“… The hard truth, alas, is that higher education cannot possibly be free. In time, the Rockies may crumble, Gibraltar may tumble — but no politician’s promise or electoral mandate will ever make the costs of providing a college education vanish. There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. That has always been the first pillar of economic wisdom.” …
People are reporting this as “political”. Every topic that has anything to do with the law is political in theory and, more often than not on big issues, in practice. Politicians make the laws. Clearly if there is going to be free tuition, say for community colleges to start like Tennessee has IIRC, it is going to happen because Congress votes for it and the President OKs it. The trick is to discuss the feasibility and/or the desirability of such a development without getting into either particular politicians or liberal/conservative generalities. That is when the thread will devolve into broad-based nonsense. - FC
“A promise of ‘free’ tuition is merely a promise to stick someone else with the tab.”
“…making any good or service free encourages people to waste it. No product was ever valued more highly by being given away for nothing.”
“If college becomes ‘free,’ even more people can attend college without bothering to become educated and without acquiring any economically meaningful skills.”
K-12 is not higher education. K-12 is basic education and it is fine that a basic education is free. But, if you want more, you should pay for it and if not take your chances in the work force without it. Even now, as it is, it is amazing how little some folks are willing to do to actually earn their grades. I speak from 20+ years FT as a CC teacher.
Making it free would make it even worse because people do not put in much of an effort now. People will run around like mo’s looking for Pokemon’s and goofing around but won’t prepare in any way shape or form for class and sit there, in class, as if it is the teacher’s job to entertain them.
No, it is not free. Someone has to pay for it. Let the user/consumer/student pay for it since they are getting the benefits of it. Thanks for posting this OP.
The system works fine for people that study. There are numerous ways, that have been discussed here ad nauseam, and if discussed again the same parties would say the same things, to mitigate the costs of higher ed.
There is such as thing as savings.
Educ IRA.
529’s.
Deserving students can also get awards and scholarships.
Going to a CC for the first two years, and living at home and working and saving money, cuts the total costs down significantly too.
That is my usual song an dance on this issue although I have softened a lot because even if a family does all that there is still no way to pay for big ticket schools. That bothers me but giving away higher education free surely will not fix that problem.
Then, of course, the fact that we have a national debt around $19T means it might be time to stop spending on anything and everything we think we want. If you weigh 450 lbs, it might be time to consider a diet.
Neither K-12 education nor public roads and libraries are “free.” All of these are paid for with tax dollars. Making college education “free” will simply shift the cost to somebody else. That’s all well and good as long as it’s “the rich” who end up getting stuck with the bill, but as Margaret Thatcher once said, “sooner or later you run out of other people’s money.”
We’re struggling with having two kids in college starting this fall. We were doing well, but the recession hit us HARD. We still have $27,000 in business loans. We haven’t had a chance to save up for retirement OR college for several years. We’ve taken out a HELOC, whoo hoo. We have to hope our house value keeps going up, I guess.
As with every “can’t be done” article, this one assumes that free college has to come from the same expensive bloated mess of a system that the current model comes from. That’s just untrue.
I exchanged some Facebook comments with some friends a while back concerning tuition, and in the mid 1980s tuition at Ole Miss was less than $500 a semester, or $1,000 a year; today it is $7,644 a year, or roughly three times the rate of inflation. I knew some guys who were paying their way through school on the “co-op” plan back then, but I’m not sure that would be possible today. I know that back then I viewed tuition as a “non-expense,” compared to the cost of rent, fraternity bills and so forth. That’s not the case anymore.
The reason tuition was so cheap was because the colleges were receiving a lot of funding from the state. That funding has dried up, and schools have been required to raise tuition. So there’s something to be said for the notion for more support for higher ed.
On the other hand, Ole Miss now has a lot of very generous need and merit based scholarships, and in fact it is still one of the cheaper schools around. Mississippi has a good system of community colleges, and middling students can often attend these for free or at very low cost. Not every student should go to college, and not every student should start out at a four-year college. As a society we seem to lack the will to set standards or erect gates, and so the only gate we have is a financial one.
In the end, if going to college is not a good financial choice, one should not go. If one doesn’t believe one will earn enough to pay back one’s loans, one shouldn’t take them out. I’m not saying the current system is perfect, but totally free education isn’t the answer, either.
I really find it disingenuous how the author chooses to use the term “free” when the obvious proper term is “public good.” As in, something paid for by the government with tax money. Very few people are under the illusion that free tuition will not mean higher taxes - the idea is simply that the government as a not-for-profit entity will do a better job of ensuring the most positive outcome for society than institutions that have money in mind (whether or not they are actually for profit).
Whether or not you agree… that’s a different matter.
Why not start slowly and make Junior colleges completely free first. Accept only instate, eliminate all frills completely, eliminate dorms, sports and all other ECs, office of finaid, health, etc. Set up some reasonable criteria for admission and see what happens.
