Community colleges are virtually free. The cost is so low that almost anyone can afford it. Of course, the quality of classes and one’s peer group at a community college is not as good as at a four year college. My niece sat in on a science class at a community college and one student actually asked if the earth revolved around the sun, something most learn in first or second grade. Yes, some are clearly not college, even community college, material.
What should be free? The academics or the entire college experience? If the answer is just the academics, then could we utilize the internet to accomplish this goal? As for the entire college experience…there my be a struggle to convince taxpayers to fund such a program.
Would we be taking the quality of all public schools down to the level of the community colleges that are discussed here? When everyone goes - and without any “skin in the game” there is little incentive to work hard, attend classes, do what is required to excel. It is not much different than public high school where those who understand the need and the value will excel and those that don’t won’t. The presence of those that won’t or can’t will dilute the experience for those who can driving quality down.
As others have said - nothing is free. The taxpayers will be paying – and paying a lot. If a family can not afford the State directional then community college is better than nothing and is affordable for everyone who is willing to work. If it is no college, masses of debt, or community college - community college wins hands down. High achieving students who do not have the funds are awarded merit to attend 4 year institutions at little or no costs. If students are too poor for college and do not have the academic credentials for merit then community college is a starting point.
The idea that everyone should have the luxury of attending college for the college experience is expensive and will bloat the system with kids who are not ready, willing, or able to do the work. Will those public colleges be quick to kick out the kids who are not attending, not keeping up, not learning – or will they keep taking the “free money” from the government and pass those kids along? This will devalue all undergraduate degrees and advanced degrees will be required for all as the new entryway to the middle class. No cost savings there for anyone.
College is expensive - but in most states (not mine - PA) there are affordable directionals and state schools that will not result in students graduating in massive amounts of debt. The costs have risen because they CAN and people keep applying and figuring out ways to attend - people keep paying thinking that they deserve this expensive, exclusive college experience. When people buy what they can afford - and realize that college does cost money and they are expected to pay for the services that they receive - perhaps they will vote with their money and go somewhere that they and their family can afford - cc, state directional, trade school, hospital nursing program, or 4 year university/college. There is no reason for anyone to be going into debt beyond the federal limits for an undergraduate degree.
Cons, or likely cons:
- Decrease in spending budgets means a decrease in quality: less to pay professors, less to spend on research, less to spend on support staff, etc.
- Watering down the quality of students would mean a decrease in quality.
- The increase in cost brought on by a large increase in the number of students means universities would be forced to increase spending on buildings/physical plant, which would take away funds from academic pursuits, exacerbating the decrease in quality.
- Lots of taxpayer money would be wasted on dropouts. Government already wastes enough of our money.
- It doesn't matter how many kids have bachelor's degrees if businesses are not incentivized to create jobs here or if would-be entrepreneurs are not starting businesses and pumping new jobs into the economy. We'll just have a bunch of new graduates, more than ever, perhaps... without job prospects. We have to reignite the private sector first -- cut regulations, slash the corporate tax rate, whatever is necessary -- to solve so many of our problems. Including giving grads greater job supply so they can more easily match vocation to education. Labor and product demand are always high in this country -- plenty to fund job expansion and startups. The job shortage is due mostly to overzealous taxation and regulation. Lower the barriers to entry and expansion and sustainable private-sector job growth can follow.
We have the best universities and colleges (as a group) in the world.
To lower prices, competition needs to improve to lower the demand for the traditional college experience. That competition is, chiefly:
- Online degree programs
- Community colleges
- Trade schools
Why not give rewards, at least temporarily, to kids who utilize those? That would almost certainly lead to a drop in demand for brick-and-mortar colleges. That, combined with a continued effort to cap/limit outside educational loans, might be enough to lower demand. A sustained drop in demand will force universities and colleges to lower price to meet the drop in demand.
I wasn’t necessarily referring solely to public colleges. It was a general comment, but clearly the cost is usually lower at state colleges for residents. Of course, it is due to increased government funding. How else will fees be reduced other than by increased government funding? As with the argument for universal healthcare, this will meet with resistance by many Americans.
This is likely true at McGill because of the political climate in QC. And yet many Americans love to tout how wonderful McGill is! It is not the case at other Canadian universities with which I’m familiar.
It’s always a political question, though, isn’t it? It would be politically very difficult for the US to go to a “free college” system because access would have to be restricted to the point that many people who primarily see university as a chance for white-collar jobs and upward mobility, rather than as a site of intellectual inquiry, would be locked out. That’s the tradeoff; a lot of students who are currently occupying seats in American colleges wouldn’t be there if standards were tightened. And that’s the only way we could remotely afford free university education: to change the definition of a university and its purposes.
Public universities would become commuter schools like most European universities, and we’d have to get rid of a lot of the cultural expectations Americans have surrounding “the college experience.”
I think we have reached “peak college” anyway. The percentage of Americans with college degrees is about as high as it’s ever going to get. A lot of people are just not college material. The real problem is not that college is not free. It’s that we have poor systems of vocational training for people who lack aptitude for or interest in higher learning (which is probably 75% of the population if we’re really being honest).
Americans have a more individualistic attitude; even if something would be better for society as a whole, we won’t do it if intrudes on our personal liberty. Given the choice, we’d rather be free than educated, free than fed, free than healthy, free than organized. Europeans are willing to give up a bit of freedom for the betterment of all; they choose higher taxes and more services.
Although what services that the government provides in the US are often provided cost-inefficiently. The US government spends per capita on health care as much as or more than most other rich countries – but the other rich countries get universal health insurance out of a similar or lower level of government spending (even with PPACA, in the US, most spending on health care is private).
Free is a manufactured political word. People aren’t free. 
The same with the slogan capitalism is necessary for democracy. That was an advertising slogan. I think the slogan was first used to get rid of a democratically elected government that was socialist.
I don’t think a college education should be free for all. If a college education was free for all, nobody should worry. Most people are still not going to go and graduate.
Are Europeans better off than Americans as a whole? Not just Germany but Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal?
15-20% unemployment rate in many European countries.
“15-20% unemployment rate in many European countries.”
However, those unemployed Europeans may consider that they are better off than Americans. If they can still get plenty of government provided benefits and income regardless of their employment status, they may feel they are better off than if they had to work at lower income/more miserable jobs. Depends upon the culture, I suppose. I don’t know if you can put Europeans into just one group.
So the unemployed have little incentive to look for a job!
Some European countries also have labor laws that create disincentives to hire additional employees, due to heavily protecting existing employees. Since existing employees outvote those who are currently unemployed, it is not surprising that such labor laws that create an insider/outsider labor market continue to exist.
“Without getting at all political, is free college education for all really a good idea?” - there is no way to avoid politics as one group has to pay for it, unless you drop paying to profs. Is anybody out there willing to work for free? I kind of doubt this notion and so the question is by far very very political as somebody will be paying for it.
That depends on how free college is implemented and the priorities/cultural expectations of the society it is implemented in.
For instance, in many European and Asian countries which have/had free college for those who qualified and private colleges, the public colleges were considered the very best academically whereas the private colleges tended to be considered academically inferior.
A few international students even stated that their societies’ views on private colleges in their societies is similar to how many well-informed Americans view US for-profit colleges.
A part of this is also cultural as there’s a strong perception that the government does a far better job of ensuring high academic rigor and standards at the public colleges precisely because there’s no profit motive along with the idea everyone in society benefits from allowing the best most academically high-achieving students who are qualified to benefit from a free college education even if their own children cannot benefit because they didn’t meet the high selection standards.
On the flipside, to ensure academic rigor/standards and ensure they don’t get swamped with mediocre and woefully underprepared students*, those societies and governments have no compunctions about mandating high selectivity and aggressive academic tracking so only the top 20-50% of a given middle school graduating class is placed on the academic track high school for those aspiring to colleges.
This was the case even in some formerly self-proclaimed communist countries such as the Soviet Union or Mainland China(With the exception of the Cultural Revolution period). With exceedingly few exceptions, even those societies aggressively tracked students academically and only those who performed well academically were allowed to continue on the college-prep or higher vocational tracks***.
- In short, avoiding the situation of what happens when one implements open-admissions policies without adequate checks or funding as was the case with CCNY/CUNY's ill-conceived implementation of open-admissions in 1969 which not only caused a rapid decline in its academic reputation and loss of its best Profs/students**, but also eventually caused its free tuition policy for city-residents to cease by 1975.
** Many Profs and high academic achiever students didn’t sign up to teach remedial classes/students or to find their needs for high academic rigor/advanced courses sidelined due to prioritization of the needs of an influx of remedial students. Most ended up voting with their feet by leaving to teach/transfer to more academically respectable/elite colleges.
*** E.g.: The STEM-centered vocational high school geared for students aspiring to attend Soviet officer training so they could become commissioned officers in the Soviet Armed Forces. He started not too long before the Soviet collapse and he ended up emigrating to the US with his family because violent crime conditions in the post-Soviet Russian armed forces was such joining even as an officer candidate/officer would have meant his life expectancy would be in serious question.
Clearly Europeans prefer their free university and free trades apprenticeship systems, youth entering each as appropriate.
Not all. I met a German girl going to high school here in the U.S. because she knew she could get better grades here and therefore not be shut out of college in Germany.
But free college for all is ridiculous. How about free assisted living for all over 65? Free cars for all who live where there is no public transportation? Free computers for all? Pretty soon those wanting free stuff run out of other people’s money.
Are tax funded (they are not free) universities and trade schools better for society? Are we ok with central gov’t deciding what is “appropriate” for your child’s higher educational track in middle school?
[quote=NJSue]
It’s always a political question, though, isn’t it?['quote]
Yes, it is.
[quote=MiamiDAP]
there is no way to avoid politics as one group has to pay for it, unless you drop paying to profs. Is anybody out there willing to work for free? I kind of doubt this notion and so the question is by far very very political as somebody will be paying for it.
[quote]
Of course it is. I don’t understand why NO discussion of free healthcare in other countries was allowed (or free healthcare for all in the US) in the Affordable Care Act threads, yet now free education for all is allowed to be discussed?
Absolutely. Everyone wants to spend other people’s money!