So I guess the entire idea of “expand educational offerings within the major to give versatility” went over your head? No one here was advocating “Overly Specific Studies” either. You miss the entire point of how majors are matched to jobs.
“Free” colonoscopies are only a problem if you could just request one willy nilly. What’s wrong with primary care physicians being the gatekeepers for determining if such procedures are necessary? And how is that even related to higher education, other than in an absurd sort of “free is bad” comment?
I didn’t say that free is bad. My point was that everyone loves free and no single individual has any incentive whatsoever to worry about the larger consequences (economic, social, etc) as long as they get their “free”.
And Neo- thanks for explaining how majors are matched to jobs. I’ve hired and supervised the hiring of thousands of people in management level or management training program jobs around the world over the last thirty years so hearing about how employment of college grads really works off an anonymous post on the internet is truly helpful.
So you don’t like handouts that are given out irresponsibly? That’s great - no one implied otherwise.
Your fixation on “Overly Specific Studies” as if someone recommended those as a solution is a nice strawman. No one even remotely suggested that the government should support the propagation of majors such as “Real Estate Development.” Instead, what would be encouraged is giving Mechanical and Civil engineers some training in real estate, economics majors some training in construction management, etc. So standard majors with a core of knowledge and further instruction in some careers that are generally open to that major.
In short: you have a very short-sighted view of what “match college grads to jobs” actually means.
Do countries that offer/require free college also provide free r&b? Travel costs to and from school? Spending money?
How long would the country (USA) be expected to offer free education? We once did it to age 16, now through high school or even more for some under IDEA. Would pharmacists get 6 years? Would masters and doctorates be covered? How about if the student is married and has a few kids, are costs for them all covered too?
Can the student go to any school he can get into or just the closest public school? Do co-op participants get to keep all the money they earn but stretch out their schooling?
What happens to all the scholarships and grants currently being awarded? Does that money just go into a pot that the government/schools can use?
Obviously it varies by country, but in my experience:
Tuition, housing, public transportation, healthcare, and money for food and personal expenses. Not a huge amount of money but it’s livable. You can work to have more.
Covered for all ages. Professional school skips the undergrad and just goes for 6 years straight. Masters also covered. Doctorates are paid for out of research grants instead of public funding.
You can go to whichever school accepts you. Co-ops weren’t a thing but there was mandatory military service, which works the same. In that case, you can take a leave of absence then return the following year with no special downsides, except the personal ones.
Scholarships offered additional spending money instead of covering part of tuition. It wasn’t really essential but it’s a good way to excuse yourself from having to work for a living.
Oh wait- my elderly mom is a retired nurse, and her pension comes from a fund which has a high percentage of its assets in hedge funds and private equity funds. Drat- if the returns go down, her payout goes down and she’ll have to move in with me because she won’t be able to afford her rent. I guess that’s a bad idea.
But I love this tax. Oh wait- my church has an endowment fund which supports our operations and pays the clergy salaries. It too is invested in hedge funds and the like. If we can’t draw as much from the endowment I’ll have to contribute more to support my pastor- really great guy, he works really hard, I guess he shouldn’t be on food stamps. And his kids are so cute and don’t complain when he misses their basketball games because he’s sitting with a parishioner who is dying of cancer and has no family around. But I am already maxed out on my contributions. So I guess that’s a bad idea also.
But I love this tax. But hey- I just realized that MY OWN pension will be impacted. That nice monthly check I was counting on to supplement social security- if the returns on my fund are taxed, I’ll get less money every month.
What a dumb idea.
Who the heck do you think ACTUALLY pays the tax? You and me, brother.
We already have free college. It’s MIT free courseware, Khan Academy, and the myriad of online services that provide low cost training because they deliver educational services in a MOOC format. Traditional education is extremely expensive to deliver and should never be free. We already have an ultra low cost community college format paid by local taxes under the control of the local community. That means that local taxpayers can customize the curriculum to benefit their population.
This all comes back to the problem with taxes - they are mandatory and not voluntary. I have this same argument with my son, a college age Bernie supporter, who uses all of the socialist arguments like “We spent $7 trillion on the war in Iraq & Afghanistan, therefore we can spend the same amount on free education & health care” (actually, spending & taxing more on top of $20 trillion in debt --> Hyperinflation + economic depression.
When my daughter was 4 years old, she’d see the price of something in a store and then ask “But they are going to charge me extra, aren’t they? I don’t want to pay that. Will you pay?”
No one wants to pay sales tax, honey. No one wants to pay the extra. Welcome to the real world.
》》So you don’t like handouts that are given out irresponsibly? That’s great - no one implied otherwise.《《
Well, suppose we put the GPA requirement in. Doesn’t that mean that we are essentially limiting who goes to college like the idyllic countries where all education is free? Does that mean a kid who screws up and gets a 2.3 GPA is toast - they will not attend college ever in their life? But a kid who has it together by 18 and pulls a 3.0+ gets a free ride for the next 4-10 years depending on what level of education they pursue?
And will free college solve the debt problem? Check out this article…
》》College in Sweden is free. But rent isn’t. And food isn’t. Neither is the beer that fuels the relatively infrequent, yet legendary, binges in which some Swedes partake. Costs of living in Sweden are high, especially in cities such as Stockholm, which regularly ranks among the world’s most expensive places to live. But again, this stuff isn’t free for students in other European countries either. So why do Swedish students end up with more debt? It’s pretty simple, actually. In Sweden, young people are expected to pay for things themselves instead of sponging off their parents.《《
@albert69 you make a good point that it will never be fair for everyone. If we can create a system of merit where that kid with the 2.3 GPA can go to cc for one year and if they get a good enough GPA they will be reimbursed for that year and each subsequent year they receive the benefits that were initially given to those with high enough GPA/ACT in the first place. It will never be perfect or fair for everyone, but if we can create an incentive for the student to improve from the bottom up they can achieve the dream of education. It is all a matter of hard work. If we can at least address covering tuition for the students who demonstrate ability and effort, we relieve them of the stresses of paying for tuition and let them focus on the other 60% of going to college: rent, food, utilities, insurance, transportation, misc, etc.
Specifically I was talking about the USSR, which for all its faults is well-known for having had an excellent education system (most of the countries still do). However, pretty much every European country has created a system that works without subjecting people to massive debt, so it’s pretty laughable to say that it cannot be done. It has already been done in pretty much every other first world nation.
You’re right, taxes are distortionary and they damage the economy. And it really sucks to see something like 40% of your hard-earned paycheck or your hard-earned profits just go to this nasty government that just takes it from you to provide wishy washy things such as “public goods” and “infrastructure.”
Guess what? Poverty, illness, and crushing debt are even more distortionary than taxes. Underdeveloped infrastructure is even more distortionary than taxes. Having people unable to get a proper education without being in debt for a lifetime is even more distortionary than taxes.
Taxes are necessary to provide for the common good. Get over it.
Yes, but this is actually a good thing. University education is expensive because it trains the highly talented.
A necessity for this system to work is that people can go to university later in life through a “backdoor” path like CC.
Doctorate level education is already paid for by research funding rather than the student. BS/MS/Professional school should be paid for, but doctorates should require funding.
This is actually a legitimate issue for professional (law/medical/pharm) schools and I don’t know any country that has worked this out in any reasonably solid way.
Seems to be filled with stories such as
If you choose to “find yourself” and pay rent to do so, then that’s on you. No one forced you to do that.
Yeah, I’d sure like to know where that magical country is that provides free full rides to everyone, all amenities included. I promise you, it’s not in Europe! CLASSES are low cost or free - and the advising, the exams, the library, the diploma, in short, the education. That’s what a country might choose to provide because everyone profits from the externality. For the rest, I can tell you how it works where I live:
A student is entitled to child support until they have acquired a qualification that enables them to support themselves, according to their wishes AND abilities (so that might mean trade school if the student does not have the qualifications, and it also means that you only get to fail or change course once or twice, but it also means a masters program if that is considered necessary to get a job in a field and the student qualifies. ). If they live on their own, it’s the equivalent of 750 dollars per month. That’s it - room, board, travel, books, fun. If there is a program available within commuting distance, the parent can demand the child live at home and commute, and only pay out pocket money in cash. If the parents are low income, the student can apply for a federal grant/loan combination with the loans forgiven only if the student graduates in the upper third of their cohort. If the parent is only unwilling to pay, the student gets the grant/loan anyway, but a government agency will go after the parent.
The universities do offer stuff like choirs and orchestras, drama clubs and facilities, cafeterias etc, but the facilities are basic and pay as you go. There is also student housing, but again, it’s basic and cheap, because no one can be forced to pay a set amount for what they can get. Though I have to say, my niece pays the equivalent of 350 dollars a month for a studio with her own bathroom and kitchenette - it’s small, but new, clean and serviceable,
If you want to play a sport, you join a club in the community. If you want to slide down sides, hang out in a hot tub, float In a lazy river, you go to the community pool which will offer it, to subsidized prices.
The upside is, everyone can manage to go an education if they apply themselves. The downside, you won’t get the “college experience”.
I still think the UK manages to provide the happy medium so far, but they are running into funding problems, too. But that’s not exclusive to universities, it’s a public services problem.
You mention Russia @NeoDymium for its attention for education of its population. In fact if I recall they have one of the highest rates of college completion by adults in the world. However, they are actually a prime example of what happens when higher education does not equal a noticeable increase in human capital. Even with all the education adults in Russia has, it is a joke to think that they are comparably valuable to other individuals in countries like Germany with their work ethic and honesty. Simply educating more students did not make up for the fact how corrupt of a nation Russia was and is still that prevents human capital being put to work or used properly because of absurd regulations they retained from the Soviet era. It’s nice having an abundance of education but it’s kind of pointless if government obstruction gets in the way of using it efficiently.
Anyways…the reason I want badly for a system like Bright Futures or Zell Miller/HOPE to exist in all states is because they are at least a passable plan compared to other initiatives made by any of the current candidates. Bernie’s and Clinton’s plans will never make it pass the current congress we have while the Republican plans for fixing college isn’t really any better either with investor backed funding as a huge cornerstone…
One thing is to wish we live in a world where politicians think of the children and will do everything they can to make it right for us. Instead, they would rather bicker and let everyone continue with the current system while simply adding “band-aids” to alleviate but never address the core issues of why costs keep increasing and more people can’t afford it. We can want what is best for our fellow peers as we try to be caring for our society members, but our politicians often lose that empathy for preference of ideological tendencies. We can debate the merits of our plans and the problems of costs and funding. In the end we don’t control anything other than voting in representatives that will wait till the last note falls and then it’s too late to save it. One way or another, we can be hopeful but we should not tear each other apart over this. We just need to fight to survive a little better each day on our own if the government won’t.
“Does that mean a kid who screws up and gets a 2.3 GPA is toast - they will not attend college ever in their life?”
I do not see why anyone should pay for that kid to go to college at that point in their life, parents or government. That kid is clearly not qualified - maybe not yet, but still not. Nor is it a human right to go to college. In fact, in all developed countries in the world, a majority of people do not have a four year degree or the equivalent, including the US and most do just fine.
Most countries do offer a route for that kid to make it to a four year college eventually, be it community college, vocational education, night school, and where college is free, those routes are usually free, too, but in the US, even community college can be comparably expensive.
However, at some point, you HAVE to show that you are actually academically qualified for that four year degree. Again, that’s the same the world over, whether you have to pay for that degree or no. I do not understand why people keep harping on the access question - why is it any more fair to the individual student or conducive to the public good if the gatekeeping is based on finances rather than on qualifications? Of course high SES kids have an easier time of it, and again that’s the same the world over, and no way to change it unless you want to introduce a kind of Khmer Rouge communism.
You mischaracterize the problem and imply that the education system was somehow crooked and unreliable (with a pretty ugly implication that individuals within a system like that have “no work ethic” or are “dishonest”). This is a common misconception but it is very much untrue.
Soviet education produced highly productive workers - this is shown by how successful immigrants from the USSR in a more economically favorable environment (US and Israel mostly - the vast majority of those who emigrated had Hebrew ancestry). This fact is pretty well-documented.
The issue was the government within the Warsaw Pact and how bad it was at allocating resources. In general, people were expected to work for life within one company, with little chance for movement. Profit/speculation was not legal, so people lost incentive to advance since they wouldn’t get anything for doing a better job. Anyone who has ever worked with smart people in a dysfunctional company would see how useless they appear because the situation does not allow for them to do anything useful. This centralized control also led to a whole lot of corruption, and I think history has shown that plenty of well-educated people will pillage given the opportunity. If all ofthat sounds anticompetitive in a very inefficient way, you would be correct. So all of that developed human capital was wasted, but it most certainly was developed through education.
Since the failure is not really on the “education” side of things, I see little point in addressing anything else mentioned. It’s pretty universally acknowledged that having smart people isn’t enough if you can’t provide a system that utilizes them and allows them to grow - the same problem exists in the US right now with the slowly but certainly decaying system of academia. University education can be provided as a public good within an otherwise competitive market. There is no necessity that college has to operate like a business.