Free education

Free education:

If a USA student continuously demonstrates their ability to fully benefit from an education to prepare them for their chosen profession, requiring they financial sacrifice to pay for that education is contra-productive to our nation's economic and social well-being. Scholarships based on merit should be awarded to all those that earn them, regardless of their personal wealth. Our nation requires the sacrifices and then complains of a medical providers' prices. That's unreasonable.


No student that has acquired their “ticket” to exercise their chosen (and nationally needed) professional knowledge and/or technical craftsmanship should be in financial debt due to direct and indirect costs of that education and training They leave school with a mountain of debt, and then we unreasonably complain they're too greedy and materialistic?


Respectfully, Supposn

They got Youtube. And blogs. They believe university education is brainwashing and they were smart to miss it. Ask 'em, they're satisfied.

University doesn't have to be 100% free but put it this way:
In 1982 my last year of in-state tuition at UCLA was less then 1800 bucks, COUCH CHANGE.
I was working part time and I was able to afford it.

If a student or parent's incomes are less than a certain amount and the student's test scores indicate they can benefit from a state college or university, give them free tuition. If they or the parents are affluent, charge them three thousand a year.

It should hinge on "ability to benefit". Smart ambitious hard working students should not have to worry about costs if they are poor.

I'm Supposn said:

Free education:

If a USA student continuously demonstrates their ability to fully benefit from an education to prepare them for their chosen profession, requiring they financial sacrifice to pay for that education is contra-productive to our nation's economic and social well-being. Scholarships based on merit should be awarded to all those that earn them, regardless of their personal wealth. Our nation requires the sacrifices and then complains of a medical providers' prices. That's unreasonable.


No student that has acquired their “ticket” to exercise their chosen (and nationally needed) professional knowledge and/or technical craftsmanship should be in financial debt due to direct and indirect costs of that education and training They leave school with a mountain of debt, and then we unreasonably complain they're too greedy and materialistic?


Respectfully, Supposn

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Who do you suggest pay the costs?

I'm Supposn said:

Free education:

If a USA student continuously demonstrates their ability to fully benefit from an education to prepare them for their chosen profession, requiring they financial sacrifice to pay for that education is contra-productive to our nation's economic and social well-being. Scholarships based on merit should be awarded to all those that earn them, regardless of their personal wealth. Our nation requires the sacrifices and then complains of a medical providers' prices. That's unreasonable.

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Most scholarships ARE based on merit, and Pell grants are given out to the poorest students. Financial aid, in the form of student loans is available to all.

No student that has acquired their “ticket” to exercise their chosen (and nationally needed) professional knowledge and/or technical craftsmanship should be in financial debt due to direct and indirect costs of that education and training They leave school with a mountain of debt, and then we unreasonably complain they're too greedy and materialistic?


Respectfully, Supposn

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The problem with this is that if the student (or parents) do not assume the responsibility for the costs, the taxpayers must assume those responsibilities, and many students who do not go to college end up working jobs where their taxes go to pay for those who wen to college. In reality, the one who benefits directly from the education should be the one to foot the bill.

Mycroft said:

Who do you suggest pay the costs?

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The whole rest of the developed world is doing it. There are many ways. Why is it that it's such a profound mystery only to us?

A well educated public is a public good, not just an individual one.

"An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people... Preach, my dear Sir, a crusade against ignorance; establish & improve the law for educating the common people. Let our countrymen know that the people alone can protect us against these evils, and that the tax which will be paid for this purpose is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests, & nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance."
-Thomas Jefferson

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ataraxia said:

The whole rest of the developed world is doing it. There are many ways. Why is it that it's such a profound mystery only to us?

A well educated public is a public good, not just an individual one.

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Can we afford it? Will we have to give something up? Will we have to raise taxes?

Important questions, don't you think?

You do get "free education;" right up through the 12th grade in the USA.

After High School, one is expected to have a basic education at a level to make informed decisions...IF they take the time to inform themselves.

After High School, one can choose the route of trade school, a college education, or simply seek employment.

The problem becomes when a piece of paper (high school diploma, college degree, advanced degree) become a "golden ticket" to some better opportunity. The mere possession a "key to success" without any consideration of what one has actually learned.

Young people are going into massive long-term debt attending college seeking a degree in anything, regardless of it's actual value in the workplace.

Thanks to the easy access of "deferred" student loans, we see many young people spending 5 or more years on an "extended vacation" studying things like Gender, Feminism, Ethnic relations, and other "underwater basket-weaving" courses. Courses that really have no actual use after graduation, unless it is to become a grade school "ideology" teacher, or work either teaching the same crap at some University or in company HR administration job.

Meanwhile, college has become big business. Colleges letting kids take whatever they want for some general degree, as long as the money keeps coming in. Or online "university" training for easy-to-get degrees based on test's you take in-home with your answers accessible by merely by checking your study materials. IMO these options have inflated the numbers of so-called "educated, college-degree holding" members of our society all out of proportion to those who worked for and achieved a "real" education.

I think the State should return to funding basic grade school education only. That anything after that should be based on motivated, self-financing people actually seeking advancement via real educational achievement.

Mycroft said:

Can we afford it? Will we have to give something up? Will we have to raise taxes?

Important questions, don't you think?

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Sure. Jefferson sure seemed to think the tax was worth it:

...the tax which will be paid for this purpose is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests, & nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance."
-Thomas Jefferson

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The modern rise and worship of plutocrats like the Koch brothers, Rupert Murdoch, and Donald Trump is more than ample evidence for Jefferson's prescient predictions.

ataraxia said:

Sure. Jefferson sure seemed to think the tax was worth it:



The modern rise and worship of plutocrats like the Koch brothers, Rupert Murdoch, and Donald Trump is more than ample evidence for Jefferson's prescient predictions.

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Nobody needs to be "ignorant". If they are, it's by their own choice. In Jefferson's day, there was very little opportunity for education. Nowadays, opportunity abounds.

Mycroft said:

Nobody needs to be "ignorant". If they are, it's by their own choice. In Jefferson's day, there was very little opportunity for education. Nowadays, opportunity abounds.

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Say that to all the coal miners who say they can't retrain to get out of coal mining because the costs are prohibitive. So what do they do? They vote for politicians who want to keep artificially propping up obsolete industries like coal mining so they can keep their jobs. That hurts us all.

ataraxia said:

Say that to all the coal miners who say they can't retrain to get out of coal mining because the costs are prohibitive. So what do they do? They vote for politicians who want to keep artificially propping up obsolete industries like coal mining so they can keep their jobs. That hurts us all.

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Coal is not obsolete. It was driven into the ground by Obama.

I'm Supposn said:

Free education:

If a USA student continuously demonstrates their ability to fully benefit from an education to prepare them for their chosen profession, requiring they financial sacrifice to pay for that education is contra-productive to our nation's economic and social well-being. Scholarships based on merit should be awarded to all those that earn them, regardless of their personal wealth. Our nation requires the sacrifices and then complains of a medical providers' prices. That's unreasonable.


No student that has acquired their “ticket” to exercise their chosen (and nationally needed) professional knowledge and/or technical craftsmanship should be in financial debt due to direct and indirect costs of that education and training They leave school with a mountain of debt, and then we unreasonably complain they're too greedy and materialistic?


Respectfully, Supposn

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Where in the Constitution does it read...……... that a student should not be in financial debt from college?


Evidently, these kids are picking majors that are not in high demand, and I would think that during their four years of college that they would have figured it out with all the critical thinking (snark) that goes on in academia land. Just goes to show that secondary education isn't for everyone....huh?

RetiredUSN said:

Where in the Constitution does it read...……... that a student should not be in financial debt from college?


Evidently, these kids are picking majors that are not in high demand, and I would think that during their four years of college that they would have figured it out with all the critical thinking (snark) that goes on in academia land. Just goes to show that secondary education isn't for everyone....huh?

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They are competing with kids in other countries that get free or highly subsidized education. The end result is going to be that the good jobs - jobs where you need higher education - are going to go to those who have the easier path to that higher education. We are already farming out a bunch of tech jobs. That's not going to get any better if we remain on the same path.

Investing in higher education is an investment in the economy. Americans seem to have a mental block when it comes to realizing that governments need to invest money into their economies.

Mycroft said:

Coal is not obsolete. It was driven into the ground by Obama.

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Yeah, coal was on a real growth trajectory before Obama. :roll:

Mycroft said:

Coal is not obsolete. It was driven into the ground by Obama.

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Coal is becoming obsolete. It still has some viability, but serious plans have to be made for the future. This is the time to start making plans for change. The above is just a Fox News talking point.

RetiredUSN said:

Where in the Constitution does it read...……... that a student should not be in financial debt from college?


Evidently, these kids are picking majors that are not in high demand, and I would think that during their four years of college that they would have figured it out with all the critical thinking (snark) that goes on in academia land. Just goes to show that secondary education isn't for everyone....huh?

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Another FOXNews talking point. The kids graduating from college right now, regardless of their major, are doing just fine. Those who are in trouble as the ones who cannot afford or have access to the education.

ataraxia said:

Another FOXNews talking point. The kids graduating from college right now, regardless of their major, are doing just fine. Those who are in trouble as the ones who cannot afford or have access to the education.

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If they are doing just fine, then they should pay off their education and stop bitching.

RetiredUSN said:

If they are doing just fine, then they should pay off their education and stop bitching.

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It should be more affordable to more people.

Checkerboard Strangler said:

University doesn't have to be 100% free but put it this way:
In 1982 my last year of in-state tuition at UCLA was less then 1800 bucks, COUCH CHANGE.
I was working part time and I was able to afford it.

If a student or parent's incomes are less than a certain amount and the student's test scores indicate they can benefit from a state college or university, give them free tuition. If they or the parents are affluent, charge them three thousand a year.

It should hinge on "ability to benefit". Smart ambitious hard working students should not have to worry about costs if they are poor.

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[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Geneva, sans-serif]If there were no accreditation standards, government backed educational and training loans would be granted for “study” at schools that had no regard for any standards and falsely pretended to service some useful public purpose. Such was the case with Trump University. That's the purpose of requiring schools that directly or indirectly receive government money, to comply with recognized standards to qualify and retain accreditation.[/FONT]


[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Geneva, sans-serif]Students meeting the entry standards and continuing to meet accredited schools' required achievement standards are doing the work and they're worthy of government supported education and training.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Geneva, sans-serif]An accredited school's curriculum and standards should not be frivolous; thus students that qualified to be enrolled and continue satisfying such a schools' standards are not frivolous students. Upon their own merits, such students prove their worthiness of our governments supporting their training.[/FONT]


[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Geneva, sans-serif]It is a waste of our governments resources to administrate financial tests for government paid scholarships. If the students or their families are wealthy, they already have and continue to provide sufficient tax revenues to justify their children of merit receiving the scholarships they have earned.[/FONT]


[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Geneva, sans-serif]Respectfully, Supposn[/FONT]

Mycroft said:

Can we afford it? Will we have to give something up? Will we have to raise taxes?

Important questions, don't you think?

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Well, we could cut our military spending from 600+bn/yr to about 150bn/yr (equals china's defense spending). That right there would pay for a very large chunk.

I'm Supposn said:

Free education:

If a USA student continuously demonstrates their ability to fully benefit from an education to prepare them for their chosen profession, requiring they financial sacrifice to pay for that education is contra-productive to our nation's economic and social well-being. Scholarships based on merit should be awarded to all those that earn them, regardless of their personal wealth. Our nation requires the sacrifices and then complains of a medical providers' prices. That's unreasonable.


No student that has acquired their “ticket” to exercise their chosen (and nationally needed) professional knowledge and/or technical craftsmanship should be in financial debt due to direct and indirect costs of that education and training They leave school with a mountain of debt, and then we unreasonably complain they're too greedy and materialistic?


Respectfully, Supposn

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Red:

1. That's basically what ROTC scholarships are.
2. I would be okay with non-military public organizations offering similar "deals" as a way to encourage prospective college matriculators to pursue careers in whatever disciplines are in demand at any given moment.
3. While it'd have benefited me -- both when I went to university and later as I put my kids through college -- what you've described is, IMO, too broad to be fair. For example, when my wife and I first started planning for our kids' college educations, we targeted $80K/child per year to cover their tuition, room, board, books, and ancillary costs. One of my kids applied for and received an NROTC scholarship that paid for his tuition, thus eliminating ~2/3rds of what I had to pay for him to go to college and leaving me with a nice chunk of change that I was able to allocate to other uses. Insofar as I had the money to pay for my kids' college educations, I think were my kids given a "regardless of wealth" non-competitive merit-based scholarship such as you've described, it'd have been unfair to others who don't have the money and who do have kids who are similarly prepared for college as were my kids.
4. I'm fine with competitive scholarships being awarded without regard to wealth/income. My kids were quite (by my estimation) assertive about applying for merit-based private scholarships, and that they received them didn't offend my sensibilities about equity for my kids are high performers. That some organizations were willing to give them money because they were didn't bother me at all. (It suited my kids too because they knew I was already predisposed to spending on them the money I'd saved to fund their educations. They correctly sussed that to the extent they reduced the outlay I'd have to make to any given school, they'd have no trouble convincing me to spend it on something else that benefitted them.)

Blue:
What?

What do you think of as "indirect costs?" I think of them as costs incurred for anything other than tuition, books, lab and/or facility fees for classes taken, lowest-cost transportation to and from school (provided one doesn't live on campus or walking/bicycling distance to it), notebooks, a computer, Internet access, writing instruments and paper.

ataraxia said:

It should be more affordable to more people.

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There are only so many ways for that to happen:

1. Price of tuition, books, etc. increases at slower rates or decrease
2. Students (their families) obtain money to pay for whatever be the costs for which they haven't the money to pay:
   • Private funding
   • Public funding
3. Students matriculate to less pricey institutions -- less pricey in terms of tuition as well as room and board.

Say what you want about it, but were I aware that I didn't have the money to pay for a "big bucks" college or university

• I wouldn't accept an offer of admission to one that didn't give me enough so that my total costs of attending were equal to or less than the total costs I'd incur going to a less dear institution.
• I wouldn't apply to many "big bucks" institutions.

I mean, really. As an undergrad, it doesn't much matter where one goes so long as one goes to a decent-enough school (in the U.S., damn near all colleges are) because it's not as though the body of information taught to an undergrad differs by where one goes to college, and strong critical thinking skills are what one is supposed to have developed prior to matriculating, thus that isn't what one is there to learn (if it were, everyone'd be required to take philosophy). Accordingly, less wealthy applicants really should "get over" the notion of going to "a" top ranked school, although applying to one's "dream" schools for which one has at least met the basic objective requirements (high school grades, SAT/ACT scores, and extracurricular leadership activities) and waiting to see what assistance package one receives from it/them is reasonable. That said, when all the "dream" schools packages leave one having to assume tens of thousands in loans and one's in-state school's tuition is less than the loans one'd have to assume, it doesn't make sense to enroll at the "dream" school.


There's also the matter of kids feeling compelled to attend a school so distant that they have to incur room and board costs as well as the tuition and educational materials costs. I think to myself, "Now that child and his/her family isn't made of money and they all know it. Why the hell is s/he so instant on going to a school that isn't close to home?" It's one thing if one lives "in the middle of nowhere" and there's no school nearby, but it's somewhat hard to live that far from a decent-enough college, and the quantity of folks who do is quite small.

Mycroft said:

Who do you suggest pay the costs?

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Taxpayers. A free society only works if the populace isn't a bunch of morons. As well the kid you educate today is not likely to be the adult who robs and murders you when you're old and feeble.

Xelor said:

There are only so many ways for that to happen:

1. Price of tuition, books, etc. increases at slower rates or decrease
2. Students (their families) obtain money to pay for whatever be the costs for which they haven't the money to pay:
   • Private funding
   • Public funding
3. Students matriculate to less pricey institutions -- less pricey in terms of tuition as well as room and board.

Say what you want about it, but were I aware that I didn't have the money to pay for a "big bucks" college or university

• I wouldn't accept an offer of admission to one that didn't give me enough so that my total costs of attending were equal to or less than the total costs I'd incur going to a less dear institution.
• I wouldn't apply to many "big bucks" institutions.

I mean, really. As an undergrad, it doesn't much matter where one goes so long as one goes to a decent-enough school (in the U.S., damn near all colleges are) because it's not as though the body of information taught to an undergrad differs by where one goes to college, and strong critical thinking skills are what one is supposed to have developed prior to matriculating, thus that isn't what one is there to learn (if it were, everyone'd be required to take philosophy). Accordingly, less wealthy applicants really should "get over" the notion of going to "a" top ranked school, although applying to one's "dream" schools for which one has at least met the basic objective requirements (high school grades, SAT/ACT scores, and extracurricular leadership activities) and waiting to see what assistance package one receives from it/them is reasonable. That said, when all the "dream" schools packages leave one having to assume tens of thousands in loans and one's in-state school's tuition is less than the loans one'd have to assume, it doesn't make sense to enroll at the "dream" school.


There's also the matter of kids feeling compelled to attend a school so distant that they have to incur room and board costs as well as the tuition and educational materials costs. I think to myself, "Now that child and his/her family isn't made of money and they all know it. Why the hell is s/he so instant on going to a school that isn't close to home?" It's one thing if one lives "in the middle of nowhere" and there's no school nearby, but it's somewhat hard to live that far from a decent-enough college, and the quantity of folks who do is quite small.

Maps of Colleges and Universities in the U.S.




All Colleges and Universities in the U.S.

U.S. Population Density Map

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A number of kids I know, my children included, opted to get their non-major course work done at inexpensive community colleges and then transfer to "good" schools for their final 1.5 or 2 years. It helps that in NY transferring from a community college to a school in the state university system - which is quite good - is a nobrainer and students already in the system get preference over kids who aren't.