxury to take a class on Medieval Asian History. And yes, we need thinkers, and a class on Medieval Asian History will help create thinkers. But we probably don’t need as many thinkers as we need doers.

And community college with the intent to transfer kind of gets this backwards - get your generals done at the community college and then, if you get that far (most community college students - even those with intent - don’t), specialize when you get to the four year institution. We’d be better off as a society if we hit those generals hard in high school, spent two years learning to do something in community college that gave you an employable skill set. And in two years, you probably can’t learn to be an full fledged electrical engineer, but you can get enough practical knowledge behind you to get a job

72

But is that investment going to pay off more than say - universal health care or improvements to infrastructure or combating climate change or funding the CDC to combat the coming Zombie Plague?

I believe its a good investment, I just don’t believe its the best investment. And I certainly don’t believe its a good investment for the kid in poverty in a bad school who has a slim chance of ever graduating from high school.

73

This just sounds like another form of welfare. Not everyone is destined to go to college. There are other ways to get a good job besides a hand out. If we want college to be more affordable to more people we need to remove some of the electives and required classes in music and sociology that all students take to pad the bill.

74

Which is going to be very hard to get given the stronganti-intellectualism on the right.

Which is further reinforced by electoral considerations.

Ignorance has been working very well for them, why would they want to fight it.

75

Wait, the government is a profit-making enterprise? Is this the New Normal?

76

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%?

77

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. 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.

78

In college I remember taking Art History, History of Photography, Social Dance, and Philosophy of Religion plus a couple other I cant remember.

But to be honest, most were taught by grad students and I could have gotten the same information using an online class. There was little back and forth or discussion and some involved alot of memorization like of famous painters or pictures.

Well except for Social Dance. I learned how to waltz, foxtrot, and other dances which I have used.

But other classes might have 200 or more students and we watched alot of videos so frankly they were not so deep.

Co were they really so important? Couldnt the students have gotten the information from just a ook or today - an online course?

Granted the social dance class was great because I got to dance with alot of girls!

79

Count me in the “not everyone needs to go to college” group.

I didn’t. I went to programming school for a certificate. Sure, there were companies I couldn’t get a job at because they wouldn’t hire people without a 4 year degree. But the fact they’d hire people with teaching degrees or fine arts degrees as programmers pretty much gave away that no part of that degree requirement was about having a proper education for the role.

We do in fact need more people with technical skills and in the trades. They don’t need a four year degree to do this. Free trade schools would benefit our society more.

And I don’t know about giving people a free degree in 14th Century French Literature just because they want to go to college but don’t know what they want to be when they grow up. That doesn’t seem to add any value to our society, unless their is some legitimate ‘14th Century French Literature’ industry that I am currently unaware of.

80

So, everyone with high marks and scores, along with a demonstrated financial need can get into Harvard?:dubious: Wouldnt that make the Frosh class a teeny bit more than 4000? Like say, 1000 times that?