One question - where are all these supposed new college graduates going to work to justify these degrees?
I went to an investor conference a couple months ago and the best estimates were that for the next 10 years we forecast viable employment for only 48 - 52% of in-country college grads. By viable employment, it means employment consistent with the student’s degree and costs to attend, i,e., ability to live and also to pay off loans etc. The other 50% of grads will be wholly underemployed and fully half of the jobs they will have to take would not require any college at all.
I get the sentiment of a more highly educated population, but educated to what end? If the end is to get a better job, higher pay and better life, then providing free college will not meet that goal because it will cost more money than the students get in ROI for the degree.
I am not against college, but based on the best case scenario projections, college for everyone will only lower the pay scale of people with college degrees because they will glut the market. It will also lower the standards of college because some 40% of high school students cannot even handle low-end community college work now. To accommodate them, the standards in college would have to be lowered.
I do think people need to think long and hard about the fact that not everyone (only 50% of students) really benefits from a college degree and the labor force has all that it can absorb already. Adding more supply does little or nothing for those with the unmarketable degrees.
I think I know the next nagging question - if the labor force has all it can absorb, why is there so many foreign workers and the call to increase foreign workers with degrees and particular skills? Answer: foreign workers are cheaper because there is an exemption that does not require that they be paid healthcare and even payroll taxes are reduced or eliminated for 3 to 5 years; thus, foreign workers are some 20 - 30% cheaper to employ to get the same productivity output.
In short, the government makes it more advantageous to hire foreign workers over Americans. It has been this way for some 20+ years now - started in earnest with NAFTA and has accelerated with each free trade bill. Therefore, unless this is aspect of the employment market is changed, more American students with college degrees will not solve their long-term employment issues and will just change the characteristics of the many unemployed and underemployed to include college degree holders.
Do you really think a school could be run with the ‘free, bare bones’ students only getting the education but the other half of the school benefiting from luxuries? And that won’t create a class system?
A state like Mich could be set up to offer the best profs and the best labs and the best research money going to the smaller public schools or the urban campuses. I still think more students AND professors would chose to be at UMich or MSU for that experience.
To keep students from overborrowing to attend a school with more luxuries, there is one way to do it - get rid of student loans. Take all choice away from them in that they can go for free to the closest school to their homes or they can pay full price at another school, but there will be no government help beyond the free tuition at the nearest school. Sort of like K-12 is now. You can go to your zoned school, you can try for a magnet or charter school, but if you want something else you have to pay for it yourself.
And that takes the choice away from the poor too. They get fewer choices, but so do all the others unless they can pay for it.
In part, so poor kids like me can go to college and not spend 8 years getting their degrees part time.
I was full pell. It didn’t even cover tuition at any of our decent 4 years.
ETA: Also, since it’s been brought up, passage of the ACA allowed me to get insurance for the first time in years and saved my life. Loss of insurance at this point would lead me to death. “Middle class” families (as in real median income) are benefiting. CC “middle class” families might be seeing an increase.
A system of “free” college will almost certainly have to be coupled with a significant tightening of admissions standards. I think for universities, the net effect will be a significantly smaller class size as they cut down on the weak students who took underwater basket weaving majors. Majors like English and History which are useful but have trouble in the job market will have to cease to cater to weaker students and significantly expand the scope of what is expected of graduates.
More people will end up going to college in total, but not all of them at the university level. And all the talented university-grade students will be capable of finding a seat at a high-quality school without having to break the bank to go there.
Party students will be on their way. I don’t think a university should be catering to them.
In general the results of government run “socialized” education programs have been highly positive. It’s one of the few fields where government allocation is superior to market incentives. Private schools will continue to be superior to the government option, but it’s easier to be better when you are significantly wealthier and catering to a small and well-behaved (financially, e.g. not many debt defaults) subset of the population.
The existence of the public option keeps the private options honest. That is, in fact, one of the reasons the ACA was not as effective as it could have been - if the government doesn’t set a baseline price then the insurance companies will just charge as much as they feel they can get. That’s not to say it hasn’t generally been a good thing - no overhaul of the scale of the ACA ever goes smoothly in its first few years. There will always be chaos in the time that it takes plans to adapt to reality. This is true with everything.
Taxes will increase, but tuition costs will be gone. That will be a net gain even with higher taxes.
No. Fees will have to be associated with tuition and therefore come out of the tuition stipend the university receives. Housing will be provided for students who need it, but in standard apartment complexes on cheaper land, not on on-campus luxury resorts. Most universities have decent public transport infrastructure to transport students from those apartments to the school. A cafeteria on campus will be provided to serve cheap but nourishing meals to students with trouble paying for food. Beyond that, expenses are small or optional.
Not much different from what happens now. They leave the school and have to be readmitted if they want to go back. The community college option will always be open to them.
@awcntdb
The simple answer is that colleges will have to do a better job of matching incoming students to projected job openings. Nowadays, we basically let students do whatever they want, good luck finding employment. Universities will have to do a much more deliberate job, in at least a broad sense, of matching skills learned in college to openings in the market. College is not merely job training and good degrees are wide-ranging in their applications, but there are nevertheless only so many people of any given skillset that are necessary for the country. Right now, universities are only too happy to let people get a degree that won’t do them any good. That needs to stop.
As for the larger economic issue of globalism, that is an issue that goes far beyond the scope of education and is going to come to a head in the next decade or two. Europe before the US, but it’s on the way here as well.
Maybe it could be run that way, maybe not. If not, then it shouldn’t be done on government money anyways. And class systems always exist - the idea of a classless society is an illusion. Even communist countries didn’t have that.
The best profs and the best labs and the best research money does not require luxury dorms.
That just completely removes a wide range of options for students and creates more of a class system than you think a half-and-half school would make. That system used to exist - it just meant that only the wealthy and middle class could even go to school. And that’s not even addressing people who live in low-population areas, kids who want to go to expensive schools like flight/law/med, logistical troubles with getting to the school, living near a university that can’t offer you what you want, disparities between whether you happen to live near a high or low quality university, and any other assortment of money issues.
Removing choice so that other people can preserve their luxury school feel is not the right way to do it.
@neodymium you should check some of your facts. The pool at Arizona State is at an apartment complex. The pool at Louisiana state and Texas Tech is fully funded by the students via self imposed fees. A low cost apartment five miles from campus would provide logistical nightmares. Are you opposed to salad bars and vegan food selections? Eating healthy is important. Also exercising is important.
Here is a better idea. Cap executive pay in a corporation at 30 times what the average worker makes. Take the excess money and use it to make college more affordable. Raise the marginal tax rate for the top 5 per cent income producers by 3 per cent. I am sure that would generate billions.
I have one kid at UCLA and one at Harvard. At both places the dorm rooms are small. I have yet to see gourmet food at either place. So I am not quite sure what you are talking about. Zuckerberg, Gates, and Buffett all want to give virtually all of their fortunes back to society and education. It is too bad there are not more people like that
@collegedad13
The lazy river issue is more of a snark than something that is so widespread that it actually matters. Someone asked about actual lazy rivers, in a discussion that used lazy rivers as the poster boy for excess spending (by both sides, mind you) so I answered with a list of schools that have them.
How exactly is an apartment five miles away a logistical nightmare? It’s a perfectly reasonable distance to travel to get to school on a public bus. It’s a fairly common living arrangement for a lot of people.
I do support healthy eating in general, and the option for students to get free nourishing meals as necessary. I oppose expensive meals and gourmet dining halls that drive up costs. “Health fads” and basic healthy eating are not necessarily the same foods, and one is much cheaper than the other. And I have seen plenty of fancy eating halls in every university I have been to - not sure how you haven’t, there are even lots of posts right here on CC comparing luxury dining halls.
Executive compensation, I agree with you but… good luck. Also it probably won’t be as much money as one would hope.
@4kidsdad The article you linked indicates that college debt isn’t a problem for your typical undergrad student. 65% of people with $50k or more in debt are graduate students. So the solution is to provide free undergrad for 80% of students?
For profits are also a big problem according to that article. I agree with that. I think we should consider whether any for profit institutions should exist. I am not sure I know anyone who had a successful experience at a for profit institution. Certainly know a lot more who had horrible experiences. Typical experience goes like this: pay a lot of money (and really incur a lot of debt) for a “degree” that isn’t marketable or that pays at or near minimum wage (that often could have been gotten – and is gotten – by people walking off the street with no such degree). Even if we don’t close them all down, a huge spotlight needs to be shined on them so that people know what they are getting.
Last group with student loan debt issues are dropouts. 41% of kids don’t graduate 4 year institutions within 6 years. If they aren’t graduating because they need to drop out, take classes part time to be able to work or have to work so much it gets in the way of studying, free college would likely help. But many of these kids simply cannot handle to academics of college? Will free college help these kids?
@usualhopeful Article noted above indicates that debt isn’t an issue for the typical undergrad student. So why must we provide free college to 80% of kids to keep from suffocating upward mobility? And unless you implement measures (such as those proposed by NEO) to offset upward price pressures that “free” subsidies would place on costs, the cost of college issue only gets worse, doesn’t it? Other than NEO, I do not see anyone touting the bare bones approach to college education.
@NeoDymium How many kids are capable of graduating from college who are not going today because they cannot afford it? How does that number compare to the 80% of kids who would go for free with the proposal being discussed?
Creating supply doesn’t mean demand will follow. We have more college graduates now than we do jobs that require college degrees.
The article noted above doesn’t seem to indicate that student loan debt is a significant issue for the typical undergrad. So why do debt concerns lead to a call for free college for all (or 80% of students)?
Your bare bones approach to college education may work (though both of us admit we do not know). But to me, what is more important is I don’t see any significant number of people talking about it. All I hear are more subsidies is what we need to help with high college costs ignoring the reality that those subsidies will create upward pressure on college costs.
@neocymium Who is going to set up and pay for the bus system to the five mile away dorm? At UCLA they have a blue bruin bus that runs every 10 minutes or so over a much shorter loop. So you are going to develop a bus system that runs every 10 minutes or so to carry 10,000 kids back and forth to campus. Lets say a kid has a class at 9, noon and 3 what are they going to do during their down time? It is not really practical to wait for a bus,then take a fifteen or twenty minute bus ride and then do the reverse and come back for a two hour break. How many buses and drivers do you think we need for that? 50 maybe? 100 maybe? It is a nightmare.
What exactly do you mean by a luxury dining hall? I ate at Anneburg at Harvard once . The building is beautiful but the food struck me as regular dining hall food. Do you consider fresh fruits and vegetables to be a luxury or health fad ? I really don’t know what you mean by a luxury dining hall. If you could explain it would be great.
This really comes down to whether we correct income inequality in this country to pay for a first class educational system or not ? It also comes down to the choices we make. Are more weapons of mass destruction more important to our society or is a quality college educational system funded by the government?
@collegedad13 Do you agree that subsidies put upward pressure on prices? And if so, what should be done to limit such effects with respect to free college?
In terms of income inequality, the article linked here yesterday (I believe) notes the educational achievement differences based on incomes. With free k-12 educations and achievements that differ based on incomes, is there reason to believe that 4 years of additional free education will significantly bridge the educational achievement gap? Should we send everyone to college? If everyone goes, won’t that increase the need for graduate school to separate from the pack?
Alright, it’s great that this issue came up because graduate students are an interesting conundrum that are worth addressing. Long story short is that the government would probably have to pay for them as well
It would not surprise me to find that graduate students are more expensive. They take a genuinely large amount of resources to train up to par and to be ready to work. But at the same time, unlike Bachelors which are more like trainees, they are fully capable workers who can contribute as students. PhD’s in science and engineering, for example, pay for themselves through the research they do as part of university grants. Other graduate/professional students would also be well-suited to perform some service.
One surprising country that is actually a great example to look at is Cuba and its medical school program. Cuban medical students are often required to go work with the World Health Organization on treating impoverished people in foreign countries. Granted, part of the motivation is that the Cuban government gets paid by the WHO to do this, but it doesn’t change the fact that they are doing a remarkable service for the world in the process. Not to mention it’s a very solid experience for the doctors themselves, who come back with a lot more experience on how to apply their medical knowledge to critical situations and how to be efficient with money.
Something similar could be helpful in the US graduate programs. Medical students could go abroad or in impoverished areas inside the country and perform medical service in their later years as part of their graduation requirement, before residency (or perhaps as part of it). Law students could help with a lot of issues of clerical services and public policy all over the nation. Engineering and science graduate students could contribute to public works projects that aren’t exactly capable of attracting the top tier talent on the public dollar. Psychologists can offer plenty of services - there are more than enough issues there that people just don’t have the money to deal with. Basically people who have skills that would be useful in the market can find plenty of community service work that they could do to offset the cost of educating them. And it would be a solid thing to add to the resume that I’m sure most employers would look upon quite positively.
Of course, the issue of extending the programs is a real one. Medicine and law are the easiest - just make med school 6 years out of high school with no Bachelors, and law school 5-6 years out of high school with no Bachelors. Traditional Masters degrees, they will probably have to run concurrently to the studies and require that students take at least two years at the school. It would take a lot of effort but I think the government could find plenty of use for them to justify educating them on the public dollar.
My opinion is that most of them just need to close down. Obama talked about how there are a few bad apples among a general trend of good schools. I think he was sugarcoating - they are almost all bad.
You might notice the trend that most people who have the most issues with student debt defaults are those for whom their education didn’t really work out. So yes, free college would help them.
If they’re not meant for university, then they’re not meant for university. At least they won’t have to pay for the years they tried in vain. And the CC/trade/vocational option should remain open to them. Perhaps they should be encouraged towards that option if their ability to succeed at university is in doubt. As long as the CC->university path is open to them, that won’t be an issue.
I know a lot of people like that. A lot of them aren’t kids, but people who are older and would like to go to school but just don’t have the opportunity. They might have children of their own, or bills to pay, or just a rotten experience with parents that didn’t support them as well as they needed. They are fully capable of the academic rigor but just can’t afford to take on the debt. They tend to be much more aware of the issue of debt and having to pay it, than 18 year olds.
You’re looking at it only from the perspective of people who already go to college. The issue is that there are also a lot of people who could go but don’t because of student debt.
Ties into my point earlier in this response. There are a lot of people who go who shouldn’t. There are a lot of people who should but don’t because they can’t afford it. Socialized education plus the related policies as specified would fix a lot of those issues. Though you are correct that a system that would be just “college as it is now but free” would be a disaster.
No one knows for sure how things would actually work out. But this general system has a pretty solid track record where implemented. I think it has as solid a chance as anything.
The state and local public transportation infrastructure, with the university filling the gaps. Five miles is not that far by bus. Buses are not the most expensive thing in the world and they cost far less than expensive real estate.
Could be every 30 minutes. Class times are generally once every hour and a half so it would mostly work out.
Talk about first world problems. I’m sure most people can figure out how to occupy themselves for 5 hours at a time. I did when I had those kinds of gaps in my schedule.
Having a car or a dorm is much better but it’s not really necessary. You’d be perfectly fine without those.
That sounds like a perfectly reasonable expansion to public transportation to me. It would serve both students and the local population so it’s an absolutely solid infrastructural investment. That would be pretty easy to find funding for given that most large universities are already massive public transportation hubs.
Luxury buildings, both in construction and maintenance costs. People have to work there and pay for upkeep. And if you have them, someone has to pay for them to be used. That tends to lead to people having to occupy the dorms around them, even if the halls themselves aren’t hugely expensive. And they often are.
Educational overhaul is definitely one of the major political issues right now. The will for change exists at least in principle.
I don’t see where having a dorm 5 miles from a school would cost less than having them on campus. Most campuses own quite a bit of real estate. Big a dorm (or hey, use the dorms that are already built on almost every campus in America!) and make the children walk. No buses, no need for transportation.
I thought the entire idea was to provide the same system as Germany or Finland - no dorms, no free meals, no fancy labs, no rec centers, advising, counseling, campus police. Large class sizes, no office hours for professors, no TA’s.
Now the argument is that only smart poor people get to go to college, that the public schools will not provide schooling for average students who want to study history because there aren’t jobs. AND we taxpayers will be paying for master’s degrees (and meals? rooms?) for as long as these students want.
Ok, so here’s the deal. A giant part of the cost of any given real estate is the land itself, and another giant part is trying to make it acceptable to the city. Land can be much, much more expensive than the actual construction - where I live it’s about 75% of the cost of residential properties, in some places with extremely high COL it can be way more than that. Another thing is that the closer it is to the university, the more it has to fit in with extremely specific requirements. In the modern system, the government basically plans out cities and has specific plans for what they want to be built in any specific area - you can only build a house on residential land, an apartment complex on land that is approved for that purpose, etc. And obviously, the closer it is to the university the more impressive it has to look, because imagery matters.
The further you go from the university, the more options you have. Within a five or ten mile radius, there are plenty of reasonable places you could build living arrangements for much cheaper than you can on or near the university. Public transportation is relatively cheap and useful for more than just the college population, so buses are trivial compared to the cost of expensive real estate.
Um… no?
I never mentioned Germany or Finland and their model because that’s not what I’m suggesting. I draw ideas from a few of them - West European (France Germany UK), Nordic (Norway Sweden Switzerland), and Soviet - but by no means have I advocated replicating them. They are different systems with different circumstances and while they can teach you something, replicating them doesn’t do you much good. And furthermore I could give you some pretty scathing criticism of each system and their weaknesses. But I don’t think anyone cares; the educational shortfalls are a matter for those respective countries to sort out. Instead, I try to highlight some things they do correctly, and a few challenges that arise with those programs that need to be properly addressed. Basically, I try to stick to policy alone because that’s all that matters.
The term “bare bones” is also used, but it’s not my term. I used it once, to describe the hypothetical consideration of “what is the bare minimum a college would need to have?” That terminology seems to have stuck. But I prefer the much-maligned but also more accurate descriptor of “socialized education.” Since that term will obviously evoke the internal instinctual aversion of people to socialism, we can just refer to it as a “free college” program. With reforms.
Smart poor people should get to go to university over dumb rich/middle class, yes. That shouldn’t be controversial in the slightest because smart people should go to school over the not-so-smart. The CC system would be expanded to better cater to those less capable students so that they too get an education, at a level that will be suitable to them.
The government is already subsidizing your education. You might not notice because you still have to pay tuition but the government is putting money into it as well. Is that fair so that people can study history and not have a paying job afterwards? I would say no, and so would a lot of other people.
My point about history majors on the last page was that it will no longer be a kind of major where you go just to get a degree without having to do much work. It will have a much more advanced scope of what it covers to better address the issue of the job market and to provide the kind of academic rigor that will make the program meaningful. I’m sure not too many people would object to more coverage of the applications of history in meaningful ways, such as a required practicum on working on making public policy. That will of course also be coupled with a decrease in the number of students who are part of that program because they just don’t care to do anything more involved, which I don’t see as an issue.
It seems you missed a lot of the more in-depth discussion on how to justify funding for the masters degrees. That is an issue in and of itself but it seems that you mostly just glossed over it.
Providing simple meals to people who aren’t able to afford food is ridiculous? I think not. Maybe they could just get food stamps instead if you think that’s better. The difference is pretty trivial and more about just making sure that poor students don’t starve.
@NeoDymium , so your thought process is pretty much that college should be free - but only for the elite and the government should only admit students to fill certain, predetermined, future job openings. Sounds like Soviet-era Russia to me, not America.