@silverlady what changes do you think should be made?
No need to completely redesign the wheel.
Scholarships typically have a maximum number of years, plus a minimum threshold for acceptable academic performance. A similar framework could be adopted.
Someone said that when there is a will there is a way. I agree. It was in the early 90’s when we started talking about nationalized healthcare, and it failed at first. But now we have Obamacare.
Similarly, if enough people are willing to institute 100% publicly funded college education, there will be a political way to make it happen. Barney raised it in 2015. Perhaps in 2030 there will a Dem President who will pass it?
Only 10% of the Defense budget will pay for “free” education. When there is a will …
Personally I think the best way to do it is to start with government price controls on college, and then shifting towards socialized education. If “free college” were to be implemented right now then it would be at the prices of right now. Which are ridiculous and far too high to work.
College shouldn’t be free but there should be some years of public sector work attached to it until one pays back.
Free college would push academic standards down, raise taxes on upper middle class and add to national debt. People don’t always value free stuff, graduation statistics for people on full financial aid are an example.
Then are you going to make FA recipients who get free college perform public sector work?
Plenty of countries which provide “free” college for its citizens, have maintained high academic standards.
When sudents on full FA don’t perform as strongly, it’s often because they come from poorer communities w weaker schools. So these students come in less prepared than their affluent classmates.
stopped by subway for sandwich. got to talking to empoyee who graduated high school this summer. She said only way she able to attend college was because it was free (1st 2 years) for her to get her associate in community college. I hated increases in my property taxes but i dont mind if those funds were allocated for this program.
If you make the local college free, many will still want more. Because of some financial issues, my daughter is looking at having to take year off or permanently transfer from the school she’s currently attending. She could go to the local univeristy for free (using federal financial aid and a state stipend). She doesn’t want to because either is not the ‘sleep away camp’ college experience she likes. She likes living on campus, going to football games, having coffee in the Union. And I want that for her too. To get that experience, she has to take out some student loans and work.
I think the same is true for students in states (Tenn) with free or extremely low cost community colleges. Students want more, the full college experience.
Countries that provide “free” college don’t provide “living on campus, going to football games, having coffee in the Union”.
But I’m sayin that even when it is provided, students (at least mine) want more. Just like student who want the climbing wall and lazy river and gourmet Sunday dinners, even poor students (my daughter) want more than just the basics. They want a small LAC, or big time football, or beach access. They won’t take the free option as long as there are loans available to buy the more exp3nsive, ‘nicer’, option.
Just because some parents opt for $40k/year posh private grade schools isn’t a reason to not offer tuition-free public K-12.
If people want to pay to have luxuries that they may or may not be able to afford, no one is talking about doing anything to the private universities that offer all the luxuries that one could desire.
Everyone else, I guess they would just have to be satisfied with getting the bare-bones: an education.
But the bare bones exists now in many areas. It doesn’t seem to prevent student loans in those areas, doesn’t seem to suddenly mean a larger college educated population.
@PrimeMeridian Really? Should those who don’t want bare bones college be forced to pay for college for everyone else’s kids on top of their own? Could that “FREE” state tuition dollar amount be applied to a private college, because then it might be slightly “fair”…We as a very middle class family already pay taxes for the existing generous Fin Aid that is available for those in need.
At one poster’s estimate of a 2% additional college tax per year, a family making an income of $100K per year could end up paying $2,000 extra in taxes per year - or $60K over 30 working yrs - or $80K over 40 yrs - or more depending on how long they work and when their $100K income started - to educate other people’s kids. That works out great if you have multiple children and if you want them all to attend a state college. But, $2,000 a year is a lot to ask of a middle income family that might have only one child who wants to try for a private college where, if needed or awarded, that child might get fin aid or merit aid. That family would lose that $80K completely. And, far more, because they might have invested/saved that $2,000 per year and earned interest on their money. And people with NO children of their own, who already pay taxes for Fin Aid and K-12 schools, would be paying even more to educate other people’s kids over their lifetimes.
Give us freedom to make our own educational and financial choices. I don’t want the government making more of those decisions for me than it already does. Get the government to balance its budgets, reduce its debt, and stop overspending, and THEN we can maybe have a reasonable conversation about adding another entitlement that only half of the population will fund.
But, again, I am happy to help the destitute kids from unfortunate family environments, so “free” tuition for those kids at a given state school is appealing, especially when there are strings attached like showing up for class, doing the assignments, working PT on campus and or at least during the summers, paying back a reasonable loan amount after college, etc. But, ironically, I think that is how the fin aid system already works for the poor and middle class with multiple kids in college now. I believe that some full scholarships go beyond tuition.
We are middle class with two kids, but only had one in college at a time and saved over the years, so we did not qualify for fin aid. (We did apply this year though, so I understand the cumbersome process…) For one, ROTC at a private college was the path. For the second, we are choosing to do the $70K/year college route, so paying an extra $80K+ in taxes over 40 years for a state school would not have helped us save for our own children. We did donate to scholarship foundations over the years to help other military kids. And we donate to other causes, so we do think of others beyond our own family. We are not totally selfish, and three of the four of us did/still do serve in the military. Including one in the Pentagon on 9/11/01 and one at sea on a destroyer now. There is a difference between being selfish vs. just being concerned about how our hard-earned money is spent.
What would you do to price control the costs of college down? And what would socialized education entail?
@saillakeerie
I laid it out in an earlier post that had the misfortune of being the last on the page : http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/19814557/#Comment_19814557
“Socialized education” is just the proper term for the free education model people are talking about. I just choose to explicitly say the ugly word that people are scared to use to describe it.
My heart bleeds for those poor somewhat-well-off folks who can afford to send their kids to private schools who might see a tax increase.
By that same logic, families paying 50k+/year for Phillips Andover shouldn’t have to pay for the lowly public high schoolers.
Looking at your linked post, I only saw one statement about reducing costs of college (if I missed others, I apologize):
What do you do with long term capital projects that exist today (whose costs are being paid over many years) and those which are under construction (whose costs will be paid over many years)? Going forward, who is on the committee for determining what “free” colleges can spend and what they cannot?
As with any infrastructure reduction issue, that’s not an easy one to answer, hence I didn’t get to it in that specific post. My proposed solution would probably be something along the lines of a gradual reduction and downsizing: allow the ongoing non-educational projects to finish, but freeze the construction of new ones under the university business. Then, gradually decouple those projects from the university in such a way that they are no longer sustained by tuition dollars. Those can be left under the general “university business” division if the university wants to maintain those buildings itself, or be sold off to private investors who want to buy them. A lot of the buildings can be repurposed: dorms can become apartment complexes, fitness centers can be opened to the public, a lot of the meeting rooms can be used both by the universities and by a more public crowd, etc. It wouldn’t be an easy transition, and universities would probably lose money initially, but in the long run it would reduce operating costs to the point that a few thousand dollars would be enough to pay for educating.
As for who determines what universities can add: state and local governments would oversee that, with federal standards, with some freedom for the university itself to commit to projects with justifiable educational value. At the end of the day the local and state governments control infrastructure spending and I don’t see why that should change.