Does Sanders specify if the tuition is free ONLY FOR IN STATE kids? If its free for both IS and OOS, this is horrendous. However, if its specifically for in state only by increasing tax, I dont see why its a bad idea.OOS and int kids will have to pay just same amount. Paying more tax may sound unappealing but its a long term investment. Isnt that what tax is for: benefit people through organized plans to build things?(not just talking about physically building)
To me, “More unqualified students” reasoning sounds ridiculous…that said “unqualified students” wont likely go to colleges anyway. Plus, they may drop out. And even if there may be more unqualified students, Colleges will just have to raise its bars on admissions.
The current draft of his bill specifies in-state.
*STATE ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS.—In order
to be eligible to receive an allotment under this section
for a fiscal year, a State shall—
…
(2) ensure that tuition and required fees for in-
State undergraduate students in the State’s public
higher education system are eliminated; *
Whether it is a good idea to tax the entire country to pay for tuition for students in individual states with widely varying cost of attendance and quality of instruction, is left as an exercise for the reader.
EDITED TO ADD: Yes, nominally Senator Sanders proposes to pay for this not through a general increase in the income tax but by stealing from financial institutions and investors.* But whether that will in fact raise sufficient money is unknown, and the money will have to come from somewhere.
*His FAQ on the bill reads: Fully Paid for by Imposing a Robin Hood Tax on Wall Street. This legislation is offset by imposing a Wall Street speculation fee on investment houses, hedge funds, and other speculators of 0.5% on stock trades (50 cents for every $100 worth of stock), a 0.1% fee on bonds, and a 0.005% fee on derivatives. It has been estimated that this provision could raise hundreds of billions a year… Robin Hood was, self-describedly and proudly, a thief; and obviously the institutions who are subject to this new tax will simply pass it on to their customers anyway.
It would be more intellectually and economically honest that instead of saying “free,” the term “Not paying at the point of sale” is used. The students are going to pay in the longterm regardless.
The tax on business and investors to pay for this program is going to be paid for by the marketplace with a simultaneous reduction in investment, i.e., a reduction in job growth and production output. The end result will be fewer jobs, lower salaries, and a smaller economy than would have been created without it. This will occur because there is no need for so many college graduates and thus the aggregate salary impact will simply be that college graduate salaries will decrease to match the true productive value of the available jobs. Or said another way, a college degree will be devalued.
Employees are paid for their productivity at a particular job, not for their degrees. Unless the types of jobs dramatically change and productivity per employee unit increases, then a college degree will have no affect on the pay scale in any particular job or in the jobs created.
Question - does a a person get paid more to be a barista if he has JD degree? No, the JD degree is irrelevant to that particular job’s productivity, and he is paid accordingly.
Overall, the program will have zero effect on increasing graduates’ salaries or types of jobs available, but will result in a reduction in opportunities available to all students - a net negative.
There is no free lunch.
Degree has never been a guarantee of job opprtunities anyway.
There are huge flaws in this logic.
- Colleges are a business first and foremost, and their first task is to get revenue and their second task is to increase revenue over time, or else they do not exist for too long. (Non-profit status is irrelevant, as that has no bearing on revenue production)
- This college program is just another subsidy paid by a third party. Thus, the college will do everything to get the largest share of said subsidy as it can. It is guaranteed, "free" money. Any other action would be just silly.
- The easiest and surest way to get the largest share possible is to increase the activity that provides the subsidy. Therefore, colleges will be incentivized to increase number of students it is supposedly educating. Forget education though, as the subsidy will be tied to enrollment, irrespective if the students enrolled are actually getting educated.
- The easiest way to increase the number of students is: 1) to lower standards and 2) to create degrees and programs that attract any and all student types, no matter how worthless the degrees are.
- Bottom line - colleges will reduce admission standards and also lower the bar for students to remain in school, i.e., colleges will do whatever to increase revenue, as that is their premier task as a business, non-profit or otherwise.
This is my Post #82 reduced to one sentence. Thanks.
@awcntdb #82 *It would be more intellectually and economically honest that instead of saying “free,” the term “Not paying at the point of sale” is used. *
Quite so; put another way, just as with our existing health care system (even before Obamacare the ACA exacerbates the problem), opening the floodgates to consumption of the education product by individuals who have no skin in the game* will inevitably lead to careless overuse of expensive products, leading to scarcity which will have to be controlled by those who are overseeing the payment for it, i.e., in the case of Senator Sanders’s plan, the federal government. What could possibly go wrong?
*And many of whom, unlike consumers of health care, do not even have the ability to benefit from the product they are consuming at the expense of the rest of us.
One potential big issue in this: What about interstate tuition compacts, particularly those that guarantee in-state tuition to residents of other states, (usually) for degree programs that aren’t available in the home state? To a lesser extent, what about regional compacts that allow students to attend public universities in nearby states for a low multiple (e.g., 150%) of in-state tuition?
Another semi-related issue: Students whose in-state offerings are sparse. For example, students from Wyoming or Alaska would find themselves faced with the possibility of free in-state tuition, but only for a rather narrow range of fields of study compared to students from states like California and New York. Is an Alaskan student who emerges from high school with a clear love and ability for chemical engineering to be shut out of a program like this?
^^ Re Post 87:
Irrelevant to the entire discussion, as free does not mean equal. The concept because something is given without cash payment then it is a problem if not equal everywhere is a non-sequitor.
States, their governments, and their citizenry are not all equal, and thus each state should deal with its own education infrastructure, just like they do now - it is called federalism. The socialist’ approach / concept that it is problem that all state colleges are not equal in offerings and capability is the fastest way to create a system to dumb-down top notch state universities.
Government never improves anything; it just redistributes via the lowest common denominator and declares inferior offerings an improvement. Via the Dept of Education, has already made the K - 12 public schools a 50% dropout system. So why in the world would people trust them with universities? History is prologue, if one cares to acknowledge said history.
Therefore, the problem is not that states have different offerings - that is good thing. The problem is there are people who think government can improve the system by giving it away.
First of all, I rather clearly wasn’t endorsing Sanders’s proposal—I was pointing out problems with it that AFAICT hadn’t already been brought up—so the rebuttal that emerged to what I said seemed…well, oddly placed.
Second, whatever one feels about the place and worth of government, a blanket statement like the one I quoted above is, quite simply, silly. Just ask those transporting goods by rail or road about the utility of government maintenance of infrastructure sometime, for one…
“Government never improves anything…”
Then I guess all 50 states better declare themselves independent.
I think there’s a lot of economic points that are spot on here, I think everyone can agree the idea is a bit (maybe more) naive: that doesn’t mean we give up on it all together.
A decent number of countries have governments involved in schooling, healthcare, and the like and are doing great, many better than America. Sometimes we forget that “government” isn’t a single thing but a concept that can be manifeste many ways. It just sucks that ours is broken.
Re Post #89 and #90:
I accept my statement does come off as hyperbole.
I should have been clearer in the context of my statement. This discussion is about markets, specifically the college admissions market, and it was those scenarios, which were in my train of thought.
My statement did not not apply to consitutional responsibilities of government, such as defense, public roads, judicial system, for example. I was thinking competitive markets in my statement, and more specifically, when government thinks it can manipulate a market - in that regard, government has never improved any competitive market or product that it has promoted.
Some states would be better of without the federal government, but the fight would come from the states that are making a mess of their own citizenry. It is not an accident that the worst fiscally-run states with cities with highest crime rates all have one thing in common - Memphis, Baltimore, Chicago, Milwaukee, New York, DC, Oakland and a few others - all are run by the same failed ideology that thinks it knows best, yet has fails miserably and then blames others saying they need more money for things such as infrastructure.
Money is not the problem, as the country is awash in over-the-top borrowing and spending; it is the approach that is the problem. This is the same reason why Sander’s idea is a boondoggle - the problem is not that the students do not have enough money of college; it is that college prices are not allowed to naturally set themselves to optimum consumer demand.
As an aside, rail is not a good example though. The one rail system that actually loses money is Amtrak, run my the government. Independent railway transport companies actually make money. Yet, Amtrak, which has a monopoly on civilian transport rail service, loses billions a year. That would be better left to private management.
You need to come into this century regarding things like crime statistics
http://www.neighborhoodscout.com/neighborhoods/crime-rates/top100dangerous/
Why is profit the only benchmark of a good service? There are many dangers in privatization at the aim of profit: see the prison system. In fact, most public services that are well regarded do lose money: it’s because the people aren’t paying for it at the point of sale, the government is paying for it on the back end.
Via: http://www.tstc.org/101/mta.php
This goes for many other good public systems. It’s not about profit, it’s about providing a service for a large group of people. No, it isn’t free. The cities each are in are very aware of the cost of it. Simply put, it’s a smart buy, and the risks of privatization far outweigh any benefits in profit that the consumer will never see.
How about this one thru the CIA…it is need based but…
https://www.cia.gov/careers/student-opportunities/undergraduate-scholarship-program.html
Bernie Sanders needs to learn about the laffer curve.
Many commenters on this thread would benefit from learning some economics beyond Econ 101.
I agree - the math must be off.
Some states already have free state school tuition for a good portion of their students. For example, GA has the HOPE/Zell Miller Scholarship which gives free tuition at any public state school to anyone who can maintain 3.5+ in high school and maintaining it in college (and about 90% tuition off for just having 3.0+ which should be a piece of cake in high school). And I’m sure nearly everyone here on CC has over 3.0+ in high school considering how many overachievers there are on here… The program is also privately funded by the Georgia Lottery (though the GA government still controls how the funds are used), so there’s no complaining about wasting taxpayer money. Other states that don’t offer free tuition at this point should adopt a similar privately funded system to do this.