So frustrated with the Democrats
Smedley said:
I also think "free college" would have an unintended consequence of devaluing a college degree. If everyone and their brother and sister has a BA or BS, what is the value of that degree? There's not exactly a scarcity value in college degrees now, but it does still mean something in the job market, I think.
That's like saying if everyone has a High School diploma, what is the value?
In this day and age, our technological society, a college degree is needed just as a High School diploma was with previous generations.
The exception would be a trade such as licensed plumber or electrician but even then courses beyond high school are required to get that license.
there's nothing wrong with people going to college simply to be educated. College is not trade school, so it's not meant to put a person on a track toward a specific occupation.
Of course, I suspect a lot of people don't particularly want a better educated population. Too many people who understand how to think critically probably isn't a good thing for the people in power who are peddling BS that wouldn't stand up to critical examination.
I should have asked what is the value of that degree in the job market. Yes a degree has a value on its own, accomplishment, learning etc. But in the job market there is a value to a college degree that would be diminished if there was free college for all, and I don't think that's a good thing.
Question for advocates of free college: should grad school (law, business, medical etc) be free as well? If not, why not?
It's just amazing what a good job that conservatives have done in making so many people believe that America can't have nice things.
Smedley said:
ridski said:True. But I'd argue that the benefit of cranking out a whole bunch more liberal arts grads who squeak by with 2.0-2.5 GPAs doesn't justify the cost.
Um... as someone who went to college for free, you still have to pass that basket-weaving course, or you end up having to pay back your tuition.
I also think "free college" would have an unintended consequence of devaluing a college degree. If everyone and their brother and sister has a BA or BS, what is the value of that degree? There's not exactly a scarcity value in college degrees now, but it does still mean something in the job market, I think.
Ultimately I just think age 18 is a good time to start making your way in the world. If someone from an underprivileged background really wants to go to college, they'll find a way to do it.
Good questions. From 1962 to 1998, it was possible for a UK student to receive a grant which paid full tuition and offered money towards living expenses and accommodation. Obviously, not everybody wanted to go in higher ed, nor did everyone qualify to get in. But the grants were in place for those who qualified to get one.
Since 1998, that system has been replaced by a similar system of student loans (actually they existed before that, when I was at college, I existed on a combo of grant and student loan) to that of the US. Knowing that, do you think that a degree from, say Magdalen College, Oxford, or University of Manchester or even University of St. Andrews (where Prince William attended) is worth more now you have to borrow money to attend the college than it was when your tuition was paid for by the state?
We can and should figure out how to make college affordable as well as trade schools.
However what I really think would help most in so have universal health care for all. And as mentioned numerous times, we spend way too much on the military budget, we can figure out how to make health insurance affordable for all.
Smedley said:
I should have asked what is the value of that degree in the job market. Yes a degree has a value on its own, accomplishment, learning etc. But in the job market there is a value to a college degree that would be diminished if there was free college for all, and I don't think that's a good thing.
Question for advocates of free college: should grad school (law, business, medical etc) be free as well? If not, why not?
Med school should be free.
Grad school is already free in many academic disciplines at state universities. I went to grad school at Rutgers tuition free, and I received an annual stipend as a teaching assistant. Most of the other students I attended with were also receiving tuition remission.
I don't understand the notion that if college is free or affordable that everyone will attend. People will still have to apply and be qualified. All these proposals are going to do is remove the crushing debt that millions of students incur, as well as allow people who now drop out or don't apply for financial reasons to go to college in the first place.
mikescott said:
We can and should figure out how to make college affordable as well as trade schools.
However what I really think would help most in so have universal health care for all. And as mentioned numerous times, we spend way too much on the military budget, we can figure out how to make health insurance affordable for all.
as a country we're really pretty dumb about this topic. Everyone with employer-provided health insurance is paying the equivalent of a tax, and so is the employer. If we instituted a payroll tax on employees and employers to pay for universal health insurance we could all stop paying private insurance premiums. For most people it would be a wash, and for lower income people, it would probably leave them with more money in their pockets.
It's really a no-brainer, and we still can't do it, because as a society we hate taxes more than we like smart solutions.
One radical thought. Drastically revamp curriculum. Less basket weaving might give us a job ready student in 3 years as opposed to 4. I've posted before that to fulfill my master's credits the curriculum was littered with filler.
The eventual goal would be to make a high school diploma geared to specific college training and make a bachelor's have the impact of a masters.
That gets the student in the market earlier, shaves off a year of tuition, and gets the student out of their parents home a bit earlier.
Most teachers have to write some curriculum and many would love to make it more intensive.
Too bold?
as a side note, I wish someone would calculate the % of our property taxes that go to pay health insurance premiums for municipal and school employees. If we add up our own personal health insurance premiums, deductibles, employer contributions and the proportion of our state and local taxes that go to health insurance, I would find it hard to believe it isn't more than we'd pay in a health insurance payroll tax.
Smedley said: If someone from an underprivileged background really wants to go to college, they'll find a way to do it.
I know personally of too many counterexamples to accept this as true.
ml1 said:
as a side note, I wish someone would calculate the % of our property taxes that go to pay health insurance premiums for municipal and school employees. If we add up our own personal health insurance premiums, deductibles, employer contributions and the proportion of our state and local taxes that go to health insurance, I would find it hard to believe it isn't more than we'd pay in a health insurance payroll tax.
This has been done and was a topic when Obamacare was first being rolled out. I don't remember the numbers but you are correct that it would not be more. And there are a lot of people out there who are stuck in a job they hate because of the benefits.
One of the top reasons for foreclosures and people filing for bankruptcy are related to those who are under or uninsured.
weirdbeard said:
nan said:One thing to keep in mind when comparing other nations' more subsidized college education is that many of those countries tend to track strictly their students' educational levels, sometimes at a pretty young age, so the free college is limited to those who were placed on the college path several years prior. Here in the U.S. we have the more egalitarian view that "everyone should go to college", which one can debate and discuss at length. I'd be curious to compare what percentage of the population in such countries attend the subsidized colleges against the percentage of kids in the U.S. who attend U.S. colleges.
There is PLENTY of money for free college. We are the richest country in the world. Other, much poorer nations provide free college.
Don't get me wrong -- I'm all for more state support for college education. But if the trade-off is more tracking and limiting admissions, not so much. Comparing us to other developed countries in this respect may not be a good apples-to-apples comparison.
I was just going to post this!! Kids are tracked EARLY into trades or college. Not everyone gets to do what they want. We live in a country where everyone thinks their children should have every opportunity, regardless of ability or effort expended, and that does NOT happen in places like Germany, where you not only don't have to pay for school, they also give you $$ to live on while you're a student. We can and should move toward the models of countries more successful than we are in terms of college, healthcare, wages, penal system, child care, and education, but lying to people about what is possible without a years long, almost complete sea change in our political landscape, demonizing those who are honest about the struggle, is no different than Trump saying he will bring back coal.
it's a struggle because of decades of propaganda. People in this country have been convinced that there isn't enough money in our country, and they have been convinced that the countries of Europe are terrible places to live. The majority have also been brought up to believe that taxes are evil, to the extent that some people call it "theft" unironically.
That should be differentiated from the fact that given the political will, the economics of doing universal health coverage and affordable college should be relatively simple and easy in a country as wealthy as ours.
weirdbeard said:
Smedley said: If someone from an underprivileged background really wants to go to college, they'll find a way to do it.I know personally of too many counterexamples to accept this as true.
Of course it's not true. That notion buys into the idea that poor people are poor by choice or by lack of effort. All they need to do is try harder!!
Have any of you saying we can't afford free college had a look at the military budget lately? No other country spends that much. We have 900 military bases all over the world. Free college for everyone even if they were C students wanting to major in basket weaving would be a small fraction of that. What happened to the anti-war movement? Democrats used to be anti-war. Time to get back with the program.
I don't think anyone has said we can't afford free college. A couple of people have mentioned that things aren't free if we have to pay for them through taxes, but that's just them being technical. Others are saying that Americans have been programmed against using taxes to make college more affordable, and one guy seems to think that affordability means instant degrees in useless subjects.
I believe government's mandate should include providing affordable health care for all citizens.
I also believe in the current educational system of free public school for ~13 years.
I don't believe government should provide free college. In my mind that goes too far. As Ted Knight famously said in Caddyshack, the world needs ditch diggers too. (Lol Im not that heartless but that was a great line.)
For advocates of free college, where do you stop? If grad school is on the house too, we may as well take it a step further and guarantee $50k/yr government jobs for all free college graduates. Or maybe $75k. Right?
Smedley said:
I believe government's mandate should include providing affordable health care for all citizens.
I also believe in the current educational system of free public school for ~13 years.
Why?
ml1 said:
I went to grad school free at Rutgers. And got paid an annual stipend.
At the University I'm currently working at, 92% of their Grad students qualify for some kind of scholarship or financial aid.
Maybe they should have been trained to dig ditches.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_City_College_of_New_York_alumni
If you don't want to read all the names here are just a few people who went to College for free (or rather on the taxpayers' dime - but the taxpayers got their moneys worth)
Nobel laureates[edit]
- Julius Axelrod 1933 – Nobel laureate in Medicine, 1970
- Kenneth Arrow 1940 – Nobel laureate in Economics, 1972
- Herbert Hauptman 1937 – Nobel laureate in Chemistry, 1985
- Robert Hofstadter 1935 – Nobel laureate in Physics, 1961
- Jerome Karle 1937 – Nobel laureate in Chemistry, 1985
- Arthur Kornberg 1937 – Nobel laureate in Medicine, 1959
- Leon M. Lederman 1943 – Nobel laureate in Physics, 1988
- Arno Penzias 1954 – Nobel laureate in Physics, 1978
- Robert J. Aumann 1950 – Nobel laureate in Economics, 2005
- John O'Keefe, 1963 – Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine, 2014
LOST said:
Maybe they should have been trained to dig ditches.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_City_College_of_New_York_alumni
bunch of takers
drummerboy said:
It's just amazing what a good job that conservatives have done in making so many people believe that America can't have nice things.
American exceptionalism
ridski said:
Smedley said:Why?
I believe government's mandate should include providing affordable health care for all citizens.
I also believe in the current educational system of free public school for ~13 years.
I believe government’s role is to provide basic services for its citizens. Police, fire, primary and secondary education, health. Things like that.
Higher education is not a basic service in my opinion.
I’m still waiting for what any of the free-college advocates are *not* in favor of government providing, if anything. Grad school? Guaranteed jobs?
government did provide me with grad school, so I'd have to be kind of a dick to say other people shouldn't benefit from the same thing.
Make work jobs are probably not a good idea. There are good arguments to be made for universal minimum income however. When the robots come to take all of our jobs, there is going to need to be a fallback.
ml1 said:
government did provide me with grad school, so I'd have to be kind of a dick to say other people shouldn't benefit from the same thing.
I got a fair amount of government financial aid, ie grants and loans, both merit- and need-based, for my undergrad. The same broad framework still exists https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/types, as it should, and I certainly don’t begrudge anyone who benefits from this system, in fact I’m happy to see it.
What’s not the same thing is Sanders/Warren proposal to make college free.
I don’t think benefiting from and supporting the former but opposing the latter makes me kind of a dick.
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True. But I'd argue that the benefit of cranking out a whole bunch more liberal arts grads who squeak by with 2.0-2.5 GPAs doesn't justify the cost.
I also think "free college" would have an unintended consequence of devaluing a college degree. If everyone and their brother and sister has a BA or BS, what is the value of that degree? There's not exactly a scarcity value in college degrees now, but it does still mean something in the job market, I think.
Ultimately I just think age 18 is a good time to start making your way in the world. If someone from an underprivileged background really wants to go to college, they'll find a way to do it.