In Georgia, where I live, tuition is greatly subsidized for in-state students with a 3.0 GPA or higher. 90% for 3.0, and 100% for something higher (which I forget exactly. 3.5 maybe?) Admission is very competitive in the flagship school, University of Georgia. As a result, a UGA degree is much more valued than it was in previous years. It’s getting to the point where the average GPA on admission is something like 3.8. Holding onto that scholarship is very important and gives students motivation to work hard. On the other hand, there are also smaller state universities with varying degrees of selectivity, so there are options for those who aren’t the top in their class but still can handle college work. In-state tuition is also not that bad, which comes from tax subsidies as well. So, I would say, free tuition based on tax money can work and is working. Room and board is ridiculous, though, and were I in charge of the state universities, I would go back to traditional dorms and make meal plans optional. That would save a lot of expense for students who either don’t want to or cannot live with their parents during college.
One outlier of a person ‘who did it on their own’ does not an argument make.
These arguments in this thread are the rough breakdown of 'rugged individualism (you can do it if you try hard enough, find the right aid etc.) versus “society owes the collective more”. Find the values you want to uphold, and follow the $$ to not support versus support them.
Having had a child take the public route (UCONN as a matter of fact), and having put siblings through two private colleges, I can agree that the burden of these tuitions, public or private, particularly on families with 3 or more siblings, is enormous. To make it all work, the stars have to align without loss of projected income (which happens), without illness, without child-centered struggles. The argument that every family can do it with proper planning just doesn’t hold weight with me because that argument assumes that whatever plan it is will be able to be executed years after the plan is made. Life is simply more dynamic than the position allows for.
While UConn provided one of my children with an excellent education, and entry into the STEM based PhD program he wanted, a UCONN undergraduate education is best suited, IMHO, for a student who can navigate to find his or her niche. He was able to do so as were some of his mature, self-directed friends. Others however, and those with average UConn GPAs, and mostly liberal arts coursework, have struggled in the job market and some have taken minimum wage employment insufficient to pay even the smallest of loans. Too, the argument that some simply should not have attended college again ignores the dynamic nature of the situation, as certainly every one of those students entered post-secondary school expecting to do well, and confronted obstacles (including poor secondary school training for basic writing skills) which made high achievement in those years a tough road. The road is theirs to travel, but it is made hard as hell by the debt assumed when they began .
The burden, even through the CC to UCONN route, could not be sustained without loans if one assumes an average student to self-fund and to graduate in 4 years. (Valedictorians from Connecticut High Schools can attend UCONN tuition free and there are other in-state discounts for high performers that can reduce the tuition by half). How much debt is then too much? Coming out of UCONN, without parental help, and assuming CC and living at home for the 1st two years, debt is still > 45K. IMHO, too much for a student with a bachelor’s degree entering an uncertain job market.
“Free” public college devalues one of the perks of serving in the military, that is, having your college education paid for when you get out.
I have no problem with college being a perk to those who serve the nation in some capacity, but ‘free’ should be earned.
We can argue the benefits of ‘free’ college forever. But, look at the results in countries where it is done. Germany being the best example.
The average age of a college student is almost 27. German schools are turning out far more liberal arts PhDs than they can possibly absorb. Met two while standing in line at a local (US) restaurant. ‘we get free education and a monthly stipend!’ was a comment. The stipend allowed them to travel around the US in the summer. Unfortunately, they had no job prospects in the major back in Germany upon graduation. One was waitressing, the other wanted to ‘explore painting’. Wonder how the German taxpayers feel about that?
Outcomes for Germany? There is a lot of chatter from university deans that they cannot deliver quality education, as classrooms are packed and budgets very lean. Looking at the top 100 universities in the world, one ONE is in Germany, and it is rated in the 60s. Pretty pathetic for a major economic power.
While the jobs are in mid-level industrial skills, obtain from specialized education, the money continues to shore up the university system, turning out prospective waitresses and painters.
In the US a Bernie-like ‘free’ educational system would have to stand in line for funding, along with entitlements, defense, medical care, environmental initiatives, and infrastructure updates. Turning out more student who want to ‘explore painting’ would be a tough political sale. But, so would limiting access to universities, as is the goal of ‘free’ education. If there are limits, look toward the California UC system for guidance. Most of the campuses are now at or near Asian-decent majorities. No doubt that would become a US trend. Toss that into the mix.
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But note that military recruiting standards are such that only about 30% of young people are eligible to enlist.
I said I would try to avoid that side of the discussion but because it was specifically mentioned I will talk about countries and why they are as they are.
First of all, university rankings are pretty unreliable for foreign institutions because you are comparing apples to oranges. American schools are generally but not always bigger, and also more luxurious, than foreign schools. I’ve seen many different methodologies for rankings, and a lot of them miss the point and especially so for foreign schools. Comparing average test scores is a bias against schools that take weaker students even if they have a lot of the very best students as well. Comparing total research output favors large schools, per capita favors ridiculously small schools, regardless of real valid productivity of the schools. A lot of nations that aren’t the US have some of their best work done not in massive universities, but in small colleges that aggregate many of the most talented people into a very focused school. A ranking that attempts to measure “student life” or spending per student favors luxury and massive budgets. In general they overstate the value of American schools. You can see this by the fact that substantial research progress does not come disproportionately out of the US but out of all nations with substantial funding for research all over the world.
Second, school quality, both real and perceived, comes and goes with the preeminence of the nation it resides in. Oxford and Cambridge, among many other schools all over the world, have suffered from their own nation’s world power waning. Part of this is funding, another part is the ability to attract the most talented people to your research staff. The US is favored for that right now. This has not and will not always be the case. Currently the US can have its pick of high-quality foreign immigration, but this is not a permanent arrangement.
Third of all, Germany specifically has a lot of internal problems that are worth looking at.
- The German model of education has always been inflexible - you have a very hard time changing tracks once you are tracked at an early age. This has little to do with necessity and a lot to do with cultural factors; a lot of these have quite unfortunately been imported into other countries which have modeled their education after the German model. It is very often associated with, but not necessity of, socialized systems that the career paths are inflexible. In recent years there has been a degree of convergence between a more flexible and a more rigid model of education in many countries, but Germany specifically has not really moved in that direction.
- Tying into the issue of inflexibility in educational tracking is the issue in inflexibility of job requirements. For far too many jobs in Germany, you have to have qualifications that go well beyond what you actually need to do the job, just to be able to get the job. To do a job that really requires a high school level of competence you need a degree, and all the exact right certifications. That's bad for getting jobs, even worse for when you have to change jobs and don't have precise requirements. We have a little bit of this issue in the US; it is much worse in Germany.
- The German economy is on the brink of crisis and sustained by unimaginably favorable circumstances. As of now, the German economy is teetering on the edge of stagnation, with a growth rate of about 1%. Which doesn't sound so bad, until you consider the circumstances. It is the most powerful nation in the European Union and one of the major hubs to which high-skilled workers should want to work in (and they do, sort of). The crisis in the rest of the EU is so bad that people are investing a lot of money into German treasury bonds at a *negative* interest rate. That is, they basically get given money that they can spend on whatever projects they want, AND they not only don't have to pay interest on it but they also don't have to give all of it back in the long run. And they're the most industrially advanced and most populous nation in the union. And for all its faults the EU does do a pretty solid job of funding scientific projects, so it's not just leaving its intellectuals to rot.
The problems are many, and I wouldn’t be able to cover all of them, but there are a few worth mentioning. The first is that the European economies (Germany in particular) are generally a lot worse at fostering entrepreneurship than the US. Partially due to badly thought out laws, partially due to excessive taxation, and partially due to lessened funding for the military and military-derivative projects (aerospace, IT, materials research, other generally high-tech stuff that needs military-grade funding to take off really). And a lot of the industry is subsidized by high-risk loans given to other countries (like Greece) that allow them to buy German exports. When repayment time comes along things will be worse.
But the most severe waste in the economy is how badly Germany has dealt with immigration. There is a lot to be said about the current Syrian refugee crisis; I will simply note that an influx of low-skilled workers at a time when the economy is weak and social welfare programs are costly is not a solid plan. But perhaps equally egregious is how badly Germany has wasted its high-skilled immigrants, especially those from the East. Many people from the Soviet bloc were highly educated and moved to the West for economic opportunities; Germany was obviously a popular destination. For example, a lot of Polish workers, including specialists like doctors and engineers, moved to Germany (among other nations) to… clean toilets for minimum wage. Why did they do it? Because the minimum wage in Germany is higher than what they could get in their own country for their own profession. They could instead have bolstered the economy by working in their specialty - if given some support then high-skilled workers are almost always a solid net plus for the country that takes them - but instead their talents were wasted because the German government’s policy was bad at addressing those immigrants.
In the US, while a lot of Soviet bloc immigrants did work in menial jobs for a few years (or for the last 10 years of their working life), most of them who wanted to did get the kinds of jobs that are consistent with their talents. In fact, I know a lot of high-skilled “Russians” (who are almost never actually Russian, by the way) who were in their 60s, who refused a promotion from low-level technology jobs because they wanted to have an easy few years before their retirement. Those who were younger, in their 20s to 50s, usually managed to get to where they wanted to go in time. The US offered them a path forward in a way that Germany does not, and that does damage the economy more than most Germans are willing to admit.
I did mention that I don’t think that the US should “become like Germany” and perhaps this gives you a few reasons why. That isn’t a very good counterexample to why socialized education is a bad thing, because I find that to just be throwing out the baby with the bathwater. That is why I don’t reference specific countries, and why I specifically avoid any form of “other countries do it better” approach here.
This situation is getting worse in the US. Increasing numbers of jobs are now subject to occupational licensing. Even jobs that already require specific occupational licensing have seen the license requirements increased*. And then there is the tendency of employers to require bachelor’s degrees even for jobs where neither specific skills or knowledge nor thinking, learning, and other general skills associated with bachelor’s degrees are required.
*Examples:
Occupational therapy recently changed from requiring a bachelor’s degree to requiring a master’s degree.
Accounting now requires 5 years’ of college credit, though the specific course requirements do not.
Many years ago, law degrees could be earned without needing a bachelor’s degree first.
So you met two Germans at a restaurant and decided that they represented a national trend. Cool story, bro. Didn’t have anything with your anti-intellectual confirmation bias clouding up the atmosphere or anything.
Maybe they actually value the arts. I know it’s hard to imagine.
They have eight major universities ranked in the top 100 for engineering and technology. And as another poster mentioned, “international ranking” systems are not reliable.
I can’t really parse your sentence here. I have no idea what point you’re trying to make.
Oh, now I get it. The whole thing was a set-up for you to explore your deeply-held beliefs about Asians. But I’m confused. Are you talking about “decent Asians” or people of “Asian descent”? Use your words.
I have a niece who lives in Berlin and “values art” She is past 30 and never had a full-time job. Mind you she graduated from a gymnasium and from some university with a degree in film making. She speaks 4 languages. Her boyfriend “values art” too. He is mumbling that he probably needs to go back to university for more study to become a social worker.
Neighbor’s daughter went to Munich to study. She is now a single mother and a permanent student there.
My niece is actually eligible for a Green Card. She said “Why are you offering me a Green Card when you do not have a job for me”.
Germany is a strange country.
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The service wouldn’t hane to be just military. But when things are ‘free’ they are not valued. If a person works for or pays for something, it is valued.
What gives? If they live the life they want, then why do you care? Are you afraid they’re going to tie you up and make you look at their art?
Probably seems strange to them that American students go $40,000 into debt for a mediocre state school that offers no guarantees in terms of post-grad employment. Even when people get jobs, they’re stuck paying off loans for years and years, delaying things like purchasing a house or having a family. That’s totally sensible.
I am not scared that they will make me look at their art because they do not produce any. They are just drifting through life empowered by their welfare state.
Do you believe that if the government will start feeding the beast by offering to fully subsidize students at this “mediocre” state school then this school will improve and the students will have a guaranteed post-grad employment?
@tating would you be okay with public school teachers and garbage men and fireman having their school debt paid for by the government? I am. They serve the country also. Education is not free. But the middle class should not have to pay an unfair share so the one per cent can take unfair advantage of the system at the expense of the common working people
What about instead of free, we remove the requirement for parental financial information to take out unsubsidized loans and make the maximum borrowed amount at the level that people classified as independent get ($9500-12500)? There isn’t a PUBLIC university in my state that costs more than 10k and change. That money is enough for a student in my state to do CC + university and have loan money leftover to help subsidize living expenses.
Here is what the democratic platform thinks about college educational costs. This is a real live proposal for America .We should really be discussing whether this will make it worse or better in this discussion
“Democrats know that every child, no matter who they are, how much their families earn, or where they live, should have access to a high-quality education, from preschool through high school and beyond. But the United States still lags behind other advanced economies in providing high-quality, universal preschool programs to help all of our kids get a strong start to their educations. Our schools are more segregated today than they were when Brown v. Board of Education was decided, and we see wide disparities in educational outcomes across racial and socioeconomic lines. A college degree or another form of post-secondary education is increasingly required for jobs that pay a middle-class wage, but graduation rates have stagnated for low-income students. And the high cost of college has required too many Americans to take out staggering student loans or put a degree out of reach entirely. We are selling our children and our young people short. Democrats are committed to making good public schools available to every child, no matter what zip code they live in, and at last making debt-free college a reality for all Americans.
Making Debt-Free College a Reality
Democrats believe that in America, if you want a higher education, you should always be able to get one: money should never stand in the way. Cost should not be a barrier to getting a degree or credential, and debt should not hold you back after you graduate. Bold new investments by the federal government, coupled with states reinvesting in higher education and colleges holding the line on costs, will ensure that Americans of all backgrounds will be prepared for the jobs and economy of the future. Democrats are unified in their strong belief that every student should be able to go to college debt-free, and working families should not have to pay any tuition to go to public colleges and universities.
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We will also make community college free, while ensuring the strength of our Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Minority-Serving Institutions. The federal government will push more colleges and universities to take quantifiable, affirmative steps in increasing the percentages of racial and ethnic minority, low-income, and first-generation students they enroll and graduate. Achieving these goals depends on state and federal investment in both students and their teachers. Whether full-time or adjunct, faculty must be supported to make transformative educational experiences possible.
Providing Relief from Crushing Student Debt
As we make college affordable for future students, we will not forget about the millions of borrowers with unsustainable levels of student debt, who need help right now. Democrats will allow those who currently have student debt to refinance their loans at the lowest rates possible. We will simplify and expand access to income-based repayment so that no student loan borrowers ever have to pay more than they can afford. And we will significantly cut interest rates for future undergraduates because we believe that making college more affordable is more important than the federal government making billions of dollars in profit off those loans. Democrats will also fight for a student borrower bill of rights to ensure borrowers get adequate information about options to avoid or get out of delinquency or default. We will hold lenders and loan servicers to high standards to help borrowers in default rehabilitate and repay their debts. We will continue the important Public Service Loan Forgiveness and loan discharge programs begun by the Obama Administration. Finally, Democrats will restore the prior standard in bankruptcy law to allow borrowers with student loans to be able to discharge their debts in bankruptcy as a measure of last resort. To make progress toward these goals, the government should offer a moratorium on student loan payments to all federal loan borrowers so they have the time and get the resources they need to consolidate their loans, enroll in income-based repayment programs, and take advantage of opportunities to reduce monthly payments and fees.”
Au contraire, the higher education will flourish, they will build more football stadiums and lazy rivers and they will not even have to import customers from China any more.
The great irony of the Boston Globe op-ed is that a highly prominent subset of US higher education is not only already ‘free’ for the students, but actually has ** negative **costs for the students, for not only do the students not pay, students actually get paid. Not only that, but that subsection of US higher education is generally acclaimed as the best subset of US higher education.
I of course am talking about the vast majority of PhD programs that actually do not charge their students, but usually also pay their students to attend. Indeed, being paid as a PhD student has become such an expected standard that I would look askance at any PhD program that required that its students pay them.
Nor do all PhD students need what amounts to a ‘paid education’ to entice them to attend. While certain PhD programs - notably in the arts/humanities - have uncertain job prospects (but at least their students usually didn’t have to pay for those PhD’s) for which one might argue that paying the students is necessary to incentive them to attend, other PhD programs, notably in business/mgmt, have some of the best job prospects in the world. For example, newly minted PhD’s in finance/accounting routinely command well over $200k a year right out of school, as either a business school assistant professor, or working for a hedge fund or investment bank, with no need for a low-paid postdoc. {Granted, some finance/accounting PhD’s will undergo a postdoc anyway in order to improve their academic job prospects at a top business school, but it’s hardly required if you just want to place at an average business school that will still likely pay you over $200k.} Nevertheless, accounting/finance PhD students are still paid stipends to complete their programs. Indeed, I would argue that accounting/finance PhD programs are by far the best deal in all of academia; I’m surprised that people aren’t coming out of the woodwork to attend such programs.
Yet it rather fascinating that none of the arguments put forth by the Boston globe op-ed seem to hold when it comes to PhD programs. While certainly PhD programs aren’t truly “free” per se - somebody is obviously pay for their costs - those costs are rarely if ever borne by the PhD students themselves. Rather, those programs are financially supported by scientific research grants, through university teaching support (e.g. TA work), or through general endowments. Business schools in particular are always always the wealthiest part of any university on a per-capita basis - Harvard Business School itself boasts of an endowment that is larger than that of almost any university in the world - and can readily financially support armies of PhD students should they so choose.
A PhD is not really the same as an undergraduate. They’re not exactly free, they are just paid for by services rendered by those students to the university, in the form of research work and TA work.
Graduate students have finished their undergrad already, so they have a reasonable level of competence that could give them employment, with no further education on their part. Undergrads are still trying to achieve that level of competence.
Very few undergraduates are capable of being financed by research grants. Some of them are paid for by scholarships and FA but that’s the best you’ll get.
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Most important words in the platform with respect to college. Given the past with government and the big business college has become, I won’t hold my breath.