20 years... A debt could probably be paid to a company long before that. How much do you think you are valued to your company... Think about how much money you make and then think about how much money you make your company. I got news for you, they may not be splitting everything down the middle with you. The military doesn't send kids to college for free. Some companies even reimburse their employees if they are going to college while working for them. The value of the employee is probably worth way more to a company than the dollar amount of the education.
This is true in countries with small, homogenous populations. Norway, which has a national population smaller than metropolitan Houston, is a good example.
We allow players to be drafted in basketball, football and even baseball. If they want to play, they are forced to sign contracts of up to five years, but they are "free men" after that. Companies who sponsor their chosen students would hold their tradeable "draft" rights for a specified number of years before they are "free" men and women. While companies would select students, students would also be able to sign "letters of intent" with their choice of corporate sponsors, depending on what career path they want to pursue. Students with talent and ability would be on faster tracks than those with lesser talent. At the same time, motivated -- though lesser talented students -- would have a chance to excel (tortoise and the hare). Motivated, talented people would lead the way, but the whole nation would prosper as a result.
Very convoluted and silly.. Are you seriously proposing this in lieu of junior college for the great masses of Americans? Hey if a poor kid has a perfect SAT in the 5th grade or solves an longstanding international math problem he can be drafted as you propose. I remember a case of some poor rural Russian kid who solved a classic math problem and was snapped up and brought to California by google.
In sports you're drafting people who are already at their physical peak and are more technically proficient at their sport than anyone else, as documented by their statistics and past teams' performance. No stakeholder in any part of this transaction: even the "talented" kids themselves, but especially hiring managers and executives developing their succession plan, are going to invest in any uneducated, untrained children; especially at the expense of industry colleagues or their own kids.
This is what happens when you get one or two generations of minority and female professionals and executives in staff meetings, and you actually have to start pushing your kids because your middle-class standing, informal professional and social networks and bull**** non-compliant hiring practices don't ensure they'll land on their feet. All of a sudden a fifty-year old training and educational model has to be ripped to shreds to accommodate "natural" talent.
In sports, teams often draft on players' current skill sets as well as "potential." In a sense, companies also do that now. A few large corporations fight over the very limited number of "big fish" coming out of college. However, I am trying to channel more money deeper into the educational system while creating a competitive environment to stimulate children's natural desire to "win." When a bright kid, generally in a poor neighborhood, looks around and sees there is money to be made now selling drugs versus maybe much later as an engineer or doctor, shortsightedness generally wins. If a deserving kid earns "bonus" money for putting in the work, I can't see much harm in allowing these "incentives."
This approach is neither convoluted nor silly. It is practical. There are too many community colleges even now. Their degrees are meaningless and expensive considering their value. They provide no skills, no future -- just an expensive piece of sheepskin that serves no purpose. You are championing a "free" piece of sheepskin that still serves no purpose. College is a precious asset, but it is only as good as the person who earns it. While I agree that colleges and universities are pricing themselves out of the cost/benefit ratio, we need solutions that address that. However, making everybody a college graduate will not automatically make them all more productive.
Obama had a 2.6 (undergraduate) Bush had a 2.4 (undergraduate) :grin: both had good GPA's in graduate school though
No, sorry to disappoint you I've never attended a community college. However I do have my BFA. It is a misnomer that community colleges are easier than 4-year universities. I had several friends that went to both and said the community college classes were often much harder. Why? Profs at CCs often have more real-world experience and are harder on their students. These days many Universities are actually trying to recruit CC profs, but are having a hard time doing so due to the pressures put on University Profs to publish, raise grants, etc..they have a lot of extra responsibilities other than teaching which often leads very qualified teachers to turn down the jobs and stay at the CC level.
If you are talking about old fashioned apprentice programs then sure I am for it. Employers want to pass off training costs to the public so you will have to legislate to force them to do their own training. Employers under our present market system want to off load those expenses. I do agree that it is problematical to have the government paying for bs for profit colleges that try to convince every poor soul for instance that they can be a famous chef etc. My wife recently told me of a relatively poor Latina who complained to her that she had gone to junior college to be a veterinary assistant and then she got a job cleaning crap out of dog cages.
What you say might be true for a liberal arts degree but is way off base for engineering or science. So far off we can't have a discussion on it.
Dammit! I never can figure out what the hell it is that this guy is saying. I mean, seriously... Is it just me or what? So confusing...
I believe we are close to agreement. One could easily call what I am advocating apprentice programs. Just as major league baseball used to have extensive farm club systems, corporations could do something on that order. The process probably could not be simplified to a level such as when a cobbler or baker taught his trade or craft to a child, but the concept could be similar. Just as an athlete today chooses his or her sport, students can choose their field or fields and compete for corporate sponsors, just as corporate sponsors could compete for promising "apprentices." Who knows? Physical sports might eventually take a backseat to brain sports.
As I understand it in Germany, for instance, not all are eligible for free university as not all are accepted. A person is more closed off from that track if they don't make the scores or grades relatively early in life. A of the folks who don't make this cutoff are routed into apprentice programs where they can develop valuable work skills for more manual type work. I think that part of the problem in the US is that we devalue this type of work and the pay range is proportionally much lower than in Germany for these jobs. On the plus side there is more of a chance for the late bloomer to say at 21 or even 25 go back to junior college and perhaps make good grades and eventually go on to get a PhD or to professional grad school etc. The biggest scam of all is the growth of for profit colleges, that are just another version of the let's use tax money to make a profit. This leads to a strong motivator to waste taxpayer money and also the time of the students. The motivation is much greater for this than in the traditional non profit schools, though they have a motivation to stay open, too. At the for profits we see the typical industry spending millions to lobbying Congress to keep the money flowing to their owners.
