Free tuition is not the same as free ride. I know you know that also, but the way you worded your post implied free ride, not just free tuition.
^ Ok, I can see how you saw a discrepancy. It was only when I joined CC that I learned that people are supposed to be entitled to a “free ride” to college, meaning free food and shelter, too. I came from a world where I thought everyone was expected to contribute something monetarily towards their college degree. Only public 1-12 was expected to be “free” then, but that did not include shelter, and only lunch on M-F and sometimes breakfast. It is different now, I realize.
Still, any low-income student who lives at home or in an affordable living situation can go to college for free in CA. (And low-income means less than $80K). That seems like a “free ride” to people like me. I’ll try to more cognizant of today’s expectations in the future, and be sure to qualify more clearly that all low-income students in CA get “free tuition.” They might have to come up with a way to feed and house themselves, however.
Back on topic: I love college football and how it has evolved. Everything about it is voluntary. No one has to like it, or play it, or watch it, or go to a college that has it. Colleges are not required to offer it. It has evolved into something that Americans want. It is marvelous in that way. If football players earn all C’s, that is fine by me. They still get to play and graduate, and if that is what they want, why should anyone else care? It is their choice.
You are mistaking the distinction between the terms “free tuition” and “free ride” with advocacy of such as an entitlement.
Regardless of what you advocate, it is the case today that the cost borne by college students and their parents is higher today than it was in past decades (for all of the low, middle, and high income families).
Even though you may think that a student living in the parents’ house and commuting to a local college or university is “free” in terms of living expenses, the cost of continued support of the student at the parents’ house and commuting expenses is non-zero (although it is less than the student living on his/her own at the school). For the high income, that may be a trivial cost (and since most forum posters are high income, they may see the student living at home that way). But for the low income, that can be significant percentage of the family budget.
Sorry, I don’t know what this^ means.
Presumably, no different than the burden of boarding their children as high school students. Plus, I and all of my children worked part time during college and I took out loans. It is not that hard to pick up some of the expenses, especially as one’s degree progresses and job resources expand via college opportunities.
If you are trying to say that college makes no difference to the life of a low-income person, then absolutely they should not go. Otherwise, some sacrifice in the form of loans, or jobs, or living on a shoe-string seems a small price to pay for the degree.
It means that someone who makes a distinction between “free tuition” and “free ride” is not necessarily advocating offering one or the other, as you imply in reply #208.
True, but there is often a different expectation with respect to parental support once the kid turns 18 and has graduated high school.
And that is exactly what students from poor families have to do. The net prices after financial aid are not zero, unless they also earn merit scholarships to substitute for the student loan/work contribution. And, if they live with their parents, they can use such contribution to help with the family expenses that they are adding to by living there.
If you were in charge of financial aid policy for a college, what would you set the net price after need-based financial aid grants for a student from a genuinely poor family? (FAFSA EFC = $0; net price may be paid for by student loans or work study or work earnings expectations)
I haven’t studied it, but I’d probably set it at an amount equal to a reasonable loan balance for the average college grad + reasonable earnings over 4 years of college + a premium for top tier colleges like Berkeley. That would probably come out close to what Berkeley is expecting today. (This is for a “free ride.” I actually don’t agree with 100% free tuition, so something should be expected additionally for tuition.)
The UC net prices for an EFC = $0 situation do appear to expect federal direct loans (“reasonable loan balance”) and some work earnings (“reasonable earnings”), so your formula would come out to be the same as UC net prices as they are today, if your values for “reasonable loan balance” and “reasonable earnings” are similar. So it is not clear why you seem to disagree with UC financial aid policies so much, unless you expect students to take on much more debt or work much more.
The main difference is that, among UCs, the more selective ones appear to be better endowed and are slightly more generous (net prices around $8,500), but the others may be slightly less generous (net prices up to $10,000 or so), a phenomenon also seen among private schools (where schools like HYPS have the best need-based financial aid, but less selective privates often come up far short). However, if one sees admission to a more selective school as being a pseudo-merit scholarship (i.e. better financial aid leading to lower net price), that may be reasonable to some people as an extra achievement-based opportunity.
The UC expectations are for living expenses only, and I don’t object to them. I object to the idea that the only option for poor kids to go to college is to be a scholarship athlete. It is not true.
North- It is obvious from your post that you have not carefully read the whole NW decision.
Once again by reading this passage it can be seen that the NLRB regional director appears to be counting all the time spent at the team hotel during on Friday nights on home game weekends as part of the 40 hours per week. As I previously discussed the regional director includes time spent eating breakfast lunch and dinner as part of the 40 hours.
This one is easy. Nick Saban has been a coach at Michigan State and is very familiar with the Michigan’s football program. In 2010 Michigan was hit with a NCAA penalties for violating the Voluntary Athletically Related Activities rule. This penalty includes a 2 to one reduction in mandatory practice time. This penalty can be devastating for a top ranked D1 football program. Many top ranked programs have internal NCAA compliance committees which monitor all athletic programs and will self report any NCAA violations. In 2011 the Maryland self reported Voluntary Athletically Related Activities rule violations and proposed a reduction of practice time of 2.5 hours per week which the NCAA accepted.
Bottom line- Nick Saban will take all steps necessary to ensure that Alabama does not violate the Voluntary Athletically Related Activities rule.
Lets walk through your comments and see how the NCAA would handle things.
This is a clear violation of section (a):
quote The student-athlete must not be required to report back to a coach or other athletics department staff member (e.g., strength coach, trainer, manager) any information related to the activity. In addition, no athletics department staff member who observes the activity (e.g., strength coach, trainer, manager) may report back to the student-athlete’s coach any information related to the activity;
[/quote]
This is a clear violation of section (d):
quote The student-athlete may not be subjected to penalty if he or she elects not to participate in the activity. In addition, neither the institution nor any athletics department staff member may provide recognition or incentives (e.g., awards) to a student-athlete based on his or her attendance or performance in the activity.
[/quote]
Again a clear violation of section D. It is likely that the NCAA would respond in kind and reduce scholarships by at least 2 or possibly more.
No one involved in the Northwestern NLRB case is arguing that Northwestern violated NCAA rules for Voluntary Athletically Related Activities, not the football players, not the NLRB administrator, not Northwestern and not the NCAA. Once again under NCAA rules:
quote The activity must be initiated and requested solely by the student-athlete. Neither the institution nor any athletics department staff member may require the student-athlete to participate in the activity at any time. However, it is permissible for an athletics department staff member to provide information to student-athletes related to available opportunities for participating in voluntary activities (e.g., times when the strength and conditioning coach will be on duty in the weight room or on the track). In addition, for students who have initiated a request to engage in voluntary activities, the institution or an athletics department staff member may assign specific times for student-athletes to use institutional facilities for such purposes and inform the student-athletes of the time in advance;
[/quote]
The 7 on 7 drills and film review are completely optional. If a player has a test he can study for that rather than attending film review. Once again the mandatory practice time for football players is 20 hours per week. All other practice time is optional and voluntary.
“Don’t ask, don’t tell”
“I object to the idea that the only option for poor kids to go to college is to be a scholarship athlete. It is not true.”
No, it isn’t true, which is why no one said it. I and others talked about the message sent to poor kids and the perception that results. In post #201, you showed that you understood that’s what we were saying, so why would you twist it here? It’s a fact that athletes get a much better deal than low-income students, even high achievers, at virtually every public school in the country, especially the flagships, which are the ones CCers would want our own children to attend. It’s also a fact that the athletic scholarships get many orders of magnitude more publicity than any other kind. (Just imagine highly rated, weekly national broadcasts glorifying the achievements of students on academic scholarships!)
California is also unusual in having (by my count) 32 four-year campuses in locations that are accessible to almost any student who wants to live at home. That isn’t true in many states, especially less densely populated ones. And while no one has to agree with me, I continue to think there are immense differences in the opportunities available at, say, Sam Houston State vs. the University of Texas.
“Otherwise, some sacrifice in the form of loans, or jobs, or living on a shoe-string seems a small price to pay for the degree.”
But scholarship athletes don’t have to do any of those, and academic recruits do. The path is paved for athletes, gravel for scholars (in the most generous states – in Illinois, it’s a brick wall). That’s my point, and it’s not lost on the kids.
@Swimkidsdad: Can I come over to your house for Halloween? I’ve always wanted to see the Great Pumpkin.
Swim – have you or any of your kids ever played sports?
Even at the HS level, optional practices are de facto mandatory.
Do you really think that Urban Meyer is totally fine if his quarterback blows off “optional” 7-on-7s and film study? If so, can I talk to you about a bridge I’d like to sell?
I’m familiar with Rich Rod’s violation of the 20 hour rule at UM. The issue there wasn’t that players were spending more than 20 hours on football. It was that coaches were hanging around observing “voluntary” activities. And that UM wasn’t submitting time cards that would allow for an audit of CARA time.
Do you think Big 12 (i.e. Texas, Oklahoma, etc.) Commissioner Bowlsby (former Stanford AD) doesn’t know what he is talking about:
“The 20-hour rule is a joke,” Bowlsby said. “There’s too many exemptions to it and it is routinely ignored on most campuses, even to the point of falsification of records. The practice schedules for young people in not just football but in lots of sports, doesn’t even approximate the 20-hour rule.”
So you know more about this issue than he does?
You will have to go to Peter Ohr’s house to see the Great Pumpkin. While you are in the pumpkin patch I’m sure you will be able to find two ballot boxes which contain a majority vote in favor of union representation.
Commute accessibility to four year schools still has gaps in California. The far northern part of the state (north of Sacramento and Sonoma) is sparsely populated, with much of it out of reasonable commuting range of the two CSUs there. Some other parts of the state are commute-accessible to only one campus that happens to be highly selective (e.g. San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara). So some students have to live at the school because there is no school in reasonable commuting range, or because the one in commuting range is too selective for them).
It is also the case that some majors are only available at one or a few of the UC and CSU campuses, so that students not in commuting range of those campuses also need to live at the school.
However, commuter accessibility to four year schools is probably better for most of California’s population compared to in many other states. The CSUs’ policy of local area admission preference does help with respect to some of the low-impaction campuses (however, the high-impaction campuses’ admission thresholds are still relatively high even for local area applicants). The 112 community colleges in California also make commute-accessibility to low cost frosh/soph level college course work better than in many other states (there appear to be some states where community colleges (or their analogs like the Penn State branch campuses) are expensive and/or do not have good transfer-preparation offerings).
@northwesty wrote
“Swim – have you or any of your kids ever played sports?”
What part of Swim kids dad do you not understand?
Oh, Hanna, this is so not true: ““Otherwise, some sacrifice in the form of loans, or jobs, or living on a shoe-string seems a small price to pay for the degree.” But scholarship athletes don’t have to do any of those, and academic recruits do. The path is paved for athletes, gravel for scholars (in the most generous states – in Illinois, it’s a brick wall). That’s my point, and it’s not lost on the kids.”
The majority of athletic scholarships are not full ride. Some of those football and basketball players on full ride scholarship are so poor they can’t cover their expenses. Until this year the programs couldn’t even provide them ‘snacks’ on the field like a bagel with cream cheese (yes, a team was in trouble for that). Can you imagine being 250 pounds and being hungry, having to go to class hungry? Of course it is wonderful that a student who couldn’t otherwise be in college is there because of an athletic scholarship, but they aren’t living like royalty. In the past, many were hired by boosters or alums with cushy summer jobs and they could save up that money for the school year but those days are long gone. They don’t have the time to take a work study job like a full scholarship ‘poor’ student can checking IDs at the library or shelving books.
The vast majority of student athletes are on partial scholarships. They are studying, going to practices, sometimes working a job (even though they don’t have time for it). An athletic scholarship student usually can’t receive any need based school aid like a ‘poor’ student on a need based outside scholarship can. At my daughter’s school, the athletes on merit and athletic aid live a lot better than those just on athletic aid. There is only one full ride everything scholarship at the school and it is 100% merit earned.
My daughter doesn’t mind all the captain’s practices or weigh room requirements. She doesn’t like the ‘optional’ team building of Halloween parties, Sunday ‘swim fun’, Ugly sweater parties, birthday parties, softball games against the basketball team, etc. which add hours to her week. Yes, all these optional activities are mandatory, not only by the athletic staff but by the other team members. Her team members don’t even like it when she eats with non-team members (which she does anyway).
Do “snacks” not include the jugs of Gatorade commonly found on football game sidelines?
(Note the origin of the name.)