In theory, I’m not going to say that it isn’t do-able. But our government doesn’t have a great track program for making public programs work. Even K-12 public schools are falling apart - just read the many articles about how the rise of charter and private schools are taking the best and brightest leaving traditional public school systems with hard-to-teach kids.
^Many, including me, would argue that that’s precisely what is hurting public schools, especially the dollars taken from them to go to charters.
What do Norway, Argentina, Greece, Finland, Sweeden and Denmark all have in common ?
College is free (or close to it). I guess this is only impossible for Americans.
Sorry - Haven’t figured out quotes yet, but if you have followed this thread, you will recognize the comments. How do you all say things so much more powerfully and succinctly?
@NeoDymium Post #29 - If anyone had tracked my son #2 in middle school, when he wasn’t turning in HW and got some very low grades, he might not be going to college next month. Kids mature a lot through MS and HS. I don’t ever want a system where someone else is tracking my kid for a certain career path. If a kid decides enter a trade school in HS or after, that decision should be up to his family and him. A school should advise kids of those opportunities, however, because not everyone knows about the great skills and jobs that can be gained at trade schools.
@bluebayou Post #24 - Yes! We need to focus on helping kids graduate HS with competent reading, writing, math, and financial management skills. They can get better jobs with those abilities and a HS diploma or GED. That role of public education is left to the states and counties, and some seem to do better than others. Many educators really do try hard, but negative family influences at home often interfere with progress a child makes at school. I saw that problem at a very poor public school where I volunteered as a reading tutor. The kids were so sweet and diligent, but their stories about their home life were sometimes heartbreaking. Drugs, jail, one mom but many kids by different fathers, etc. HW would go home but never come back…
@doschicos Post #3 - From what I can tell in the counties where I have lived, “free” libraries have been hit hard by budget cuts. I believe they are wonderful too, but we can’t have as many of them without more people donating to them, or raising taxes. Nothing operates for free.
@romanigypsyeyes Post #7 - Not sure if you were being sarcastic or not? I actually do think the public university system is quite fair to most kids, and that $30K in student loan debt is not the end of the world. Pick a major wisely, secure a job, share an apartment with friends after college, shop at Walmart, minimize nights at bars, get a second job, drive a used car, and pay down the debt as FAST as possible after college, before going to grad school, buying a house, starting a family, or backpacking through Europe. Pay off $500 a month and you can be done in about five years, right? Or try to negotiate with your company to pay off your student loan debt over time, as part of your employment contract. Why is it bad to have a few student loans, if they can lead to a productive career? And, many people on CC suggest that a student that has skin in the game will likely work hard and appreciate the investment in college more. People are usually more careful about spending money when it’s their own.
@GoNoles85 Post #10 - And, if parents can’t afford to save for college, kids can consider college on an ROTC scholarship and serve their country for five years. Or serve first and use a GI bill for education. These are government programs, but they aren’t freebies without any commitment… No one HAS to go to a college that they can’t afford. Work PT during college and during the summers. Or work FT and go to night school… Both my husband and my father worked FT and got their MBAs at night, resulting in no student loans from those private colleges. Go to community college for two years and transfer. Poor kids already do get tons of aid from state colleges. And, as you inferred, some state universities offer automatic free or reduced tuition to kids just for having certain SAT scores, sometimes as low as 1200. Good options are out there!
@EarlVanDorn Post #15 - Right on. Don’t take out loans if you don’t think you will EVER be able to pay them back. Too bad more people didn’t think about that risk when they were taking on adjustable rate mortgages in the last decade. No one wants to see their hard-earned taxes being used to bail out people from unwise mortgage and student loan decisions.
@NeoDymium Post #14 - What is your alternative to the current “bloated mess?”
@AlexanderIII 3 @mom2collegekids Post #11 - Margaret Thatcher’s quote is so relevant. With the almost $20 trillion national debt, we are headed to run out of other people’s money. Will our kids see the USA go bankrupt during their lifetimes, like Greece and Venezuela Few in Greece were paying taxes; thus, they were relying on loans and other people (those few who actually did pay their taxes) to fund schools and other services. The other people’s money finally ran out.
@yikesyikesyikes Post #17 - Why should trade school and community college be free to everyone? Many of those kids come out with real skills that earn them more $$ than some recent liberal arts majors I know. @HImom in Post #31 also points out that community colleges are already very reasonable in price and result in certificates for very marketable jobs like paramedics, paralegals, bookkeepers, and nursing. And, I think CCs and many state colleges are already basically free to the very poor.
@CCDD14 Post #19 - Are junior colleges different from community colleges? Our community colleges have no dorms and certainly no big sports teams. Not sure if they have more than maybe a gym or intramural sports. What are some examples of junior colleges and what is the purpose of them beyond what a community college offers?
@simba9 Post #30 - California is a great example of a state that has the heart to give a lot of things away for free, but now they are running out of money and have had to cut back. They have good intentions but not good budgeting and forecasting skills. The population of CA is huge, but many people, including thousands of illegal immigrants, do not pay any taxes, even though they do receive all of the government services that beautiful state offers. Do we owe everyone everything for free, when many are already receiving so much?
@NeoDymium @ChoatieMom Post #32 & Post #37 - Yes, WHO WILL PAY FOR THIS “FREE” TUITION EVERYWHERE? According to an article I just read, only 54% of Americans pay taxes at all…So 46% of people are getting the use of our wonderful national parks, protection by the military and police, public schools, roads, libraries etc etc for free already - without paying a dime for those benefits. Why shouldn’t they have to pay a little to attend college? But, likely many of those same people will qualify for fin aid anyway. Which is fine with me. I am just not willing to open the door to paying for college for every upper and middle class kid whose parents just want a good deal - especially after I already saved to pay for my own middle class kids!
I do think our goal should be to help people get educations so that they can earn better salaries, be self-sufficient, and attain the “privilege” of becoming contributing tax-paying citizens. But, since so many public and private colleges are already being very generous to poor kids, do we have to add another government subsidy that will cost our kids and their country more money in the long run?
@yikesyikesyikes Post #39 - Has anyone ever actually seen our bureaucracy shrink? Government just grows. Sometimes they move budgets, buildings or military bases around, but expenses only ever go up overall. No one in Washington can agree on how to make budget cuts, so that is why our national debt is growing by the second. People on CC complain about student loan, mortgage, and business loan debt all the time - Try finding a way to pay off our country’s $20 trillion debt!
The End.
Our country’s national debt is the most misunderstood thing. National debt and federal deficit are NOT the same thing. I am tired of the hearing rhetoric that we have to pay off the national debt. Although it may have ballooned to extraordinary levels, the highest priority should not be to pay it all off. The United States has yet to have have a full credit default on its national debt - in fact, US Treasury securities are among the safest investments in the world. It is unlikely a full credit default is imminent (don’t take my word for it, look at Treasury security ratings, and you will see for yourself).
We financed a war based on lies (Iraq) for 1.7 Trillion USD - that could have paid for several years of public college.
@mitchklong Post #42 - If the international college systems are so great, why do so many internationals flock to colleges in the USA each year? Many post on this CC website. I swear that the Penn auditorium was full of 70% international students the day we visited. Our tour guides at several colleges were international. In fact, at Carnegie Mellon, I had to ask three different people where the admissions office was before I found someone who understood my question in English.
Internationals are definitely taking a larger portion of the available spots in our colleges today than they did when I was in college. What do we have that these kids want? And, during our tours at various colleges, I’m pretty sure I met kids from all of the countries you mention. But, I don’t know anyone from the USA who has headed to those countries for college, except for short study abroad opportunities. Do you know anyone?
I have relatives in Sweden who seem very well-educated (and they speak English more properly than most American citizens!). But, I don’t know what percentage of the Swedish population actually attends college or what the system is like. I actually don’t know anything the colleges and job situations in those countries at all, so am just raising questions here.
Green card
just because something works in a small wealthy Northern European country of 5-10 million, does not mean it can be easily implemented – or is even feasible – in our massive sprawling nation of over 320 million.
and i’m not so sure we should follow the example of Greece in just about anything.
No one is suggesting that Penb or Carnegie Mellon be free. Those are private schools. Internationals will always come to US private colleges because we have many of the best.
And I can’t speak for mitchkong, but I know students who have gone to those countries for cheap tuition. But that’s not really relevant - there aren’t many international students at average US state schools (many or most flagships are not included in that). That’s the equivalent of going to one of those free tuition schools internationally.
Personally I think the best way to do it would be a flexible track program, in which it’s perfectly feasible to go up or down a track if performance changes. At the very worst, if a capable student does badly for any number of years, they should have to play catch-up, and then easily be able to jump to a higher track.
European tracking is often inflexible. You get put on a track, you stay there for good and your career develops accordingly. That makes no sense from an educational perspective.
Socialized education with a private option. Similar to what we have, except more centralized and less profit-driven.
Basically has to be the federal government. With tax money. With increased taxes, and not just on the wealthy.
Because they don’t have the money. They don’t pay taxes because they don’t make enough to qualify for paying taxes.
The end result of it would be that everyone pays for everyone else. They would pay as much (or more) for your kids to go to college to get “a good deal” as much as you would for theirs. Except ideally, it would be cheaper overall because no one has to turn a profit in running the university. Even though most reputable schools are not-for-profit, they are still much more money-driven than one would like.
The structure of financial aid in its current state encourages universities to just keep hiking tuition rates, because the government will toss in more money and more loans to pay for it. The result is skyrocketing attendance costs. And they do that because the federal government controls financial aid, while state and local governments control and pay for the schools themselves. If that sounds like a conflict of interest, it is.
After refreshing my memory a bit about our Constitution, I just don’t see where the obligation to provide citizens free college exists. Iraq may have been misguided, but the military and security are duties of the government. I don’t think that free college is an obligation of the states either? Is public college overall even a duty of the states, as the K-12 public school systems apparently are? (I need to reread previous posts about public goods.)
In fact, many of our government programs actually seem to be “nice to haves” but definitely not obligations of our governments. I just don’t think we can afford to add more “nice to haves” until we balance state, local and federal budgets — and ensure that the credit rating on our treasury securities never gets downgraded. I don’t want to leave the burden of our overspending to our children and grandchildren to clean up. Not sure why we don’t want to start paying down our scary debt and balance our budgets? Are we making more money on our debt than we owe in interest?
I am neither a constitutional scholar nor a finance major, so I am getting over my head - and off topic here.
I am mostly just worried about our kid’s future and overspending in our generation. I have seen friends and one family member go bankrupt during the past decade because they have over-extended themselves. I don’t want to see our great USA do the same thing.
Pretty sure it would be justified under the Elastic Clause the same way all massive expansions in government power are: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necessary_and_Proper_Clause
It would spend years in the courts either way though.
So because you’re “tired” of hearing rhetoric that we have to pay off the national debt we should take on more debt? You just sweep away @MOMANDBOYSTWO 's point about only roughly 50% of people actually paying federal taxes. I suppose you were “tired” of that and decided not to deal with it.
The US hasn’t had a default. So what? Your point is?
The US hasn’t had a default because we are the reserve currency for many other countries and they choose to continue buying our debt, and earning interest, which is the only way we can keep running the government. But. And this is a big but. That doesn’t mean they will continue buying the bonds and bills our government issues forever.
And, if they did stop buying our debt that would balloon our interests costs and make it nearly impossible for our government to meet it’s obligations. It is kind of like Wal-Mart. I can go down to Wal-Mart and buy whatever I want no problem. But if there is a hurricane or other nature disaster and the power is out suddenly I can’t go down to Wal-Mart and buy whatever I want. I have about a week’s worth or food and about one day of clean water at home yet I don’t perceive any real problem because, what the heck, everything seems fine. If we ever stop being the desired currency of reserve, and that could happen as china increases it’s economic influence, we will be in immediate and drastic trouble. Look it up.
Despite everything you said yes we do have to pay back our debts. Maybe not all at once, but it is still debt and it must be repaid. We have a massive hemorraging obscene ridiculous spending and consumption problem in this country and believe me the solution is NOT more spending even if it benefits the “common good” which oddly turns out to be just some people. The politicians don’t even bother thinking about solutions to our annual deficits and national debt because they are running for office and instead of being honest and truthful it is just more fun to promise things we can’t pay for.
Taking on more debt when you’ve got $19T of debt on the balance sheet is like giving more whiskey to an alcoholic. It is not a good idea. In addition to the debt we already have, we have lots if unfunded projects that need to be addressed but probably won’t until it is too late. I am sorry if this makes you tired.
I’ll echo and repeat another of Mom’s excellent points which is some folks plan ahead and mitigate the costs of college and shop intelligently and others don’t. It is foolish to punish the ones who planned and reward the ones who didn’t. It is exactly like retirement planning. Some people do it all along and are all set well before it happens and others wait until they are 55 and suddenly realize WHOOPS!!!
What we really need to do is revise the tax code. Take the authority to budget away from career politicians and give it to a panel of normal citizens who are elected or hired or something and let common sense people determine, in broad strokes, how taxpayer money should be spent.
@usualhopeful Post #48 - Actually, there are quite a few international at most state flagships these days, from what I can tell. If you read questions posed on this CC website and you review diversity stats at various public universities, there is a lot interest from internationals in Michigan, Purdue, UVA, UCs, etc. In fact, UCONN (near you maybe?) says on its website that over 100 countries are represented in its undergraduate population. State universities are using full-pay internationals as revenue generators, just like OOS students, because they usually don’t offer fin aid to the internationals. I have heard that some public universities even advertise overseas for applicants.
I knew when I wrote that long diatribe that we were not discussing free tuition for all at private colleges like CMU and Penn. I was just questioning why folks from Scandinavia and other areas would come here and pay so much for our colleges in the USA if their free universities were great.
Just about every outerlander I know who sent their kids to school in the US did so for US citizenship. School quality has very little to do with it.
All of the US debt has been getting paid on time. A panel of “normal” citizens who are elected essentially makes them politicians.
I also think that our conversation has focused largely on fiscal economic policy. Let’s not forget monetary policy - which is very important to consider when we are talking about interest rates and credit, which have a huge impact on the national debt.
I hate to say it, but “normal” citizens and most politicians are not qualified to make such decisions (although they have every right to know what is going on and the right to vote/pressure out people who are not acting favorably) - which is why Washington depends on economists in the Treasury, Federal Reserve, Council of Economic Advisors, and think tanks to advise or sometimes even call the shots.
In fact, the Federal Reserve controls interest rates and reserve ratios among other things WITHOUT needing to seek approval from the President or Congress.
Also, your point about China. It is highly unlikely that their currency will become preferred reserved currency over the US Dollar. That was alarmist thinking and it became clear in late 2015 that it will not happen any time soon. With transparency issues with China’s Central Bank, their aging population problem exacerbated by their one child policy, and their shakey property markets will keep them from even surpassing the US economy in terms of GDP for some time - their currency replacing the USD as the preferred reserve currency is even more unlikely.
Also, you talk about punishing parents who had planned ahead, while rewarding parents who were not “intelligent” with their planning. This argument has a few issues. 1) It assumes that everyone has the ability to save for their children’s college. 2) It paints parents as victims/beneficiaries when it is actually the children we need to be thinking about as such. I think all children deserve an equal opprtunity at success. Even if their parents had been less “intelligent” about college planning, they did not pick their parents.
So you think it is the government’s job to make sure all children have an equal opportunity at success? Should we all turn our resources over to the government and let the government divide by the US population and then return the resources to the citizens on an equal basis so that everyone starts with the same amount.
Sure, why not?
Monetary policy has been at or near zero for a long time and it really has nothing to do with the spending problem we have other than lowering the cost of capital which stimulates the economy but you can “push on a string” as the saying goes to magically make the economy go.
Lets try some reality.
Not everyone has the same resources. It isn’t the government’s job to fix that.
The first 12 years of school are free which is about as equal opportunity as you can get. The ROI taxpayers get for that investment in the public good is embarrassing by most objective standards. As someone on this thread pointed out the drop out rate in some inner cities is abysmal. The number of student who come through public K-12 education who are underprepared for college is interesting too. How much time do you have? You would probably be shocked if you knew what percent of high school students are prepared for anything really other than a job at McDonalds.
The free college stuff was election cycle rhetoric. It isn’t a serious policy proposal. We have other priorities. If someone wants higher education they will have to pay for it. It doesn’t have to cost $50K a year with some intelligent planning, You are right about one thing that I can recall from all your posts that being that children can’t choose their parents. I’m not sure what that has to do with anything but on that point we agree.
@GoNoles85 Post #52 - If our elected officials treated our government budget decisions as if they were managing their own family money, I would feel better. I do think we need a few more civil servants and leaders who understand the fundamentals of accounting, finance, budgeting, and debt.
Back to college — Having just been through our second massive college research and application process, I sincerely believe that there is plenty of fin aid out there already for those who truly need, and enough other college funding options for those who are diligent in researching. I met so many kids (including my own) of all income levels who were getting full rides or heavy discounts at all kinds of universities. There is so much advice about finding good college deals this CC website. Money is out there for those who seek it.
I am guessing that many of the kids we see on TV who are rallying for free college are NOT poor. They may have to work to pay off a few student loans. Just because they want it doesn’t mean they are owed it. My son is fortunate that we are paying for college, but if we couldn’t, he still would have gone on his own without too many loans, by doing ROTC or picking an instate or community college.
@yikesyikesyikes Post #55 Maybe we need the financial folks and economists from the Federal Reserve and Treasury to cross over and teach the rest of the decisionmakers about money and budgets…
You are correct that not everyone can afford to save for college. That is why fin aid and other low-cost options are already out there for those kids. My sister is a single mom (with a deadbeat ex-husband) who has not been able to save for her kids’ college or her retirement. I am worried about her retirement. But, her two kids somehow went to UCONN for very little because of fin aid. One is already done and has a great job. He has almost paid off his student loans only three years out of college. Employer promises to pay for grad school if he stays on. The second son is living at home for the first two years and attending the local extension campus. He will finish at main campus. Wow. So simple. And the kids got this fin aid, even though they are not on food stamps or any other government benefits (so not totally destitute). I have never heard her complain about college costs.
Where there’s a will, there’s a way.
The problem with “Where there’s a will, there’s a way” is that most colleges cannot meet full financial need. Some people struggle with in-state public costs. Heck, some people even struggle to meet the costs for community college!
Example (modified from a CC post):
Student kicked out in the middle of his college career by his parents because of his sexuality. His financial aid package is determined by parental income/assets even though he has no access to those. He cannot transfer to a lower-cost college since he needs to pay his tuition/fees for a transcript to be sent. Sure, there are ways around this problem (LGBT resources, angel/crowdfunding, etc.), but paying for school should not have that many obstacles.
There are so many more examples and situations like this.
When we have a child who cannot afford to go to college even though they are capable - society has failed that child. This is exactly why community college and trade/vocational school need to be made free.