I’m not convinced his math is remotely close… Thoughts?
If you are looking to a socialist to get the math right on government spending, you are barking up the wrong tree.
@Requin Though I consider myself a conservative, I would extend that remark to any breed of politician.
Agreed.
MOOCs have some serious limitations. Completion rates are terrible, for instance:
http://www.gse.upenn.edu/pdf/ahead/perna_ruby_boruch_moocs_dec2013.pdf
Well, they are free. So there are probably a lot of people that sign up for a few to see the lectures and just do some of the work.
And I agree that they have limitations, but they’re only going to get better over time.
Related…NPR interview today. They were talking about the initiative in CA to improve aid at the UC system. Both Governor Brown and Janet Napilitano were quoted.
I thought Robin Hood stole taxes from the crown and returned them to the taxpayers. Sort of like an early surprise refund.
Please refrain from solely political comments
ED Mod
So, they’ll be tuition free to instate students? What about OOS students…what will they pay? I’m guessing that OOS students would pay an OOS tuition amount minus the fed contribution? What will the undocumented pay?
Of course, there will still be the issue of room, board, books, etc.
I wish there were ways to bring down the cost of instate tuition. I just think that states will find a way to still charge the people that they think “earn too much”. The UCs already over-charge the full-payers to provide aid to others.
I do think that suddenly there would be a much higher demand for publics; suddenly the acceptance rates for many publics, particularly flagships, would suddenly drop.
Furthermore, the cost difference between the publics and mid-to-low tier privates would be too much for nearly anyone to stomach. Many of those privates are already struggling to offer enough aid to get their net-costs down to the state’s flagship. I think of USD that tries to offer its better applicants enough merit to get costs down to a UC. To expect them to be able to compete with free tuition (net cost of about $15k) is unthinkable.
Long-term investment helps grow the economy. Short term speculation can do serious harm to the economy so I am supportive of applying a higher tax rate to those types of transactions (which to me seem more like high stakes gambling than anything else). Putting those funds toward free state school tuition sounds like a worthwhile investment in our citizenry, but I feel like there are a lot of details unaddressed (a massive understatement).
I presume that state schools only have to support 1/3 tuition for students from their own state at their own state school? But what about admission decisions? Will the schools have quotas for in state students or caps on out-of-state students? Clearly the intent is that the benefit flows to qualified, competent students only, but that’s quite subjective. Are they going to try to make it objective? Will state schools be required to accept all in-state students with certain stats? And turn down stronger candidates from out of state? How do you enable the school to accept a diverse and competitive student body? Or are theree no guarantees that a competent student will be accepted to his or her state school, but IF he or she is accepted the state will pay a third? You could require the state support to follow the state’s residents to another state university, but I can’t imagine a state would want to do that, especially if the out-of-state school costs more or the in-state school was having trouble attracting students. If the federal government is paying 2/3 of all state school tuitions, does the federal government have a say in tuition rates? Operation of the university? There would have to be some controls or else tuition rates would sky-rocket even as room, board and fees might go down.
What will this do to private colleges and universities? They will certainly face more competition if all students have a free tuition option. Maybe that’s a good thing and it will put a check on the ridiculous rising cost of higher education. Do the private schools become even more elite than they already are? Does the government still support financial aid to private schools if it is also providing free tuition to state schools?
I like the idea of a free tuition option at public colleges and universities, and maybe it could be made to work,
but it will need more thought to make it workable without high risk of unintended consequences.
As to for-profit schools, I think many are scams against the students AND the American people funding them through government sponsored or guaranteed student loans. They need to be seriously regulated or cut off from government funding.
Why don’t we just peg the maximum increase in COA per year for public universities to the annual inflation rate to curb excessive tuition growth?
I’d personally like to see corporations foot your bill kind of like a coop and then you’d be obligated to stay with them a few years…like the military. I like personal responsibility and I don’t think students would appreciate and work as hard…most of them…for a free higher education. I still have german relatives who six years later we joke they are professional students with no ambition to finish…,I think “free education” breeds that mentality. Don’t want to see it in the US.
Because not all the costs increase at that rate.
Things like healthcare insurance, utility and maintenance costs, salaries, pension obligations,
And you also have new spending, computers, campus upgrades, new programs etc…
What @Rdtsmith said is a good idea. A corporation, for example, offers to pay off remaining tuition after FA, scholarships, etc, but you’d have to maintain some requirements like choosing a certain major, maintaining grades, etc and then work for them for x amount of years.
I don’t see why companies don’t do this now. Is there some legal barrier?
There is absolutely no reason to do this since there is more downside than upside.
- If they did this, they would just offer a lower salary or reduce other benefits, because they aren’t going to pay more for the same work.
- What happens if a person doesn’t work out and they get fired after a year? No company is going to want to sue to get their money back - beside the hassle and the cost, the PR cost is high.
- What do students do when they want to change majors? Pay back the money? How does a company collect from a poor student who decided not to pursue that major?
- In the job market that we have had in the last 20 years, what is the benefit to the company?
Colleges are supposed to be colleges, not trade schools.
Public universities’ costs have increased most where budget cuts have hit the public education system.
The availability of easy loans in basically all other countries has not raised the costs the way American colleges have. I don’t think “easy” loans (what would be a “difficult” loan?) are the culprit here.
We all know this is a proposal that won’t go anywhere. It’s just Sanders positioning himself in the Democratic primary.
However, something good could come out of it: a discussion of college costs.
I do believe that federal grants for students who have a certain GPA (3.0?) or class rank (top 25%?) should replace the federal loans, on a year-to-year basis (ie., if the student goofs off in college, the following year they get loans not the grant; if they pick their grades up their 3rd year, it reverts back to the grant, etc.) It benefits the students (fewer loans), the country (more educated, less indebted work force), and doesn’t affect college pricing (if you consider loans affected pricing). That’s what we used to have and it worked fine, BTW, even without the GPA/rank conditions.
Corporations don’t even like doing in house training much anymore, at least in IT. For every green entry level grad they have hundreds of shiny H1-B candidates ti choose from with perfect resumes, pre-trained.
Internships paying high salaries are a way for companies to sponsor specific students as well as see if they are a good “fit” to their organizations. I think a lot of these people get offers, but if you are not a good “fit” or they can’t hire, they have paid you a good wage and gotten a summer or semesters of work out of you. If companies seek star employees, they may have to provide this to get the folks they want without paying outrageous starting salaries based on school, GPA and an hour interview and then hiring a lazy jerk.
Corporations who do train and otherwise take an interest in their employees can have good solid 3-5 year people not leave their company for a $5K raise … and H1-B candidates require a slot and paperwork (or you have to telecommute from India). If you want to keep good employees up through management, you train and care about your employees. If you want to hire from outside paying $50-60K per head to a headhunter and gettting lazy jerks 30% of the time who don’t fit into your corporate culture, if you have one, well that is your decision.
I think the recession and poor job market in some fields have really screwed up the heads of a lot of corporate types, both due to necessity (you can’t spend 20K on someone and then have to lay them off a week later) and greed.
I think state colleges are pretty affordable and/or a good investment for a lot of people. They should really meet financial aid needs, and if they don’t that is not fair. The upper income students are getting a good deal at say 25-35K a year including room and board and all the activities …
We could also argue about the NEED for many people to live and eat on campus for free … some do need it, some just are getting a great deal.
Private schools have a major issue with affordability with the upper middle class, who really deserves NOT to pay $250K for a bachelors, they have already raised productive smart well-adjusted community minded children, often at a pretty large expense. So why do we make it FREE if your family has not worked hard and $250K if they have. Seems odd … But private schools do have one excuse … it is their money and it is up to them (and their alumni donors) on how to spend it. If the alumni really wanted to bring in more merit people, they could fund lots of merit scholarships through the university or alumni association instead of giving HPYS more money to invest in the stock market or whatever. Instead they seem to want to be seen as bringing up the low, lower middle, middle class and also providing lots of spaces for the top 0.5% Muffy private school with the trust fund kids. The upper middle income classes either pay through the nose or just don’t attend (even if they get in a top 10 or 20 school).
Some industries do pay for students’ college costs. My sister is a nurse who was sponsored through college with a required payback period in a certain hospital.
@MYOS1634, an easy loan is one where the lender does not check to see if the borrower has the resources to pay it back. Hence, it’s possible to graduate from a third-tier school with a degree in art history with 100K in loans, no assets, and job opportunities at Starbucks and Wal-Mart.
Loans aren’t the cause of tuition increases. They are an enabler, since they fill the gap between what schools charge and what students can afford. Absent such loans, schools would have been under more intense pressure to hold down costs in order to fill their seats. (Sketchy for-profit schools wouldn’t exist at all without those loans.)
The continued rise in cost of attendance and the smaller number of traditional students is now creating this pressure, and we do see many schools upping their financial aid just to fill seats.
Some observers of higher ed compare it to health care, where a third party payer system (insurance, Medicare, etc.) insulates consumers from the high prices charged by providers. The only catch is that unlike insurance reimbursements, college loans need to be repaid.