Is Bernie Really Proposing Free College?

Ikari said:

It's not free. You can use the aggregate power of government intelligently to drive down costs, and then use taxpayer dollars to pay the rest. But there's no such thing as a free lunch, everything would have to be paid for in the end.

Click to expand...

As a general rule, anything the gov't manages ends up costing more than what it would cost if it was privately managed. The problem is to find out the REAL cause of skyrocketing educational costs and start addressing them. Just covering up the problem by burying it under a pile of tax-payer's money is not the solution. There's a reason why costs are increasing so fast and we need to be pursuing that issue, not just adding another way to cover those costs. What being proposed is like having a private road that keeps washing out and shifting the cost from the people who drive that road to everyone else in the state and never addressing the reason why the road is getting washed out every spring.

cpwill said:

....Is that in the magical land where government becomes nimble, effective, and efficient?

Click to expand...

It's a hardcore land of control and restraint, yes. But it's not unobtainable, it just requires work.

faithful_servant said:

As a general rule, anything the gov't manages ends up costing more than what it would cost if it was privately managed.

Click to expand...

Meh, really depends on the system and how government is used. In its current state of Corporate Capitalism, yes it's hard to make something that benefits the People since the government is pandering to Corporate needs. But it's not to say that the aggregate power of government cannot be used in large scale systems to bring down costs and open up availability, for it can. Even in medical care we see this as many other advanced nations that have some form of nationalized healthcare end up paying less money for and having greater access to healthcare.

The same can be done for Universities. Yes, it needs to be done well and intelligently, but there's no reason to suppose we couldn't do just that. Our public school structure as is isn't the worst out there, though it could be better. We'd essentially be extending that.

Fundamentally, I don't have a problem with subsidized education since a free, democratic Republic requires an educated people.

shagg said:

If it actually happened, I would demand (for what its worth) anti-abuse measures of some kind. Performance, income, etc.

Click to expand...

One problem with means testing is the bureaucracy it requires.

PeteEU said:

There is a very good argument for free university education and there are some good arguments against it.

But coming from a country where free higher education has transformed society from a class society much like the US is at the moment, to an almost classless society in under 30 years.. then I can say it works.

Click to expand...

So you like being classless?

Ikari said:

Meh, really depends on the system and how government is used. In its current state of Corporate Capitalism, yes it's hard to make something that benefits the People since the government is pandering to Corporate needs. But it's not to say that the aggregate power of government cannot be used in large scale systems to bring down costs and open up availability, for it can. Even in medical care we see this as many other advanced nations that have some form of nationalized healthcare end up paying less money for and having greater access to healthcare.

The same can be done for Universities. Yes, it needs to be done well and intelligently, but there's no reason to suppose we couldn't do just that. Our public school structure as is isn't the worst out there, though it could be better. We'd essentially be extending that.

Fundamentally, I don't have a problem with subsidized education since a free, democratic Republic requires an educated people.

Click to expand...

But none of that addresses the rest of my post and the real problem that needs to be addressed. The problem isn't in the student's ability to pay, but in the college's ability to increase costs at will. They know that they can increase expenditures because they have an almost guaranteed source of income - fed. guaranteed student loans. As long as they can charge whatever they want, they will do so. We need to start finding out why costs are going up so fast and address that FIRST.

faithful_servant said:

But none of that addresses the rest of my post and the real problem that needs to be addressed. The problem isn't in the student's ability to pay, but in the college's ability to increase costs at will. They know that they can increase expenditures because they have an almost guaranteed source of income - fed. guaranteed student loans. As long as they can charge whatever they want, they will do so. We need to start finding out why costs are going up so fast and address that FIRST.

Click to expand...

Yes, so you rent control, essentially. Subsidizing and setting the value thereof.

Ikari said:

Yes, so you rent control, essentially. Subsidizing and setting the value thereof.

Click to expand...

Then all you end up with a heavily tiered educational system with under-funded "public" colleges at the low end and well-funded private colleges at the top end and you still never fixed the problem of why costs are going up so fast. Fix that and there is no longer the need for gov't mandated controls. There may be federally mandated solutions to put in place, and that's where the gov't gets involved, but it shouldn't go any further than that. Fix the root cause, not just the symptoms, otherwise you end doing nothing but fighting the symptoms over and over again.

faithful_servant said:

Then all you end up with a heavily tiered educational system with under-funded "public" colleges at the low end and well-funded private colleges at the top end and you still never fixed the problem of why costs are going up so fast. Fix that and there is no longer the need for gov't mandated controls. There may be federally mandated solutions to put in place, and that's where the gov't gets involved, but it shouldn't go any further than that. Fix the root cause, not just the symptoms, otherwise you end doing nothing but fighting the symptoms over and over again.

Click to expand...

Costs are going up because of elitism and "class war". It matters a lot if you have a degree from Harvard vs say random university in Oklahoma. This means Harvard can charge whatever they want, because people will pay for it because people think that a Harvard degree is better. It aint.. it is just more "showy" and "elitist". It is like having a pair of sunglasses that say Ferrari instead of Polaroid..

Now on in Denmark for example, it does not matter from which university you have your degree for. If it is from Copenhagen or Aarhus.. irrelevant. It is you and your grades that matter.

Free higher education has the added bonus that anyone can become whatever they want as long as they have the ability. Money, aka cost has no influence. In the US and lesser in the UK, cost is a big problem, and yes you can get loans and scholarships but that misses the point. Most people in the US, and in part the UK .. they stay in the same "job type" as their parents. Yes it was worse back in the day, but it is still very relevant today. There is limited social mobility for the masses and it comes down to cost and elitist attitudes to the piece of paper that you get with the degree.. Now in Denmark, there has been massive social mobility because of free university.

Take my late father. His father (my grandfather) was a welder at the biggest shipyards in Denmark. My father started out as a bricklayer.. a similar manual job and that was how it had been for generations for most Danes (and Brits and Americans and so on). But after WW2, Denmark introduced free university and my father and his generation benefited from this. My father finished his bricklayer apprenticeship, and then was the first generation to apply to university... in his case as an engineer. In no way in hell would that have been possible without free university education. He became an engineer and went to the US for a few years to work, and then other places around the world.

So today in Denmark we have achieved the "American dream".. as you can be what ever you want to be.. ironic aint it?

RabidAlpaca said:

Why not instead of speculating wildly how he might do it you guys actually look at the bill he's proposed as a Senator and the information he's supplied on his website?
http://www.sanders.senate.gov/download/collegeforallsummary/?inline=file
https://berniesanders.com/issues/its-time-to-make-college-tuition-free-and-debt-free/

It would cost 70 billion and would be covered by a 0.5% tax on speculation trades. Not exactly a radical amount. We spent trillions upon trillions on Iraq and Afghanistan, the latter of which we're still pumping way more than 70 billion a year into, and people want to pretend like we could never find the money for this. It's time we get our priorities straight and join the modern world.

Click to expand...

It's actually in the first line of the PDF. It says it will eliminate tuition and fees. I still find my suspicions reasonable though, this is the first time I've seen fees mentioned anywhere by anyone on either side of this, and I did look pretty hard. The other link doesn't mention fees either. It would be out of character for Bernie to be deceptive like that, but we are dealing with politicians here and I can't assume they mean something they didn't say specifically. And like I've shown it can make a huge difference.