I am personally of the opinion that not everyone should have any given degree. The reality of the world is that there are only so many people we need in any given advanced profession, and there are plenty of low-level jobs that need to be done. For every engineer or scientist we need technicians. For every lawyer we need clerks. For every doctor we need nurses/other medical personnel. For every… you get the point. And those support workers shouldn’t be pushed to have a degree above what they need, if that really isn’t what they want and are able to do. The requirement for Bachelors degrees for work that can easily be done with just a high school diploma or some 2-year training past high school, is ridiculous and counterproductive. I am generally against the one-track university model that the US has because it leads to inflated job requirements and eventually, inflated costs of education.
The proper way to do it would likely be to start by forcing all those cost savings measures and then implementing a government-paid college system. Community colleges are already very cheap, so the “free community college” program is well-posed, at least in principle (we’ll see how it works out in practice).
As for taxes, they would certainly have to increase. Money doesn’t come out of nowhere. It would save people more than it would cost them, so it would be worth it if implemented well.
Neodymium,
Free doesn’t necessarily mean everyone automatically receives it. Countries that provide free or low-cost public higher education do not provide it to everyone-- just to students who qualify academically. There’s no point in giving it to people who have neither the desire, intellect nor work ethic to pursue it.
Reasonable minimum academic thresholds could be set. Maybe something very modest like NCAA eligibilty standards. The student would still need to be admitted into an accredited college. And that raises another issue: college accreditation standards need to be tightened up.
The devil is in the details.
…if they have the time. Which, in a family of white-collar professionals (the #1 collegeconfidential demographic) generally isn’t a problem.
That time is a lot harder to find if a kid is living in a single-parent household (like 41% of children nationwide), or parents are working two jobs to make ends meet, or a family has more than one child with HW, teachers to speak to, etc, or all of the above. Add the fact that most low-income areas are public transportation deserts (making hourlong commutes the norm) with fewer government services (more bus/metro trips required) and more people working night shifts. Time with children starts to look like a rare commodity for low-income parents, when the demands of everyday life are taken into account.
Clearly they just need to try harder.
If the college-educated share of the population went from <50% to 90% (which is of course a hypothetical example not likely to happen in our lifetimes), that would be a massive shot in the arm for the economy and the job market. A more educated population would lead to increased worker productivity, more newly created businesses, more research & development, increased investment by existing firms, etc. This would allow new and existing firms to create all manner of products and jobs that don’t exist today.
For instance, when brain implants become more safe, reliable, and useful, people less squeamish than I am about putting computer chips in their brains will rush to buy them. This’ll create a few jobs in resource extraction and manufacturing, but most of the new positions that result will be for engineers designing the chips, programmers creating the software, surgeons implanting the final product, and technicians maintaining/troubleshooting these implants. All these jobs require a college degree (at the very least - I’d hope the surgeon has more than a pre-med education).
All things being equal, in a country where 90% of workers have a 4-year degree, the average earnings of a college graduate will fall because his/her skillset will be more common. There is a flip side: we’ll all pay less for many services, though not enough to offset the pay cut for the college-educated. On an individual level, this wouldn’t be great for those who can already afford college, but it would benefit those who can’t immensely. On the macroeconomic level, it would boost economic growth (due to higher productivity) while lowering unemployment (since more workers would have a marketable skillset) and reducing the scope of some costly social problems (crime, substance abuse, teen pregnancy, etc.). Tax revenues go up as average earnings rise, letting the government spend more, lower tax rates, or reduce the budget deficit.
The extent of these effects and whether they’re worth the cost are topics where reasonable people can disagree (as evidenced by 10 pages’ worth of disagreement right here), but employment prospects wouldn’t stay the same. It’s why the strictest fiscal hawk in the country, if 90% of the population could go to college at a cost to taxpayers of $1,000/person, would say yes in a heartbeat. The cost is higher, of courseso we don’t have that kind of consensus. Setting aside the cost, it’s widely accepted that a more educated population expands the job market and benefits the economy.
@Much2learn "Spending on public education has doubled in real terms over a few decades, but the scores of average students have not budged. "
@MOMANDBOYSTWO “@Muchtolearn And test scores aren’t everything. An overall passion to learn and a desire to work hard are probably more important. Tests should just make sure that kids can read, write and do math at grade level. Kids who can’t do these basics do need extra help. Sadly, some kids just have innate IQs lower than others, no matter how good a teacher is. But with the right mix of motivated parents and caring teachers, those kids can still be successful n school and jobs.”
Of course special-needs students can be successful in schools and jobs.
However, that is not a rationale for the average graduating high school student having a 20 or 21 ACT score. The level of math, reading, writing, and science knowledge that students have after 13 years in school is poor. How can it be that half of students can’t get to a 20 ACT score?
If we could just get the average student to achieve a 24 ACT, the impact on the American economy would be profound. That is completely achievable. We know it is achievable because many many schools have averages at this level and higher.
Why shouldn’t we expect better results from schools, when we continue to raise the funding? That is my concern about giving away free college. I am okay with the taxpayers funding free college, but I want to know that the country gets something for that investment. If it is structured so that a higher percentage of students are learning, getting degrees, and degrees that improving their employability, that is a good investment.
Essentially, if it is a hand-up, I support it. If it is a hand-out, I don’t support it.
Agreed. Universities have too long just allowed people to pursue random degrees without particular purpose and graduate with them, and I can’t help but feel that part of it is that they get paid for it. The quality standards of those degrees is also lowered because there’s not always a specific body of knowledge associated with them, and frankly the university doesn’t want to fail out students out of some preconceived notion of “quality standards.”
Long story short that has to change. Something like the ABET accreditation for engineering should be created for all major cores studied at the university level.
@Much2learn Have you ever worked in a lower performing school? We armchair critics need to walk in those teachers’ shoes to see the challenges they face with the demographics they teach & the class sizes they are assigned. We do always need to set the bar high, but many good-intentioned teachers end up walking away from inner city-like-schools because of the behavior issues.
More and more employers are looking for achievement on external, standardized tests to validate skills they want and desire in large part because grade inflation is out of control. So merely getting more people in and out of colleges and universities isn’t going to stimulate the economy as much as you think.
Even if 80% or 90% of US citizens have college degrees isn’t going to counteract the fact that manufacturing jobs are long gone because US companies can’t compete on labor costs. It also isn’t going to fix our trade imbalances with other countries overnight and neither will tearing up our trade deals.
It will result in McDonald’s and Starbucks having very highly educated cash register employees. Some of the basic skills you all are taking about should be taught in K-12. College and universities should not be for remedial work. FA should not be used for remedial work either. If you didn’t learn the basics in high school then the train has left the station without you. If you need remedial work you should have to pay for it not the taxpayers.
Increasing the number of folks with college degrees in STEM fields would, on the other hand, help the economy. But, in my opinion, it isn’t the government’s job to dictate what people major in. The free markets should decide that. The greater the demand in certain fields, my field of accounting is one example, should cause salaries and benefits to increase to attract more workers. Check accounting employment rates and salaries and you will see that the free market should work just fine in terms of providing incentives for what people study.
My solution then is to fix K-12 education. I’d start by not requiring any student about the age of 15 to go to school if they don’t want to. I’d lower the age you can work to 15. If academic training isn’t your thing you can hit the work force. Some of those folks will start businesses (plumbing, HVAC, Software related, arts related, sports and/or music related) and they will earn whatever they can get the market to pay them. The student who stay will face a serious curriculum and if they miss class and fail they will be held back until they get it. If we did that, by the time people, got to college, college could be real higher education instead of hand holding, baby sitting and so forth.
@CheddarcheeseMN Post #135 - There already is merit-based free college at a number of state universities - My son was offered merit tuition free at Clemson & South Carolina. Others get merit tuition free at FL, AL, etc… Some even get full rides on merit at private college like Vanderbilt and USC. For the savvy shopper and the smart student, free rides (sometimes even including room & board) are out there.
The problem is that supply of workers doesn’t really create jobs. It does to some extent, but what matters more is the actual availability of profitable opportunities. The primary limiter there, if anything, is money and technology.
For example, it’s pretty widely acknowledged that there are too many people holding Chemistry and Biology PhD’s. There are not enough jobs as researchers for all of them and the markets that generally hire them, such as medical researchers and pharmacists, only need a small number of people to actually do research. A lot of them either leave the field (so the degree is useless) or get a job at well below their qualification (so the degree is useless). The latter comes with another problem: if a PhD gets a job that a BS could do, then that job now requires a PhD even when it doesn’t. So now people have to get PhD’s for pretty low-level jobs. Pretty soon everyone becomes overqualified for everything.
When does that become a problem? When people start to have to switch jobs. The higher up you go in education, the more specialized the knowledge. Which is all well and good until it starts to become excessive. Say that an associates degree is enough to work as a nurse, from a skills perspective. But because everyone has that degree, now everyone has to get a Masters. What’s more, there are plenty of Masters in nursing, so now they start requiring specific Masters degrees. To work in a hospital you need a Masters in Hospital Nursing. To work in a private clinic you need a Masters in Private Clinic Nursing. To work in an ER you need a Masters in Emergency Nursing. All the while, there is nothing about an Associate in Nursing that makes someone unqualified to leave a job working in a hospital and start working in a private clinic. But they can’t do that because education has become so specific and limiting. So it will cost time and money to get a new education.
Widespread overqualification is a real problem in a lot of countries and even in a lot of specializations in the US. The opportunities for high-educated employment either have to grow perpetually, or overspecialized requirements will paralyze people and overfill the education system. So no, more education isn’t always a good thing. The balance is to provide enough for the jobs that people need, while making higher education rare enough that people who attain that level of education have opportunities that make advanced work worthwhile.
@NotVerySmart Post #143 My sister, single mom of two boys and lowish income, seemed to manage to help her kids enough that they were able to get into UCONN main campus (and other colleges) tons of fin aid. Good grades and decent test scores. She worked FT so usually got up at 4am to get chores done and make the kids’ breakfast before work so that she could spend time with them in the evenings after 6pm when she got home. It is hard work but can be done. My family all wished she had never met their deadbeat father, but, in the end, the kids turned out amazingly better than their father and are true blessings.
@Momandboystwo “@Much2learn Have you ever worked in a lower performing school? We armchair critics need to walk in those teachers’ shoes to see the challenges they face with the demographics they teach & the class sizes they are assigned. We do always need to set the bar high, but many good-intentioned teachers end up walking away from inner city-like-schools because of the behavior issues.”
I do understand the situation in underperforming schools. I was raised in one, and I have volunteered in others. I am not saying change is easy, and I am not blaming individual teachers. We will not be successful by just raising the bar, but changing nothing.
The facts are that the oversight of schools by federal government, state government and local governments and all of the complex rules that, combined with more rules from the teacher’s union mean that education administrators are focused on politics, not on delivering the best education for the students. The mind-set suggesting that there is nothing that can be done is just making the argument for people who vote against all education funding because “The money will just be wasted anyway.”
If we give knowledgeable administrators a mandate to improve reading, writing, math and science scores for students across-the-board, and empower them to take actions that they need to achieve that, they will get results. Bad teachers should be removed from classrooms, good teachers should be rewarded. If there are behavior issues, doing what they have to in order to root out these behaviors. Possibly these schools should make broader use of cameras, and have principals and assistant principals actively supporting teachers to be sure that the rules are followed, and an effective learning environment is maintained. I agree with you that schools have not generally done a good job of educating and involving parents. To improve student effort and results, you do need to be sure that both parents and students understand why getting a good education is important. Why would they work hard at it if they don’t understand why it matters?
“Tests should just make sure that kids can read, write and do math at grade level.”
America is struggling to compete in a global economy, and the middle class is already shrinking. If we take this minimalist approach, it is going to get a lot worse. The US will continue to lose manufacturing and other comparatively low skill jobs. To keep employment high, we need to increase the countries percentage of high knowledge high skill workers and jobs. There is no other alternative. In the long run, that will benefit all Americans.
@Much2learn Like you, I would like to set the bar higher and have rewards or consequences where schools are not performing. But, I also see the struggles that teachers in some schools face where there is no support from delinquent parents. Studies here in my area show that progress is often made in the elementary schools with under-performing kids, when the kids are still young and excited to learn from their teachers. But, when the kids hit HS, they tend to dip again when no one at home is pushing on them.
It gets tiresome that, despite an education, some still don’t believe that subsidies increase demand and increase prices.
Roads, libraries and such are not free. Someone pays for them. Because their existence has been usurped by the government for so long, many people (perhaps while driving 80 mph on a toll road) become apoplectic at the thought of privatization. Even the word “privatization” elicits reflexive responses about all of the children and old people who will die.
Of course making higher education “free” is a deception on multiple levels. With existing subsidies we have many unqualified students racking up massive debt that will never be repaid. “Free” college would simply multiply their ranks but pass the debt to the empty public coffers.
What would be included in this “free” education? Several posts mentioned Sweden, but that country’s “free” system only includes tuition - everything else is extra. At my state’s flagship university, tuition is probably do-able for most folks with grants, loans, jobs, scholarships, etc. But students must also pay for room and board (and freshmen are required to live in the dorms even if they are from that town), books and “other fees.” These fees include a facilities fee, health fee, library fee, media fee, network and data fee, activity fee, transit fee, ID fee, and new student fee. Some “high demand” schools such as business and architecture have additional fees. Those are the general mandatory fees. There are also lab fees for science classes and who knows what else. The dorms are nicer than my house.
My state, in an effort to make college affordable, came up with this great idea to get more kids taking AP tests as well as partnering with tech and community colleges. The goal was to give kids a head start to earning degrees. What did the public universities do? They said that these kids have too many hours to be considered freshmen and were, therefore, ineligible for freshman scholarships (which one must have if one wants to have a sophomore scholarship).
The level of ignorance here is astounding. The absolutely asinine arguments against free college are ridiculous. The true reason why it is unlikely to create major change is because students are not well prepared for college by the broken K12 system in the United States. Until governments take note of the startling disparities between public schools in different localities and increase funding for the renovation of these facilities at the state level and finance an effective and rigorous teacher training program at the federal level, the free college isn’t likely to create major change. HOWEVER, once we achieve this, free public universities would be highly beneficial as they would increase enrollment and vastly transform the skillset of our future workforce, with the dual effect of driving down the prices of private tuition.
Free means financed by taxpayer dollars. I don’t think any idiot thinks otherwise. Hence, it would be nice if this obvious statement was no longer stated.
@MOMANDBOYSTWO "Like you, I would like to set the bar higher and have rewards or consequences where schools are not performing. But, I also see the struggles that teachers in some schools face where there is no support from delinquent parents.
Yes, one of the major mistakes that schools make is failing to understand the importance of involved parents. When schools do more to educate and involve parents in their children’s education, students learn more. Parents who don’t know much about education, why education matters, or how to support their kids, will not be effective advocates. Many schools can do a better job of building connections and information flow with families, and it would pay off.
@MOMANDBOYSTWO The 60 billion is a number that I have seem from many sources on the internet regarding the cost to have public college education be free. The federal government between individual income taxes and payroll taxes takes in roughly three trillion dollars. That is how I came up with the 2 per cent number. It was a rough estimate of course.
I agree with post 156. I think they have hit the nail on the head. I live in California where the citizens have voted to raise taxes for the benefit of all and it is working. The insane income inequality must change. The multi billion dollar companies paying no taxes must change. I don’t believe in trickle down economics nor am I a socialist. We must all work together for the common good and pay our fair share. It will help our schools and it will help our economy
My question is how long can a student at these free colleges stay in school? Do they get 8 semesters? Can they change their major multiple times? While I think there should be changes, this would be just too big of a change.