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All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free

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Re: All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free

#471

Post by nxx788 »

markdown wrote: post #469
NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is "we"? I've seen a lot of terms used for social services: subsidized, covered, available by grant, available to those who qualify. But I don't always see those social services tossing around the word "free". Sure, sometimes there are "free haircuts for the homeless" or "free medical services for the needy", or "free help to apply for benefits", but generally in the context of entitlements, we're not freely band…

Free police, free firefighters, free roads, etc. It's all free as far as your average layman is concerned.

I don't think anyone thinks free services don't have costs. Everyone (or nearly everyone) understands they are taxpayer funded. Even to the layman.

Re: All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free

#472

Post by jonhohle »

nxx788 wrote: post #404
jonhohle wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something is not free if someone else is forced to pay for it. It’s really easy to be generous with other people’s resources.

That's not how the language works. We have long ago decided that "free", when used in the context of social services, is correct enough to be understood. Do you think that definition is bad? If so, maybe you'll catch more nibbles by trying to engage in a dialog?

That is incorrect. Social services are “free”, adhering to the legal and traditional definitions in that the entity offering the service is indeed not charging for the service. That is well understood.

It is also understood that the source of funding for institutions which offer free services is taxes, fees, and levies from the general population. Regardless of what MMT proponents imagine, costs will eventually be repaid by resources, labor, or war.

I find it intellectually dishonest to advocate for “free” services without acknowledging how those services are funded. It does seem more of the population is interested in immediate gratification regardless of long term costs (see deficit spending, consumer debt, etc.), but that doesn’t make the cost disappear because it is ignored. It’s no different than suggesting because birds fly, they must not be affected by gravity.

Re: All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free

#473

Post by User23 »

rdevsrex wrote: post #412
johnnyanmac wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if teachers have (which I'm not convinced of to begin with), Universities and land haven't. Its no secret that we've had an overpopulation crisis for the past few decades as is, so We haven't fully solved that issue as of now. And I'm equally unsure if taxes have tripled, between increasing poverty on the bottom and more and more tax evasion on top.

I'm sure if we built new universities, there would be plenty of applicants to teach it in, given how fierce the competition for academic positions already is. If capacity at existing colleges is the problem, we could start new ones.

Where exactly would you propose building them? A competitive university is going to require around 2,000 acres of land. Where are you going to find that in today's California? No doubt there is plenty of open space left, but it's not in very desirable areas.

Re: All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free

#474

Post by User23 »

andersa wrote: post #443
IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of these stats grew at the rate of tuition prices. Which happens to be the metric that really matters.

From the outside, that seems to have primarily two reasons: - universities wasting massive amounts of money on things that have nothing to do with academics, such as sports programs, stadiums, etc. - because they can, due to people getting ridiculous loans to pay the ridiculous tuition cost. So all that would have to be done there is ban them from charging these ridiculous fees. Is that not it?

> universities wasting massive amounts of money on things that have nothing to do with academics, such as sports programs, stadiums, etc.

Don't forget administrative bloat.

Re: All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free

#475

Post by User23 »

xmddmx wrote: post #333
hotpotamus wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how many non-foster kids graduate high school?

The question to ask is "how many kids graduate high school vs. how many should ". Turns out the answer is interesting - about 50 years ago, the graduation rate for high school was around 50%. These days it's much higher (90% or more in some areas). Does this mean the children is learning? Perhaps. It also may represent a failure of our systems - in the past, not everyone needed a high school degree to be a functional…

A hundred years ago graduating high school was rare. My grandfather made it all the way to 6th grade before he had to start working. And if you look at what a high school graduate applying to one of the Ivies was expected to know a century ago, it was considerably closer to today's bachelor's degree than today's high school diploma.

Primary and secondary educational standards have dropped precipitously in the USA.

Re: All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free

#476

Post by [deleted] »

xmddmx wrote: post #294

This idea is not really new - the California Master Plan for Education essentially promised a free higher education to everyone in California. In 1960. [1] As these things go, the plan was eroded over time, with the (in)famous Proposition 13 of 1978 dealing a big blow. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Master_Plan_for_Hig...

[deleted]

Re: All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free

#477

Post by lisper »

sudosysgen wrote: post #441
lisper wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody thinks that free education is magically free, everybody understands that it's paid by taxes/government/society. That is far from clear. There are crazy people on the left just like there are crazy people on the right, and I think some of them really don't understand how the world actually works, and that you really can somehow magically make education "free for everyone". Even if it's not true, it provides a…

Oh come on. Literally no one believes that teacher salaries are going to pay for themselves. When leftists say that something like public healthcare would be literally free what they mean is that the net cost compared to the alternative is null or negative, not literally that nothing is being spent. If you want to give me a link of someone who literally thinks that free college means that no one has to pay anything f…

I don't think they think that no one will pay. I think they don't think about it at all, or they think that government somehow has unlimited resources at its disposal.

Re: All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free

#479

Post by jonhohle »

SantalBlush wrote: post #424
jonhohle wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something is not free if someone else is forced to pay for it. It’s really easy to be generous with other people’s resources.

It's easy to argue that nothing is truly "free" since tradeoffs always exist--at least to some small degree--but that isn't illuminating or helpful. We all know what is meant by "free" in this context, and there's no point in acting obtuse about it except to argue in bad faith.

I’m really not trying to argue in bad faith. Many conversations about “free” social services ignore real capital and human cost of the proposal as if it doesn’t exist. Why stop at education when basic needs like food, water, and shelter could all be “free”? The cost of residential water in CA, for example, is about an ⅛th of the education budget.

In the case of covered education for foster kids, I’m conflicted. I’m in favor of providing anyone placed in the foster care system resources to offset their hardship. I would support non-profits that showed they could efficiently direct funding to programs to help foster kids go to college. I would wager there is research that shows positive economic and social impact by sending foster kids to college that outweighs the cost and significantly reduces the risk of foster to prison. But that’s my choice and don’t think everyone else should be forced to have the same convictions.

While not perfect, Arizona exposes this somewhat by offering tax credits for contributions to non-profits in certain categories (aid for working poor, tuition assistance, foster/adoption, public schools). I’m still forced to cover the cost of social programs, but minimally I get have some agency in choosing organizations that align with my philosophy in those domains and aren’t kicking back a slice of that money to politicians.

Re: All foster kids in California can now attend any state college for free

#480

Post by yarrowy »

mcny wrote: post #450
slavboj wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is this meme that Prop 13 is responsible for everything bad in California because of course we could pay for anything if we had more money. In reality the CA budget has grown faster than inflation for decades. https://www.statista.com/statistics/313176/california-state-...

My personal opinion, the first thing we should do is a complete ban on all “professional” and/or spectator sport in any and all educational institution. You can still have classes teaching sports but no spectators and definitely no “college spirit” nonsense. It doesn’t matter to me if these sports generate more revenue than it costs. It is a distraction that we don’t need. If people want to participate in spectator s…

Except the whole point of college is that it's more than just education.
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