“We” always love things. But what “we” don’t love is actually having to pay for them. And “we” especially don’t want to spend the next decade in a debt trap because those frills have to be paid for in the long run.
Anyone who wants to pay to have the “college experience” should have the option to do so… at a private school. Those who don’t want to pay for it shouldn’t have to have those luxuries coupled by force to their education.
@NeoDymium what exactly do you think is a luxury? Having a dorm? Having a choice of majors? A student club is a luxury? I DO NOT see them as luxuries. Those items need to be paid for by the corporations and the ultra rich that skate on taxes. It makes for a better society
Dorms are a luxury, for those that don’t need them. Dorms on campus, rather than a few miles away where they would be cheaper are also a luxury. Lazy rivers and gourmet dining halls are a luxury. Student clubs, not so much, but they aren’t so expensive either unless they require their own infrastructure. Picking majors that are “fun” instead of practical and useful is a (dangerous and unwise) luxury.
And saying “take from the rich to give to the poor” (or better yet, “take from the rich to give to the people that want lazy rivers”) isn’t a policy. It’s just a talking point that won’t solve anything that cannot be implemented.
Skate on taxes? Please explain. How high should the top individual income tax rate be? What should the corporate income tax rate be?
BTW, @NeoDymium Thanks for the detailed response. As you note, the devil is in the details. And I agree the for-profit colleges are the biggest problem.
I do agree that for profit colleges are the biggest problem. @NeoDymium the problem is income inequality and addressing that is a policy. Here is an article from the Brookings institute you may want to read. When the bottom 20 per cent have an income growth of 3.7 per cent and the top 5 per cent have an income growth of 57 that is a problem and policy does need to be developed to deal with it.
This is testimony before the Joint Economic committee. Do you disagree with it Neo?
Here is one quote from the report that is particularly germaine
"Second, the growing levels of income inequality have translated into sizable gaps in educational achievement between the children of the rich and the poor. As the rich amass greater shares of the nation’s wealth, the children of these families enjoy even greater advantages relative to their less economically advantaged peers. This has the potential to perpetuate societal divides and erode social mobility. We must meet these structural challenges with a concentrated effort to invest in future generations "
And this is part of the conclusion
“Expanded access to higher education has been important to keep the supply of college educated workers from falling even further behind the demand, which has yielded large benefits to individuals and also kept the earnings inequality from rising by even more than it has. Again, The Hamilton Project has released a series of papers in the last six months offering policies for expanding college access and affordability that could be considered.”
I assume having a place to sleep and food to eat on campus is a luxury to you. It is not to me.
So you don’t want to change anything but public schools? What if every state had at least a few free options, could they then keep their ‘moneymakers’ (flagships and other good regional schools) open and charge tuition? Hillary’s plan is only that those under a certain income get to go to school for free, so middle class and wealthy students still need somewhere to go, and all of them aren’t Harvard material. Shouldn’t they still be able to go to public school, sleep in a dorm, and pay less than $70k for college? They are paying for it, after all. Shouldn’t they get a choice that isn’t stripped down to the basics?
I think that if there is a free public option for those making under $125k but it is a stripped down version of the current system with no frills, no sports, no extras, you are quickly going to have the country club private schools, and the ‘free’ schools that only poor kids go to. Oh wait, don’t we have that now with many community colleges and urban colleges practically free with Pell and FA, no dorms, no stadiums, no marching bands yet students preferring to borrow money and pay for those extras because that’s the college experience they want?
I don’t object to offering a free option IF all the ways the government currently makes the free option available are put into the free option. Pell grants get paid to the school for tuition. No government subsidized loans because the student is already getting a free education. I do object to free tuition, free books, and a Pell grant on top.
@collegedad13
The author paints in broad strokes and gives not all that many specifics, but yes, I generally agree with the point. However, the difference is that she gives specific policy suggestions, not just “tax the rich” which is merely a talking point. If you want to propose a payment structure that involves the wealthy paying more, in a manner that is effective at generating revenue and not just punitive or spiteful, then I’d like to hear it. But “tax the rich” isn’t a policy.
Having that on campus is in fact a luxury. A low-cost apartment five miles from the school (where land is much cheaper than right on the university) with a bus route to the school, with a cafeteria that provides basic meals to students who can’t afford them, is meeting the needs of students who need the money. A fancy dorm on campus with a lazy river and a fitness center and a gourmet dining hall is a luxury.
Out of pure curiosity, which college(s) have lazy rivers?
@twoinanddone
Some reading from previous posts of mine, that will give you more specifics on my suggestions, because I have the bad luck of posting long essays on the last post of the page:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/19814557/#Comment_19814557
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/19822482/#Comment_19822482
If there are luxury options at public schools, there should be a means to opt out of them. That will certainly damage that “university community” feel, but frankly that’s much less important than education. Also they can go to cheaper private schools - there are a lot of them and plenty of them can give a fancy “country club” education for $70k without having to be Harvard caliber or top 1%.
Oh man, is that a false equivalency. Let me just break it down.
So community colleges are a weird sort of omnibus for a lot of different purposes, mainly:
And as I mentioned previously, a university caters to the following three groups:
See a lot of overlap between those two groups? I don’t.
Maybe they pay to go to university not because they want all those extras but because they want a Bachelors, Masters, or higher degree?
^ I don’t know the percentages, but don’t forget dual enrolled high school students getting ahead. Many of them want to go to a university and get a well-paying job eventually. It sort of fits into your category 2, just a bit different.
A quick google search brings up schools including University of North Florida, Arizona State, Louisiana State, University of Central Florida, and Texas Tech.
http://www.collegerank.net/best-college-pools/
Check some of these out.
I thought the Buff pool at the University of Colorado was over the top, since it is in the shape of CU’s buffalo logo. But it looks shabby compared to the pool at UT/Austin.
Not on this list, so Google up the pictures of the new outdoor pool at LSU. Lazy river in the shape of the LSU logo!!
Bernie’s and Hillary’s ideas would be a disaster. Obama’s idea, however, makes a lot of sense to me. Everyone gets two years to use for community college or tech school. Basically 13th and 14th grade.
“Free” is pretty hard to resist. So once middle class families start sending their kids to CC, the current bloated four year university model will get the overhaul that is so long overdue.
I don’t buy your 3 types of people who go to universities, @ neodyium. There are those who want to go to universities to party. There are those who have no interest in a career at all, just want to take courses (degree seeking or not) because they like to learn (older people who want a degree, athletes who return to finish a degree but already have a career, etc). There are still a lot of people who go to college just to find a spouse. Your description is of a factory, just producing future workers.
There are urban universities that are providing all those things you list that community colleges provide - remedial education, cheaper tuition, no dorms or sport. Metro State in Denver even has a few sports and a few dorms, probably has more part time students than full, has remedial courses, has high school students, and can be free for an instate student with the state stipend ($75/credit) and a Pell grant. It’s a full university, no lazy river (but some other nice amenities because even students wanting a cheaper or free education still want Starbucks and nice walkways and good parking and movies), grants BA’s and BFA’s and masters degrees. Why should anyone get to say “but I want to go to CU (or CSU, or Mines) and in order for the government to provide it to me for free, you must strip all the extras away from all the other students to make it affordable (free) to me.” Your version of ‘public university’ is available at Metro, which is only 30 miles away, so why shouldn’t the other ‘sleep away’ college also be available to those who want it and are willing to pay for it?
There are other state universities between the ‘free’ Metro and ‘lazy river’ CU too (CU’s ‘lazy river’ is actually a $1M pool shaped like a buffalo, but yes, a luxury that student fees pay for). Residents can opt for Northern Colorado or Mesa for about half the cost of CU. Lots of options. California has a variety of options for its residents. Many other states do too. Why can’t states offer both types of public education, free and traditional?
I’m fine with offering free education but not at every public school, and not just for poor or needy students. Offer it to all at some schools. Some middle income or high income earners will take that free offer too but some will be willing to pay more for the buffalo shaped pools.
@northwesty
One of the issues, or perhaps non-issues, with the “free community college” pledge is that it’s almost a non-issue. The maximum Pell grant is in excess of average yearly full-time attendance at a CC. And even if it isn’t, a 1/4 time minimum wage job will easily cover the expenses. So it’s not a particularly expensive proposition for the government to offer “free CC” in its current state. As far as I know, the “free CC” fund the government has set aside is a paltry $100 million, which could be pretty close to enough.
What would make a difference is if there were free CC, and the government were to expand the scope and usefulness of the degree programs offered at community colleges. They are actually much more logistically efficient than universities in what they do, and they could rapidly increase their enrollment with minimal cost overruns. Specifically, I think that community colleges would definitely be equipped to offer some more advanced trade/vocational programs, and to offer certain practicum-heavy Bachelors degrees. That would make a CC degree actually meaningful, as opposed to a stepping stone.
Also, a lot of people already do go through the CC route to save money. It’s more common than a lot of people think it to be.
Sure, there are more because people never fit neatly into a few groups. But those that don’t either don’t really belong in college, or are pretty trivial as far as total numbers go. For example:
Don’t belong in college.
Only a few people have the money AND time AND motivation to do that. Pretty trivial a group as a whole.
Dating and finding spouses isn’t really trivial, but it’s also incidental. People date because they meet each other and want to date, whether or not you explicitly create an environment where they are supposed to do so. In fact, my experience is that any form of explicit pressures towards coupling up don’t really end well. So no, I don’t see much value in people who treat university as a dating service.
All universities provide those qualities to some extent - it’s just that CC-type environments are better suited to doing so efficiently.
“Only 30 miles away” - sounds great for people who have to actually commute from one place to the other. And let’s not even get into the issue of relative educational quality, programs offered, and general other reasons why someone would choose a university over another other than because they want to party and have fun luxuries.
The problem with everything you’re talking about is that you are speaking from the point of view from either those who can afford a ton of luxuries, or those who can take on a lot of loans to do it anyways. The former is perfectly capable of going to private schools. The latter will set themselves back a decade financially because they were foolish enough not to understand finances at 18 years old, a steep price to pay for garden variety teenage stupidity. Most people, even middle and upper middle class, don’t have the kind of luxuries that would allow them to put more than one child at a time through college without severe financial hardships. That’s a pointless and unreasonable tax on wanting to raise children who go through college. And that’s not even talking about those for whom even one child is expensive.
The primary purpose of a university is to provide an education and to conduct research. It has a lot of incidental qualities of merit, like social interaction, educational outreach, community service, sporting events, etc. Providing a “4 year luxury country club” is not one of its main purposes.
Universities can always offer the same within one school. Offer people a “luxury premium” tuition cost and allow them to have those fancy things they want. Of course, the problem arises when it leads to additional infrastructure that everyone has to pay for, which significantly undermines the educational value of those schools.
I’m sure all 37 million people who owe student debt (7 million in default, $1.2 trillion owed total) are really happy to pay all the money for all the fancy things they can’t afford, just so people who go to school for fun can have them.
Private school. Lazy river luxury dorms don’t deserve taxpayer subsidies.
What is the ultimate goal with free college (for all or some sub-set thereof)?
^So the graduates not burdened with heavy student debt See http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/06/08/heaviest-college-debt-burdens-fall-on-3-types-of-students
And so that upward mobility is not suffocated by the time someone’s 18 years old.
The big questions we need to be asking are:
(1) In a society where entitled kids take out huge loans to go to prestigious schools they can’t afford to get degrees that have almost no marketable value, will there really be a demand for bare-bones colleges? Or, are we really trying to keep up with the Joneses and have our kids get a free Michigan or UVA degree?
(2) Do we trust the federal government to have the ability to actually cost-effectively implement this without raising taxes on the middle class (who already saw their health insurance premiums and deductibles skyrocket after Obamacare)?
(3) Will the costs of everything other than tuition skyrocket and make high-quality public universities even more out of reach for the middle class?
(4) What happens when kids flunk out after the first year?