<p>Private universities don’t need to be cheaper. They are a business in a capitalist system. They can set their tuition at any rate. Plus private universities give a lot of financial aid to those who would struggle affording tuition. Also, making colleges a right would hurt the economy more than the rate at which students are in debt. Taxes would skyrocket and there would be underemployment in many jobs that do not require a degree. The results could be catastrophic.</p>
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<p>However, the European and foreign systems do not have that law that you’re calling for. In their societies, citizens may get a free college tuition…provided they qualify through a rigorous tracking and admissions process which does not guarantee admission to any school. </p>
<p>If your qualification record/national college entrance exam scores are not good enough, you may not gain admission to any university…and that’s accepted in those societies as part of the bargain of having a fully/mostly subsidized education is that only those who are the most qualified by surviving the rigorous tracking process/college admissions process would get it. </p>
<p>One interesting phenomenon with many foreign countries as a result is that the most prestigious universities tend to be state-run…not private. In fact…with a few notable exceptions…private schools are sometimes regarded by parents and many elite state university students with similar disdain some US parents and students have for US public universities.</p>
<p>The difference in Europe though is that those who don’t get on the academic track go into vocational and technical training through all of high school so they are ready for the workforce. We don’t do that. High school prepares each and every student for college, so every student should have an equal opportunity to go, whether that means going to the worst school in the state or lowering tuition.</p>
<p>^And that, my friend, is the problem. We really should consider something more in-line with the European model if we wanted to actually make the most of both our best and brightest AND our vocational-oriented workforce.</p>
<p>The poster’s quest for college as a right completely overlooks the fact that the average IQ of a successful college student is 115 – a full standard deviation above the mean of 100. Since the mean is 100, one has to take into consideration that more than half the students in a class are apt to have an IQ that would make academic pursuit especially unproductive and frustrating.</p>
<p>So I’d be more than happy to pay for, say, free education for those who are TWO standard deviations above the norm, because, hey, I want THEM designing the next plane I fly in 
(And yes, that would be only roughly two percent of the entire American student population.)</p>
<p>But I’d also like to live in a world where there are friendly, fulfilled, productive people in all the other jobs that may not require advanced abstract thinking but that do benefit from extensive vocational training and apprenticeship. If feel these students are being robbed right now because the “American dream” of education (aka debt) is being rammed down their ideological throats – so instead of having opportunities to find their unique skills, which might not be “academic” in nature, they’re just made to feel like “C” class students – when in truth they can and often do have great value and great skills. </p>
<p>I never minded streaming when they had it in Canada (technically, they still do, actually) – vocationally tracked students took a 4-year HS diploma; university-bound students took a 5-year (now four year, but many do it in 5) “u-prep” sequence of classes. Seems to work fine to my mind.</p>
<p>^I hate that idea. America should stay as is. Most people don’t grow into their potential until high school or after, should they be punished no. In the US its a lot more rounded, you just can’t have great grades and test scores you must have good EC’s, and volunteer. Its makes the applicants seem like a human and not just a set of numbers. One of the reasons why America has the majority of the best schools in the world. </p>
<p>I think OTHER countries should follow the American admissions system. I think the European system will be liked here because many here are obsessed with the numbers game.</p>
<p>The reason why American schools are so damn expensive is because the funding of research and some professors getting too much money.</p>
<p>The USA is still a nation built off industry. The European nations are service economies that are sometimes so small that they can be run like large corporations. Everyone needs a technical education (or better) in those countries. This is not the case in our country. The old “no college=‘want fries with that’” tripe is old and tired. Not going to four-year university needn’t condemn you to a career at McDonalds. College is already an excuse to party for a good percentage of its attendants. We don’t need every Tom, Dick and Harry bringing the relative worth of a college degree down with them. </p>
<p>More people are attending college today because it <em>is</em> more affordable and the requirements <em>are</em> more lax. There’s no such thing as a free lunch. The French pay in taxes what Americans are paying outright for college. We already are looking at a completely unrealistic healthcare system that will render us like Greece in seven years. Let’s worry about that first.</p>
<p>Quoting nothingto.</p>
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<p>Well, college may not be a financially difficult or crippling for families who make under 60K, but for those who don’t, attending a top-ranked private university most definitely is. I was accepted to an Ivy league school and to several other universities in the top 25 of of US News & World Report’s list, but they were all out of reach financially because I don’t qualify for financial aid and my family can’t afford to shell out $220,000-240,000. Top universities are really only accessible to students who come from either low or high income families and not for students from families who are somewhere in between, so to say that “It’s the top schools which are much more affordable” is only true if you happen to come from a low-income family.</p>
<p>This is an issue that, I admit, I am a little bitter about. While I do not think that college is a right, but rather something to work for and to be earned, I firmly believe that an education at a top-tier university should not be so expensive. More financial assistance (and not in the form of loans because, in reality, loans do little to alleviate the financial burden of college) should be available for middle-income families.</p>
<p>Correct me if I’m wrong, but what I think the OP is saying is that everyone should have the right to AFFORD to go to any college they want. This isn’t implying that every applicant everywhere gets in to wherever they want to.
Honestly, I don’t see why someone would be opposed to making any college affordable to anyone of any circumstance. It wouldn’t make the admissions process more lax and it wouldn’t make the admitted any stupider.</p>
<p>^they’re opposed to the notion because as usual they don’t want to pay for it in taxes. More specifically, they don’t want to pay for someone else with their taxes. So this is what you get when social policy is left entirely to the free market in a wholly bifurcated socioeconomic structure – a handful who can pay, a handful who can’t but get a free ride, and everyone else stuck struggling in the middle. At some point though, this plethora of mediocrity that’s replacing a meritocracy collapses on itself and you find yourself in a country that gets it’s butt kicked by 37 other countries in the Pisa because we just keep watering down the curriculum so “everyone” can PASS because hey, it’s their RIGHT
next thing you know this so-called industrious innovative country of bygone eras suffers a lack of STEM students and there’s a talent war because talent is scarce – but hey, we don’t want to actually spend any of that precious pretax dollar nurturing high talent because we need our money to but more junk that we have to import from Asia because we don’t have a working class anymore because hey, it’s everybody’s right to read Foucault
/end of rant</p>
<p>from numero1: “High school prepares each and every student for college, so every student should have an equal opportunity to go, whether that means going to the worst school in the state or lowering tuition.”</p>
<p>This simply isn’t true on virtually every level. You need to speak with some high school teachers. A substantial number of students should never aspire to attend college as has been stated repeatedly in this dicussion. These students should learn trades and develop other skills. Do you need to go to college to learn how to rebuild an engine? Would you want me to put in all the electric wiring in your house? Why not - I have three degrees. My mother-in-law is 97. The people who care for her are a mix of college educated (e.g., nurses) and non-college educated (the vast majority of the people who enrich her life on a daily basis). The education and skill mix helps define which job each person has but compassion is something all of them have. I don’t recall any “compassion” classes in my academic studies. We need to truly understand and value the plethora of talents necessary to make this a better place for all of us. We have been blinded by “political correctness.” It is just as bad as what it was (lack of fairness and true equal opportunity) that we battled before. There a balance somewhere which we need to find.</p>
<p>…and in the real world where most of us live and work, you have to balance the idealistic view that everyone should be able to attend low/no cost college with the practical aspect of where would the money come from to pay for this???</p>
<p>Toxic93 and wiscongene I agree with both of you. America is different than the other countries and in fact our education rivals all of the other nations. The only reason we rank lower is because we use all of our children in our testing while the nations who are higher up in the rankings only use those who were chosen to be on the academic route, ie their smartest children.
I am in the middle class and have spent a good portion of my life working so that I could save up enough money to help my parents afford college. For those who say that being in the middle means you can’t afford college they are incorrect. Plus the ivies and other top colleges give a lit of financial aid even to those who are in the middle.
Why should top schools lower their tuition? They are businesses and tree is demand for them. There is a surplus of those who don’t get accepted. Therefore the top schools are performing good marketing and have every right to charge that much. there are many other options for college so cost is out of the question. And why should the money that I earn be taken away from me so that someone else can go to college? America is capitalist and doesn’t need these socialist ideas.</p>
<p>@englishjw: every high school’s goal is to prepare a student for college. This isn’t Europe, where they separate 9th graders into “You’re going to be intellectuals” and “You’re going to be mechanics.” That’s not how we do it. Every high school has a set number of courses one must take and credits that apply to being able to be accepted by colleges. So maybe we should change the system and do what Europe does, but if we don’t then it wouldn’t be fair to prepare everyone for college and then deny the opportunity for some people.</p>
<p>@Strat94: These socialist ideas is what’s making dozens of European countries have better education than you or your children will ever have.</p>
<p>Can we at least get health care so people dont die of neglect before we educate everyone?</p>
<p>I’ve read part of this thread…No, I don’t believe college should be a right. Some people are just not college material and wouldn’t do well in it. They need to work hard to get to that. If they slacked off all of high school, sorry, college isn’t for you, compared to those of us who worked hard to get where we are. But people should have a chance to work hard in high school and do well enough to go to college without going into so much debt.</p>
<p>Finley… I must say that I disagree with your assessment that only those with low or high income can afford an Ivy league education. My wife and I found that when our S was accepted to Stanford, Cornell, and Caltech, they were all VERY generous with their aid… and none of it was in the form of loans. Our EFC was $20K, $12K, and $9K respectively. Each school was very affordable and our S chose Stanford which we decided was worth the cost. We make a combined income or around $120K so if your EFC was the total cost, it must be that you are in a pretty high income bracket. If you will look up the latest stats, you will find that any American family earning over $95K annually is in the top 20%. I’m sorry that you could not attend the school of your choice but Nothingto was correct when stating that top universities are more affordable… at least that is what I found when you consider that our local university was going to cost about the same as our EFC for Stanford.</p>
<p>nujmero1: "…every high school’s goal is to prepare a student for college. "</p>
<p>I have both brothers and sisters who are teachers. I have many lifelong friends who are teachers. Some of these teachers are in private schools and others in public. The overwhelming majority are middle and high school teachers. Rather than get into a long and detailed discussion, let me simply ask a single question. Do you know what “social promotion” is?</p>
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<p>Strat94: You really should read the PISA report to disabuse yourself of this kind of self-consoling kool-aid. Or at least the 292 paged section of the report that examines why Canada placed 8th and the US 38th considering each spend approximately the same amount on education and have similar systems and almost identical national IQ averages. It’s a question worth examining. And it’s NOT because the entire spectrum is not being tested.</p>
<p>Yes I know what social promotion is. I don’t see how that’s super relevant. Look at any high school’s website and/or registration manual or handbook and you will see that the goal of that high school is to prepare its students for college. The school’s requirements of credits do so by what they believe that colleges want and they’re pretty standard throughout any public high school- 3-4 years of english, math, science, social studies, and then some electives. Some even less for science or math. Doesn’t matter. We have guidance counselors and college fairs and AP classes and ACT/SAT’s and PSAT’s so that we know how prepared students are for college. </p>
<p>Find me ONE public high school whose goal is to train students to go into the workforce right after high school. One public high school where kids go to be mechanics, construction workers or other technical jobs.</p>
<p>There are none- because we try to prepare every student for college.</p>
<p>College is available for most everyone. The PELL will take care of the expenses for those from the lowest income families and everyone can borrow from the Staffords. The thing is, college is not a right because it is something that an adult makes a decision to do. Most students are 18 or over when they go to college. </p>
<p>A line has to be drawn somewhere in terms of education being fully funded, as the sky is the limit. So high school is where we have drawn the line. As one goes further up the education ladder, one’s abilities and potential contributions to the field of study become determining factors as to whether one is funded or not.</p>
<p>College is a great gray area in terms of entitlement. In our capitalist society where you pay for what you get and you get when you pay, really anyone who wants to go to college and can come up with the money can find some higher education. Finding sources of funding, is a whole other thing unless you have something you can offer to a college.</p>