Getting the money to make tuition free is going to be s challenge enough. Room and board too? I don’t think so. First step of diverting funds from private schools to Community Colleges would be controversial. It’s not like getting funds for this is going to be easy.
The poorest parents are subsidizing room and board for their adult children a lot already. It’s not a new expense to incur.
That doesn’t mean society should expect them to keep doing it once kids are adults. It also doesn’t account for the kids whose parents can’t or won’t do this. I am not asking that tuition+room+board should be completely free. In fact, I would argue strenuously against that. I am stating that when calculating what is fair to charge for college, those costs need to be taken into account. Students who don’t live close enough to college to commute also need to attend.
I agree that the entire COA needs to be taken into account when budgeting, and families are covering R&B in one way or another. Clearly though it’s much cheaper for students to live at home as other than food and maybe a nominal increase in utilities, the mortgage/rent is a fixed cost.
I think we need to be tackling the tuition issue first before R&B.
I also think that while kids are legally adults at 18, that is really not the case in terms of being able to be fully independent, and hasn’t been so for decades. Families do need to budget to be at least helping their kids past high school. I don’t believe that’s society’s job…it’s the family’s.
All the more reason to offer substantial work against tuition and living expenses. The alternative, loans, is not working. A community (or the college itself) could offer bare bones living arrangements. Similar to SRO or in groups. No frills. No daily cleaning staff, RAs, etc.
There are two sides to this: facilitate a more comfortable experience or focus on the academic opportunity and drive down the rest.
Competant, smart, well prepared children are a huge benefit to society. Everyone, with and without kids, benefits from the next genration. Without them, where will the next round of scientists, teachers, plumbers, nurses, etc. come from? Yet, socieity places most of the burdon of supplying this vital resource on parents. That made sense when children were an economic benefit to the family, but that hasn’t been true in generations. Children are a huge economic drain. Its one thing to ask parents to bear that burden through the age of 18. At some point, its no longer fair. The law recognizes this. Parents really bear no responsibility for kids after age 18. And while they are on the hook to pay for college, they are not legally required to provide that gift.
This leaves many kids in a kind of limbo. Their parents are not supporting them, and are not required to do so. However, they cannot be considered independant for purposes of college aid. Its time that the public at large accepts that they should be sharing the burden of preparing the next generation.
I like @lookingforward’s ideas about no frills, bare bones living arrangements paid for by work that students can on campus. We disgree about the suitability of loans, but its really minor in the grand scheme.
I agree with offering the option of barebones living arrangements (perhaps a very basic* shared apartment with a kitchen and access to a non profit food ‘market’) in exchange for work.
What about offering students the choice: $2,500 guaranteed through a 10-hour/week job that they must do OR a loan for that amount?
My “room and board flagship scholarship” non policy would be a sort of “merit scholarship” for low income kids. I agree free room and board can’t be a national policy nor would it be possible. But free tuition at the flagship is meaningless if you can’t afford to go there (how are you going to pay 12-16k if your family lives hand to mouth) - I meant specifically the Flagship because it means an uncommon degree of academic success. Tying it to work requirements seems fair.
The OP question is very important though. I really think we’ve reached a point where the damage to young people’s lives and the economy require a large-scale plan. When young people put off buying a house and having children, everybody is impacted.
Population growth is the number one cause of global warming. Everyone benefits seems debatable.
You’re blaming HR for credential creep? You think that bots reading resumes has caused the problem that a kid with a HS diploma can’t get a job which is self-supporting?
Tail wagging the dog, my friends. Organizations which require a college degree or community college certificate for jobs which used to only require a HS diploma do so because of the abysmal preparation of most HS grads, not because they are trying to ratchet up the requirements.
Do you want a pharm tech preparing your mom’s bags of chemo solutions that doesn’t know that a lb and a kilo are not the same thing? Do you want to hire a receptionist for your company who is to supposed to sign off on office supply deliveries who doesn’t know what a dozen is? Do you want to try and get a wire transfer from your bank from a teller or banking assistant who doesn’t know that Euro’s and dollars are not just different names for the same exact currency?
I’m not exaggerating- these are real life stories of otherwise ambitious young people with HS diploma’s who were so woefully under-educated that the basics- 12 equals a dozen, Europe not a country and oh, by the way, the Euro is not a dollar, what decimal points are used for and why a patient who weighs 300 lbs gets a different dose of medication than one who weighs 45 lbs-- simply go over their heads.
Companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars on training every year- you can look it up. And some things can be taught (and get taught every single day). But you think the Fortune 100 is responsible for teaching 5th grade math, or 7th grade social studies?
And don’t get me started on reading comprehension and writing skills.
So no, companies have learned that in order to get some modicum of “entry level skills” (a high school education) that means asking for a college degree.
And if someone’s reading skills are so poor that they are applying for jobs where the keywords- stated in the job description- do not appear on their resume- again- not the fault of the company. When a job description requires experience with Excel- put Excel on your resume. Pretty simple. When a job description asks for “fluency in French required”, the word “French” needs to appear somewhere on the resume. This is not rocket science, folks.
Well, not like we’re all exhaling too much CO2. Sorry, couldn’t resist that.
To clarify, my idea is you work 20 hours/week, the pay is applied to tuition. Maybe 100/mo reserved for personal. At 10 or 12/hour, you can play with the numbers. I haven’t found one exact way it would work. Maybe 2nd year the rate goes up for more resume relevant work. (Eg, admin or in labs.)
Offering (or expecting) room & board is a frill. You don’t solve the price problem by throwing in all the pricey extras. Nor assuming a cushy 2 or 4 person apartment. Like dorms, they could have several kitchens. common bathrooms. But either very small singles or group arrangements. A place to lay your head. Not socialize on the current scale.
But really, if you need a college near home to get educated, why not? Why talk of free this or that, but all the cozy bells and whistles? Yes, it would take more than 4 years unless one was ardent.
In my hs days, this is similar to how vocational ed went. Classes in the am, work assignments after lunch. We knew each other, socialized on weekends, but they left after lunch. Some to office jobs, blue collar training, etc.
I just want free community college tuition as starters. And i think pulling fed money from private’s abd diverting there would do it. Heck, Tennessee managed it without any federal help
And Scubadive- no, missing the keyword on your resume does NOT make you perfect.
When an entry level job requires fluency in a foreign language- because you will be working at the US headquarters of an overseas company and will be getting emails in that language 8 hours a day-- you aren’t “perfect” if you can’t read or speak that language. It is insane to think that the company should teach you that language. You are either fluent or not; you are either qualified or not.
I know in the popular imagination automated resume screening is a deep state plot to create some nefarious universe where otherwise fantastic people can’t get jobs.
Reality- keyword search is used for REALLY basic screening. Do you know Excel, can you speak Spanish, are you board-certified in pediatrics. Do you really think that a large hospital system is going to interview and hire a physician who is NOT board certified (or board eligible) in the required specialty if a human being is reading all those resumes instead of a computer program?
“Hey Joanne, look here, this dude didn’t go to med school, isn’t a pediatrician, but he really loves kids. We should totally interview him for the opening in our Peds department, don’t you think? And this guy isn’t an RN but really cares about people with HIV- wouldn’t he be great in our infectious disease group”?
Scuba- machines are doing very, very, very basic screening and are NOT screening out “perfect” candidates- unless you think that hospitals have an obligation to interview everyone “just in case” a board- certified pediatrician has “forgotten” to put that on his or her resume.
@lookingforward : I was thinking that most traditional, non fancy dorms don’t have kitchens. But it’s probably cheaper to retrofit kitchens on each floor into super cheap, basic dorm than to convert old apartment towers in town into student corridors (even if these apts have kitchens already) 
I like the idea that the first two years after high school (trade, vocational, college) should be free tuition, immediately, as a first step.
I’m thinking of Pennsylvania, where the community college equivalents (academic two year commuter campuses preparing for the flagship or the non commuter 4-year universities) are “branches” not “community colleges” and cost 16k a year. There are community colleges too but most offer vocational/technical instruction, remedial academics, and classes equivalent to AP. A kid with APs would have little to fill their first two years and few credits would transfer to the flagship anyway .
What about Michigan, where the Flagship simply “counts” all CC credits as general credits thus making the students at the upper class fees…but refuses to count any for pre-reqs to a major?
NYC has a program that has been very successful- they found that to make the program truly free they had to include subway transportation and book rentals , otherwise these became an obstacle to being in class, preparing and taking tests, etc. These two things, which cost very little in comparison to the total program, increased its effectiveness and changed outcomes for many people.
Published COA at the closet junior college to my house is $13,700 for 30 credits if the student lives at home. It is a very good junior college but That is too much IMO but still cheaper than sleep away colleges. I see no reason for the high costs except bloated administration and questionable business models around majors that used to be handled in technical schools to a plethora of somewhat esoteric majors for special interests and could easily be rolled into existing majors. Climbing walls aside there is a lot of fat trimming that could occur.
Everyone hates bloated administration.
Except when it’s for their kid. Your student has a potentially fatal food allergy? You want a nutritionist supervising meal planning and prep- not a fry cook who makes $15/hour. Your student is under the care of a psychiatrist and clinical psychologist at home- you don’t want your kid taking a cab into town every week for appointments and therapy- you want full mental health services available in the campus health center (which used to be staffed by an RN whose job it was to send kids to the ER when they came in with appendicitis). Your kid needs to be able to use their smartphone AND laptop from every single place on campus- and doesn’t want to wait 24 hours for the helpdesk- your kid needs help RIGHT NOW when a paper is due and the network has slowed down. Your kids don’t want the dining hall to close at 7 pm- they want dinner at 8 when their athletic practice is over; your kids don’t want to train at the local Y with the grannies taking zumba, they want an Olympic quality university gym with trainers and staff and high end equipment.
Need I go on?
Bloated administration (i.e. non teaching staff) is a function of our consumerist society. We want everything and we want it now and we won’t accept responsibility when we screw up (how many lawyers are on staff at a large university? Because when a drunk kid falls off a balcony, that’s a lawsuit and when a drunk kid slips on a snowy sidewalk that’s a lawsuit, and when a kid who hasn’t been to class all semester gets an F and loses his merit scholarship that’s a THREAT of a lawsuit because the kid’s ADD means he can’t show up for an 8 am lecture and he needed accommodations.)
Change society and you can reduce headcount in administration. But until that happens, you need professionals to manage the blowback.
It should cost whatever it costs. Thinking you can get free college education from more taxes is a complete fantasy. Whenever you tax, you cannibalize your economy until there’s no more wealth. The government controls everything and you become Venezuela.
There are LOTS of developed countries that have low-cost/free college and are not anything like Venezuela: Germany, Canada, Scotland, Italy, Spain, Finland, Japan… Basically, the US is an exception (along with England/Wales, although their loan scheme is very different from loans in the US since they only kick in once you’ve reached a salary threshold.)
^but in those countries not everyone goes to college/university. The problem with America is that everyone has to go/expects to go to college. Many kids go, incur large debt to do so and major in something useless. Then they complain about having to pay back their loan on a barista salary. Free anything has unintended consequences.
I realize I’m out of touch. But how exactly does this happen? The federal loan limits shouldn’t be that burdensome for a college graduate even with a history degree. How do undergrads incur such high debt levels, are they paying off the parent plus loans, or do they do it by going to graduate school?
^Actually Canada has the highest percentage, among OECD member countries, of adults aged 25-64 who have obtained a tertiary education (though that’s in large part due to high rates of college-based vocational education and not 4 year university degrees).