As far as I know, no one has a RIGHT to go to college on someone else’s money. Graduating college may be a good idea, but that does not make it a right.
Or turning the phrase written in post 3 and 12- do some people have the mindset that people have the right to go to college on other people’s money?
Clearly, the answer is yes.
In my area a student needs to drive either 20 minutes to a tech 2 year community college or 35 minutes to a traditional community college. An unreliable car can mean a student cannot continue their program, even if they wish.
These are our most economically fragile students. If this passes I could see that many around here wouldn’t even start out of fear of having this over their heads.
For the first generation students, having an older friend/relative who went to any amount of college is a good model for thinking they can too.
Are you saying, then, Snowball, that I am(or should be) obligated to provide a more reliable car to people in your area, so they can attend college? (through taxes)
Or as a taxpayer, must I have “this over my head” that I must pay for others’ college, even if they fail in college? Those that have less somehow have a RIGHT to take from those that have more?
I think we cannot pick and choose where our taxes go. Our collective responsibilities sometimes include items that I may not agree with but I can see it that the big picture is improved when we help each other out.
I cannot say that I do not want to financially support CIA activities in central America and instead have those funds go to the National Parks. I just pay my taxes.
I think that there has been a lot of emphasis in the last few years on saying we need a better educated and trained workforce. It is too bad if some people do not complete a program of study. However I hope that they received personal benefits from the class they took whether a sense of wonder from a biology class or the ability to write better from an English class.
Due to mental illness issues, my niece has taken about 7 years to get 3.5 years through college. Fingers crossed, she will graduate in May. She has gotten so much from her education and her confidence in her own abilities has grown. With the new confidence she has taken classes that she would have previously not even attempted. She is undoubtedly a better person and a more informed citizen. I think that is a net win for our society.
Snowball did not say this at all. I don’t know where you are getting this from.
It is not about rights or obligations.
It is about your self interest. Helping those from disadvantaged backgrounds get better educated will repay the student aid many times over in economic productivity (and resulting tax payments), which will be beneficial to everyone, including those from non-disadvantaged backgrounds whose parents could pay for their college costs. For example, your workplace will be better able to hire educated people domestically, rather than exporting jobs to places where it can find educated people to hire.
There are also non-economic benefits. When everyone, including those from disadvantaged backgrounds, sees opportunity to do better with one’s own ability and effort, there is greater social stability, and desire for change will mostly be in terms of advocating orderly reforms. When those from disadvantaged backgrounds see opportunity blocked at every turn, while the scions of wealth do well on financial inheritances, they may be more likely to want to destroy and replace the system instead of working within it and improving it. Angry disaffected people may be more likely to embrace noxious political ideologies like communism, racism, religious extremism, etc… Is that what you really want?
In New England, there is an old saying that is apropos to the ridiculousness of this bill: “Penny wise, pound foolish”/ Even if, for selfish reasons, you might want to keep a few extra pennies in your pocket by supporting this bill, rational thinking and historical context would dictate that encouraging, supporting, and funding education helps not only individuals but society at large and reduces greater support down the road. Which reminds me of another saying, "“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime”.
Taking classes has a benefit even if it doesn’t result in a diploma. I agree with others that the focus should be on holding institutions accountable, particularly the for-profits with lousy track records.
Choosing to pay for items that are in my self-interest is charity. It’s a good idea. It’s wonderful. Forcibly taking away my money through taxes for someone else’s college costs does, in fact, make it my obligation to pay for that person’s college. Good idea or not, it still would be an obligation. The argument I ask people here to consider is NOT whether more people attending college is good for society. I already agree that yes it is. My point is whether it should be an obligation of others to pay for it. Broccoli might be good for me, but would I support a law that I had to eat it? Or would I support a law that others had to eat it, just because it’s in their own self-interest??
While I also may not like the CIA in Africa, the Constitution does give the Feds the right to tax me for national Defense. Not my example, and that’s the Feds, not state gov’t.
Snowball talked about some in his/her area that don’t have reliable cars to drive to college, and that they might be reluctant to accept the -pay back a Pell- idea we are talking about. So that leads to the idea that if they had better cars, they might accept such an offer.
Maybe I haven’t been clear in earlier posts. I’m not saying I’m against higher education. My first post in this thread was just a post showing a different perspective than had been presented before. Posts previous to it addressed only the good a Pell grant does for a student, and the harm people here thought might befall a student that attends but does not graduate, and might have to pay back the Pell.
I tried to present the perspective of the taxpayer that pays for a student’s Pell. The taxpayer might not feel he/she is getting his money’s worth for a student that drops out. In a case like that, the taxpayer has been harmed.
@younghoss How much is coming out of your personal pocket for Pell?
Like others have said, you don’t get to pick and choose. There are a lot of services and tax exemptions I’d rather not pay for or don’t personally benefit from.
How do you quantify one’s personal sense of worth? Is there zero benefit to having attended some college classes vs. none?
Scouting around, it appears that Pell disbursements are about 0.7% of the Federal budget. So maybe $280 of the $40K we sent in last year?
But that doesn’t mean you have to refrain from debating whether spending is too high or low in a particular area, or if the program can be improved. I don’t completely agree with @younghoss, but he presents a perspective that is too often missing on these pages–the need to actually determine if the program is working as well as it could be.
Someone earlier wrote something to the effect of “who am I to judge?” I counter that by saying that as a taxpayer and citizen, it is your responsibility to judge, not in a cruel way, but with both compassion for the individual and an appreciation of the cost to society.
No one here is limiting anyone’s ability to express their opinion. Some of us just don’t agree with it and are expressing our own. Ideas have been put forward and rebuttals have been made but paying taxes isn’t like walking into a grocery store and only choosing what you’d personally like to pay for.
“I counter that by saying that as a taxpayer and citizen, it is your responsibility to judge, not in a cruel way, but with both compassion for the individual and an appreciation of the cost to society.”
My guess is most here would concede that their are some limitations with the current system but I, like others, feel like a good deal of the focus should be on institutions themselves which often serve as pretty much sham operations, taking $ and delivering little in return. There are consequences to changing existing programs. I don’t feel like accurate research has been conducted to determine why people don’t complete degrees and how that issue can be reversed. If we value an educated populace, I think imposing penalties such as the kind of repayment in this bill seems shortsighted and simplistic. Fine to question but where is the analysis behind this bill?
That’s only true if you assume the resulting salary is a result of treatment effects and not self-selection effects.
It’s worth remembering: students are heavily subsidized even if they don’t receive a penny of aid.
To punish JUST the Pell students for not finishing is just cruel. Absolutely cruel. Poor students have everything stacked against them. I dare any of these politicians pushing this to live a few days in a poor kid’s life. I don’t think they’d survive in-tact.
A lot of emotion tied to this topic and that’s understandable. At the end of the day, don’t you think there should be standards applied to receiving pell grants? Number of credits per semester, minimum grade requirement, total time lapsed to graduate (say 10 yrs to accommodate most scenarios), etc. This is free money, a gift if you will. We certainly want to encourage education but shouldn’t we also set up a criteria of goals to accomplish in order to continue receiving the gift? I’m sure there could be a reasonable litmus test designed that would make it hard to not receive the grant. Accountability is important. Basic rule in life: using your own money, do whatever you want. You want my money, you have to abide by my rules. It’s a fair deal. (of course we would need to decide upon the rules)
No accountability and you’re ultimately throwing the money away in many cases. I’d much rather the schools just lower the cost and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
Are you trying to say, rickle, that it’s easy to spend OPM?
^it’s not as if we have no criteria already. The program has been around for years.