yea doesn't make sense to me either to have free school for kids k-12 but then just stop when another 2 or 4 years (for some not all) of free school would be extremely beneficial for everyone including tax payers and collectors. i'm genuinely curious why the line was drawn at 12th grade. if in fact the reason is 18 years old then that seems arbitrary. we could simply start free college (basics) at 16 as has been suggested. or some hybrid program of ending "high school" at 16 and either enter a college program or a 2-year vocational program. maybe make the vocational program free (ala public school) and the college program partially free. anything beyond 4 years (masters, phd) would be paid by the student.
How many K-12 teachers do we have in this country? How many college profs do we have in this country?
My point is there are many more teachers in K-12, if you want to have more students in college, you have to hire many more college profs and build more dorms, teaching facilities, research labs etc, the cost will be huge.
Interestingly enough, our two kids went to AISD "magnet" middle schools, which helped them get into a magnet high school that offered college credit courses. AISD also has a deal with Austin Community College that allows every high school student in the district (there might be some minimum grade level required, but I don't recall hearing of one) to attend ACC classes during the summer for college credit, tuition free. Both of my sons took advantage of that ACC deal (their idea, not ours) and took numerous AP courses at LASA (the AISD magnet high school - ranked 8th in the nation by Newsweek). Our oldest went to an outstanding college out of state with 42 accepted credit hours before he took his first class, graduating in 4 years with degrees in computer engineering and computer science. Our youngest started school with at least 30 hours. Yeah, I'm bragging about my kids, but they went to public schools here in Austin, essentially doing what you suggested by using what is already offered. All at their own initiative. Yeah, we've been lucky.
Western Europe has free colleges. Graduates even get a small stipend. Compare that to antiquated laws that doesn't afford bankruptcy protection to student debt.
Someone earlier stated that it was a universal truth that a more educated public would equal a better one. I would like to ask you to rethink that sentiment. It would represent a more fair society, yes, one with a bit more (but not that much) equality of opportunity for people looking to enter the workforce. If you follow the example of Japan, Taiwan, and Western Europe, however, you will find that the main side effect of an universally more educated public is a decreased birth rate. That's about it. There is no positive correlation between a country's economic output (GDP) and the education status of its populace. Making it hard for people to go through college, do well, and earn a degree raises the barrier for everyone to find the financial means as well as the personal traits (like self-discipline, dedication, delayed gratification, perseverance) necessary in order to get a job. In a lot of instances, this actually helps the poor people that have come from strong family backgrounds like Hispanics, East Asians, and South Asians. In Europe, universal education for all has served only to make you indistinguishable from your peers when it comes to having a college degree. Without a plethora of job openings, the good ones go to people who have connections, leading to an even more nepotistic society than the one we have in America. Class divide is not an obstacle in Europe, it is a reality. For your anecdotal stories of poor smart kids who can't afford to go to college, sure the idea of universal free state schools is a good one. But for the health of a society trying to maintain a competitive edge economically, it's yet another untenable Bernie Sanders promise. They really should be subsidizing the costs of apprenticeships in order to bolster the number of people who want to pursue those high paying, critical-for-industry, but negatively perceived jobs.
that sounds good to me. many more jobs in construction and infrastructure. we have the money we just don't spend it on the right things. not true, you also get more voter turnout and presumably smarter voters. this in turn can change progress policy even further. it sure be nice to have smart voters in this country. right now it seems many are uncultured morans. you're assuming everyone will go to college because it's free and that's not true so you still have that distinction. now if more in the workforce have degrees you still have schools, majors, gpa, and certifications to distinguish even further. then of course you have advanced degrees to distinguished further. and most people don't think advanced degrees should be part of that program since it's outside the scope. that should be on the student. no one can convince me it's a bad idea when almost all other developed countries do it and we've yet to try it to find out.
Not sure if this is necessarily true. My college adviser (Biology professor) would constantly tell me of professors who worked ad junk or had side jobs because of the lack of work for professors, along with the increasing abundance of online courses that universities are offering. As far as dorms and facilities go, take a visit to College Station and let me know if there are a shortage of any of those things.
1. Adjunct professors are available in droves, but do you really want to move from paying them near minimum wage to a real salary with benefits? They are increasing b/c it makes economic sense for the colleges. Hiring all of them to be full-time profs to teach 2x the number of students would really push costs upward. 2. I don't know about College Station, but there are tons of schools that can't even offer students 2 years on campus. Ours can't, due to lack of dorm space. Building more dorms is another big ticket item and then you need to hire more staff to run them and keep the kids from drinking themselves to death, clean up the barf, run pregnancy tests. There's no free lunch until we fundamentally change what we do in American universities, which is in no small part: fix what we do NOT do in American high schools.
I am not feeling the dorm thing if that is being provided for free also. This will definitely lead to a lot more abuse of the system. I think that we should only pay for tuition an books and the students will have to provide for their own housing and basic needs.
Dorm rooms and the number of professors aren't even an issue. Sanders isn't proposing that schools allow everybody that applies in. Schools will have the same admission standards that they have now and accept the same number of students that they do now. If schools are greedy and accept more students than they can handle then that's a problem of their own doing, not a problem with offering education to everybody.
You would be totally wrong. There are so many students admitted to college that does not go because they decided it was too expensive, you can be college enrollment will increase significantly if it is free.
And schools know that not everybody that is accepted will go and adjust for that. For example, if a school knows that they have 1,000 spots to fill they don't just accept 1,000 people and hope they all show up, they accept 1,200 knowing that 200 won't attend. They may miss their target by a bit but they aren't consistently under enrolled year after year because of people that can't attend.
I'm sure you'll see of a work for room and board type deals. Most universities employ their own students. I can only imagine they will need a lot more student workers to help maintain a new free college system. People need to realize what Sanders says is fact. College is the new high school. The public deemed high school should be a right for all children and because of globalization (we're many of the young workforce get FREE college education) our children are now handicapped into having to pay out of their own pockets to have a chance at success. Even a college degree doesn't guarantee you a middle class life anymore. You can't argue that globalization Is great and not give our children the same benefits European children get.
Dorms aren't free, guys. Universities treat them as cash positive. Cram 2-4 people in each small unit and charge $. Ridiculous, locked-in meal plans are cash positive for the universities too. Agree with Dr. L though that dorms and prof expenses aren't the issue. The already super-inflationary economic model of the modern American university is the main issue, as I've already said, plus the other elephant (referenced intended) in the room: tax aversion.
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It's an ecosystem. You make it so that a student need not pay more than 80% of the minimum wage for example. Would 80% of minimum wage in available hours to work cover the cost of college accommodation? I think it's fair to expect that a student should be able to cover the costs with the type of jobs available to them while they study. What's not reasonable is to expect kids to be rich or to have parents pay for them.
It's definitely something that needs to be reviewed but what we need to be careful with people using the educational system as a loophole to get free/discounted board and lodging. People are already abusing the welfare system and just dont want this to be another one they can use.
