When I was an undergrad at Oberlin, the dining hall dishwashing/server jobs were considered the least desirable for native-born/naturalized citizen American students who had work study.
Those students were prioritized for the better subsidized work-study jobs such as working in the computer labs, answering phones for senior admins/departments, etc.
Vast majority of students serving/washing dishes in the dining hall when I attended tended to be international students who weren’t eligible for work-study or FA due to their non-citizen status.
Vast majority of those tended to be Mainland students who were under greater financial constraints due to not only having to show capability of being full-pay…but also meeting higher admission requirements compared with native-born/naturalized citizen students. However, since most Mainland students of this era grew up and attended college before or at the very start of the Mainland Chinese economic boom, working the dishwashing/server jobs in the dining hall wasn’t a dramatic change from what they were used to back home from what I gathered from them.
After the Asian Economic Crisis of the late '90s, the Mainland Chinese students were joined by South Korean students whose family’s economic problems weren’t dire to the point of calling them back to South Korea to finish their educations*. With them, the changeover was much more dramatic as most came from families which had much higher SES/finances than the families of Mainland students during this period.
The very lucky ones compared with many more S Korean students who were forced to go home because the crisis pulled the financial rug out from their formerly well-to-do families.
I actually thought this was a joke when read the title. My D is take one three credit class this semester ACC and it cost over $1300 this does not include the required book, study guide and work or the required parking pass. That’s no where near “almost free” Tuition at CC varies from area to area.
“As an aside, nearly 1/3 of the graduating seniors in Oregon this year have applied to the new “free” community college option.”
This is the KEY!!
If you want to change things in higher ed, you have to make two years of CC absolutely free to everyone. Exactly in the same way that four years of HS is completely free. If you make two years of CC completely free, it will become acceptable and then very quickly standard for middle class families to use the CC option. Free is pretty much irresistible. That’s why 95% of HS students go to completely free public HSs, even though many middle class families can afford a private HS option.
Under the current “nearly free but only if you are poor” system, middle class families shun the very inexpensive CC alternative as embarassing, yucky and down market. Something that only poor kids do. Once the free CC option becomes the acceptable middle class option, the whole over-expensive 4 year college system is dealt the death blow it so richly deserves.
Grades 13 and 14 get delivered to more students at much lower cost. The two-year CC experience gets massively upgraded by the influx of all those middle class students. Then kids go on to two years of university (or not) but at much lower cost. Since the two years of free CC destroys the current monopoly that the diluted and over-priced 4 year residential university degree has as the gateway to a decent middle class or better life.
Since the current cost of CC is already pretty low, making it truly free wouldn’t really cost all that much. It would easily be paid for by the money no longer flowing to the 4 year residential colleges. Who would have to dramatically cut back on glossy marketing brochures, administrators and lazy rivers.
Two years of completely free CC is a massively better idea than Bernie’s cost exploding idea of free 4 year college.
The embarrassing, yucky, and downmarket aspect isn’t solely due to low-tuition from what I’ve observed during my HS years and after.
It’s also due to the fact CCs in my area have a high number of remedial students and do not offer advanced courses which many above-average/genuine genius type academic achievers need as the next stage on their personal educational ladder. Incidentally, before the late '90s when admissions and academic standards were raised substantially and attempts to move all remedial instruction to the CCs initiated, this very issue also affected the local public 4-year colleges which are part of the very same public university system those CCs are a part.
One illustration of this was if students at my public magnet or students in similar situations exhausted all their advanced course offerings…especially in STEM in the public magnet, the only institutions which offer DE courses sufficiently advanced enough for them are the 4-year universities as they’d be at the level of taking intermediate/senior-level undergrad or even grad level courses for majors.
Courses which none of the local CCs I know of offer as their main focus tends to be on the remedial and academically average students.
Incidentally, before the late '90s when admissions and academic standards were raised substantially and attempts to move all remedial instruction to the CCs initiated, this very issue also affected the local public 4-year colleges which are part of the very same public university system those CCs are a part.
A few HS classmates who ended up at those 4-year colleges due to abysmal HS GPAs and/or parents who felt “all colleges were the same”* were miserable after finding themselves able to get A grades without learning anything or cracking open the textbook in REGULAR COLLEGE COURSES because the material was covered in their HS education while the majority of their college classmates were struggling to barely pass with a C-/C grades.
All ended up opting to transfer to more academically rigorous private colleges such as Reed, Columbia, CMU and continued to excel while finding ways to fund their last 2-3 years of undergrad (Mostly FA).
The counterpoint to the same uncritical "Ivy/peer elite or bust" mentality endemic among some parents and HS students. IMO....both are wrong.
Nobody except me mentioned the $2500 per student per year Federal tax credit (IRS form 8863)…so tack that on to any Pell money. Even if there is NO Pell money, it looks like a lot of community colleges in the country could be afforded on this $2500 alone (though only the first $2000 is credited back to you dollar for dollar…the second $2000 is 25 cents on the dollar).
Yeah, some states don’t have cheap community colleges; yeah, some students live far from a community college (but could take online courses, so subtract a lot of them). What I’m trying to drive home is the idea that those two groups probably don’t amount to more than, what, about 10% of students at whom “free college” is targeted? So rather than start yet another gargantuan federal bureaucracy to ensure this “free college” thing, how’s about we tweak what we’ve got for the small % that isn’t already in a good position to use existing programs and resources? (Any resemblance healthcare, where some might say a major re-tooling was chosen instead of a minor tweaking for the benefit of 10% is purely accidental.)
“Under the current “nearly free but only if you are poor” system, middle class families shun the very inexpensive CC alternative as embarassing, yucky and down market. Something that only poor kids do. Once the free CC option becomes the acceptable middle class option, the whole over-expensive 4 year college system is dealt the death blow it so richly deserves.
.”
Are you really saying that we have to make CC free for everyone just so some middle-class prestige snobs feel ok with attending them? How about the US military switches from armored vehicles to BMWs so Ivy Leaguers feel better about joining the Marine Corps?
It’s $246 per credit in Vermont. That’s about $7400, before fees and books, per year if the student carries 15 credits per semester. Not even near “free” for someone who doesn’t qualify for FA. There’s a wide variation in state subsidies to higher education and Vermont is on the low end.
It varies not only between states, but within states. Our local CC, which has an excellent reputation, is aligned with and receives support from a certain number of local public school systems, so for kids whose families are ‘in system’ the price is really good, but definitely more pricey for those who are in-state, but not ‘in-system’. Generally if you live in or around a large to moderately sized city in our state, this sort of set-up is beneficial to you, but if you are in a poorer, more rural area, you are likely not part of one of these systems.
Also, transferring to our public four year universities after two years is pretty pricey in Pennsylvania and not much in the way of merit to be found for anyone, much less for CC transfers.
My kids didn’t qualify for work-study. Like others mentioned, the best jobs go to work-study students. Mine had to work in the dining hall. Funny, though, the day my D began grad school, she was poor enough on paper to qualify for the work study/internship she couldn’t get as a wealthy undergrad. :-S
That political talking point is (intentionally?) distorted – the actual number is that 57% (was 53% a few years ago) of Americans pay federal income tax. However, many of the other 43% who do not pay federal income tax pay other taxes (payroll taxes (FICA deduction on your pay stub), sales taxes, etc.). Also, many of those not paying federal income tax are retirees, disabled, or students as well as low income people.
^^True. My point about taxes going up in some capacity still holds, though, and the people who pay the most taxes (not all, perhaps) will bear the brunt of it (like they do already.) Is the money for free community college going to come from a state tax on apples? Perhaps if the magical money to make it all free comes at a state level.
Because everyone has a few grand just laying around that they can just float until tax season. 8-|
That seems unnecessarily restrictive. I worked work-study off campus at an ELL school as a math tutor for my first and second year. One of the best experiences of my undergrad.
Baseballmom, ok so in Vermont a year of cc is what, $8500? Subtract about $7k if u get a Pell and file 8863 form. Flip a few burgers in your leisure time and you’re good to go for 2 years…no $100k debt. Do it again at an in-state public college and you’ve got a B.A. If u dont qualify for a Pell, u might have to flip more burgers and maybe take a small loan IF the colleges give u no other aid. Point is that just because a lot of people have huge college debt, it doesnt mean that’s the only way for the non-wealthy to get a degree. At the vast majority of comm. colleges, the price is a fraction of those in Vermont, too.
Right here in my state, about $40 million are allocated for scholarships, which if students qualify for (pretty easily) can pay for the entire community college tuition and mandatory fees. Pretty amazing, yet haven’t seen many people use it to advantage.
CC in my area is about $7000/year because we do not have a county with a CC. So we have to go to a neighboring one which is more expensive for non-residents.
Surf, shop around…shud be able to find online comm.college courses around country cheaper than that. Again, not saying things are a bargain and convenient and perfect for everybody. But the gaps are small and can be addresseds with online courses and a few more tax credits , not a huge new fed bureaucracy.