Not sure if this was ever brought up before, but... Would having the government pay for free college education be such a bad thing? (note: this doesn't just hand any student college admission, just those who meet the educational requirements needed to be accepted to a college-level curriculum)
I'm sure it has been brought up before. I say: Bad Idea. If the government is going to pay for your college tuition; colleges will have no reason to be frugal or give a good deal (there's already enough of this happening because of all the scholarships as it is). I also think it would give the government too much power, as they may, for example, decide not to let you attend a private school.
It would be a bad idea for a lot of reasons. First of all, it floods the college graduate markets. If college is free, that means we're going to be making a lot more graduates, and the value of a degree is much less. As it stands now, you don't have to go any farther than the local starbucks to figure out how that ends up -- college is now not good enough to get you a good job. That will be much worse if everybody has a degree. You're fires will be made by a man with a degree in English, and your groceries rung up by someone with a degree in economics. Which also means that YOUR degree is worthless. You might as well tell your potential boss about your Pokemon collection, because it doesn't send a positive signal as it did in 1960. In 1960, college was rare, so when your boss saw BS from University of Wherever, he sat up and took notice. Today, the exact same line gets a different reaction -- a shrug. Now, really to get the same "wow" effect for a diploma, you need at least an MS, and even then, MBAs are so plentiful that they no longer stand out. Second, it dumbs down the education you get at university. If everyone can go, absent a "brand-name protection" need to be restrictive, there's no reason to bar a kid from college. It's essentially free money to stick an unqualified student in a classroom, and if you can "graduate" him, then you get 4 years of cash from this warm body. But, since you cannot do so honestly, as in requiring college level thinking, writing, and mathematical ability from most of these marginal students (many of whom could not have graduated from high school in 1950), you do what you have to do, which is lower the standards so that the remedial student can "earn" his diploma. The result is McDiplomas,much like McDojos, where you teach the student only enough to pass tests, because what you're selling is not "skill" or education, but diplomas, credentials, and the like. And for all the crying about the "liberal arts" education at the university, that's essentially what is happening via cheap student loans. The idea is already fairly common, most students know the scam, they know that they're not purchasing an education, but a diploma, and thus they never do any work beyond the minimum required to pass. If you don't believe me, go to a Frat house and than a library in the evening on any campus in the country. The frathouse will be full brim to brim with college students, the library will be empty. The only places that don't do this are pretty much the Name Brand Colleges -- Harvard, MIT, Yale, and the like -- who's "brand" is elite college. In those colleges, you earn your way in and you earn your degree. As mentioned by someone else, it's actually going to cause more inflation. If everybody needs it, and cost is no object (because we're paying for it rather than the student), there's no cost control. That's what we did with Health Care -- people went for the most expensive care, sought more care, and so on -- because they were sticking their boss with the bill. Suddenly, every sniffle required a doctor's exam, and people stopped price shopping. If college goes the same way, there's no reason to price shop a college, and thus colleges can charge anything they want -- because no one's going to turn down a college because it costs too much, so no reason to economize. The other problem is that because marginal students are going to college and cannot compete at college level for college level jobs, they're going to wind up with the worst of all worlds. They've been groomed to think that college is the ticket to middle class, except that for those students, it's not. They aren't going to outcompete their intellectual betters for those jobs, but since they never learned a skilled trade, they don't have anything to fall back on. At the same time, a lot of businesses don't want "overqualified" people because they think they'll leave when something better turns up. Now these kids are in big trouble. They aren't going to get a college job, they can't get a trade job without more training, but they also cannot get an unskilled job for being overqualified. Now what do they do?
an idea that's well overdue...Denmark has free tuition...it levels wealth disparity coming from a lower income family is no longer a disadvantage, students are rewarded for their ability and not on how much wealth mom and dad have... - - - Updated - - - pretty much worthless...
college entry would be based on ability not income, basing it income makes class mobility a distant dream, only the rich will have university education and middle and lower class will fall ever further behind the 1%...unemployed graduates are not the result of overproduction of graduates but globalization...graduates from 1st world countries are competing for the same job market as 3rd world graduates, so where does the corporate world source out their work? hmmm lst world graduates wages vs 3rd world graduates wages wow that's a tough decision
well there is no way to verify the person person getting credit for for doing the work is the same person who is actually doing the work...the reputation and credibility of these online degrees and the schools that award them is generally very, very low...
They do something similar in France. The problem then becomes who gets in and where, and if the government pays favorites but then again I wouldn't mind that. It would take a load off of my mind and it would mean I wouldn't have outstanding debts to pay and can then start paying for other things as well.
LOL. Doesn't sound a whole lot different than most college now. Something needs to change in higher education (or needs to stop and reverse), but as far as I can see the situation you describe is already here.
There are still loans and scholarships. The difference is what you'd call "reality testing". In other words, a student in a "free college" system would never question whether he's college material, nor would colleges question the same thing. He'd have to EARN his way in. He'd have to earn scholarships, or at minimum look for them, and colleges would have to count the cost of giving him a seat VS a better student. It might mean that some choose not to go, but the vast majority of students who cannot get a scholarship cannot do so because they're not good students. A truely great student can get a full ride, a marginal student cannot. It also means that since most students will be carrying some of the cost (perhaps not all of it, but some) he's going to be a lot more careful about his education. He's got one chance to make it, and he isn't going to make choices like major lightly (in fact, I think the glut of liberal arts majors is proof that college is too easy to pay for), he's not going to blow off studying to drape sheets around his fat ass for the frat party. Ideally, college should cost enough that none of it is a casual decision, so that when a kid sits down to decide what he wants to be when he grows up, he's going to consider his own abilities realistically, he's going to know the job market well enough that he's going to know the odds that a degree in X results in a job. In short, it's an investment, and as such you should study it as an investment. Giving someone other people's money to invest doesn't make them a good investor, they have nothing at stake. Giving someone a free education also doesn't make them a good student. I do think we have a relative glut of graduates. If not, why is it that so many low level jobs are being taken by college graduates? No one is going to college to become a barista or a shelf stocker at costco. They do those jobs because there are more graduates with degrees than jobs for graduates. When you have thousands of graduates right now who cannot find college level employment, there's a problem. Unfortunately we're talking about doubling down on college, which means even more college grads (many of them marginal students who wouldn't have gone a generation ago) competing with the grads we already have who cannot find careers. That's not going to work, because the "solution" is contributing to the problem -- the problem is that college degrees are common enough that having one signals nothing more than literacy.
It would be way too expensive unless the government owned the colleges and operated them with some sense of economic efficiency, doing away with all the bells and whistles that drive up tuition costs to the point that the cost of the other stuff accounts for more of tuition than the cost of instruction. University would need to be more comparable to community colleges with no dorms, pools, stadiums, high budget clubs and organizations, etc. I would support such a system. I would be okay if all community colleges became Bachelor awarding institutions and those were free to all and then if you wanted to go elsewhere you had to pay with no federal financial help of any type in the form of grants, loans, or scholarships.
Ultimately it is about what society you want to live in, in most of Europe we chose to pay and live among educated people you decide to live among the ignorant.
Depends how far down the list the skin color "requirement" falls. There are cities around the country that offer free college. Just live there. Or meet the present requirements and earn a scholarship.
Nobody forces you to pay taxes... You can join a monastery, renounce worldly goods, take a vow of poverty and bingo! you beat the system. But if you want to avail yourself of the privilege of participating in the economy, and gaining rewards, please pay your taxes, or we'll have to imprison you...where you'll get free room and board courtesy of the taxpayers...
every state should have a state college system that is free for the residents of that state..and non residents pay the tuition price..if they did this instead of healthcare then people would be able to get jobs that pay enough to afford healthcare..education and job training is the answer not government handouts
College can be free. Do excellent in school and get a free ride or almost free ride by outperforming those around you. Plenty out there. Or, excel in a sport and get a scholarship that way. If you're lucky enough to be a minority you've probably quadrupled the number of scholarships you're eligible for. If you're a minority and a female multiply that out even further. And if you're really poor, a minority, a female, and smart, you've almost got a free ride waiting for you when you become a senior in H.S. The sad part is, it should be the males that colleges should be going for now, since we're outnumbered as it is....funny how that goes. And lets be honest, if you think EVERYONE deserves to go to college, you're crazy. Many going now don't even deserve it.
