I don't believe even public colleges want this. They're raking in too much money, at this point.
who cares what they want.
Stop Arguing over Elite Schools. Just Make Public Colleges Free
41–50 of 288 posts
Re: Stop Arguing over Elite Schools. Just Make Public Colleges Free
#42Nothing is “free”. Sometimes the costs are hidden from most people. It’s like immigration. If you say, “anyone who comes here can’t be kicked out and you instantly get access to healthcare, food stamps, and free housing” then your maximum payout is the entire planet and you are bankrupt once people realize this. For public college to be free, I want to limit access, like happens in Europe. Sure college can be free… t…
Honest question, do you have a college degree, and do you think the majority of the population being generally educated is actually a bad thing? I can understand the reaction to the cost, and many people work outside of the degree they majored in, but I do value the general education of the population. It’s been a remarkably uplifting force in society, if you look back over history. I also wonder what that means for…
We are talking about taking something that individuals pay for, that costs about $40k in total at affordable schools, and making it totally free for as many people who want it.
If additional people want to pay beyond the cap, wonderful. But I don’t see how the financials make any sense otherwise.
Re: Stop Arguing over Elite Schools. Just Make Public Colleges Free
#43One of my favorite cultural artefacts from Europe is that "Oh you pay tuition? Sorry your grades weren't good enough" My university only charged you for retaking exams (after 3 tries) and for redoing a year, if you didn't make a baseline of credits. 1 re-do was free. You can re-take any class for free as long as you're enrolled. I used this to take classes from past years that I didn't pass. While I'm a bad example o…
Some zero-price schools in the US, like high schools, have essentially no standards at all. You can get a diploma even if nearly illiterate.
Good schools with high standards can be delivered with or without paid tuition, and the same for bad schools with no standards.
Re: Stop Arguing over Elite Schools. Just Make Public Colleges Free
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US spends more on education than the military, it is difficult to defend the idea that spending on education has not been prioritized. Per the OECD, US spending per student is among the highest in the world by a large margin, which raises the question of value for the money already being spent -- any deficiencies compared to other countries aren't for lack of money. The US also spends a lot of money on the milita…
> The US spends more on education than the military "The US spent $877 billion on military in 2022, a new report says — more than 10 times federal education spending" https://www.businessinsider.com/us-defense-military-budget-c...
Can't see the article but I assume they are comparing it to Dept. of education spending as most do. The vast majority of educational spending is at the state and local level which people frequently leave out when making this comparison.
Re: Stop Arguing over Elite Schools. Just Make Public Colleges Free
#45Nothing is “free”. Sometimes the costs are hidden from most people. It’s like immigration. If you say, “anyone who comes here can’t be kicked out and you instantly get access to healthcare, food stamps, and free housing” then your maximum payout is the entire planet and you are bankrupt once people realize this. For public college to be free, I want to limit access, like happens in Europe. Sure college can be free… t…
> to the top N people in the state, with N being decided by the payers (i.e. democratic electorate). I don't know how it works in the EU, but one issue I see with that it has the danger of permanently locking people who grow up with worse early/middle/high school education into their socioeconomic status, i.e. it would prevent social mobility for those with less resources. Unless public schooling standards prior to c…
In many (most?) EU contries, kids are evaluated and steered into vocational/trades or college-bound tracks at about middle-school age. College/university education may be free or close to it, but not everyone can go. EU approaches to education are more likely to lock you into your socieoeconmic status than those in the USA, where if you are smart but poor you will have schools falling over themselves to recruit you so their enrollment stats for "underserved" students look better.
Re: Stop Arguing over Elite Schools. Just Make Public Colleges Free
#46> There’s the age-old question of how we pay for this. Sanders proposed a Wall Street financial transactions tax. A 0.1 percent tax, according to a Congressional Budget Office estimate, could raise $777 billion over 10 years. Or we could hike taxes on corporations and the wealthiest Americans.
I have no problem taxing wall street or "the wealthiest Americans", but I don't see the connection between this proposal and this funding source. It feels like taking money away from people who don't vote for you, and giving it to people who do. That's a bad direction to go down, and I'm generally skeptical about politicians who do this (which is a lot of them).
Re: Stop Arguing over Elite Schools. Just Make Public Colleges Free
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honest question, do you have a college degree, and do you think the majority of the population being generally educated is actually a bad thing? I can understand the reaction to the cost, and many people work outside of the degree they majored in, but I do value the general education of the population. It’s been a remarkably uplifting force in society, if you look back over history. I also wonder what that means for…
We are talking about taking something that individuals pay for, that costs about $40k in total at affordable schools, and making it totally free for as many people who want it. If additional people want to pay beyond the cap, wonderful. But I don’t see how the financials make any sense otherwise.
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Re: Stop Arguing over Elite Schools. Just Make Public Colleges Free
#48We've been prioritizing military spending over education for decades. I'd love to see even a bit of that swing the other way. I don't think taking a small amount from the military, by requiring them to optimize a few budgets, would be impactful on our nations security.
The US spends more on education than the military, it is difficult to defend the idea that spending on education has not been prioritized. Per the OECD, US spending per student is among the highest in the world by a large margin, which raises the question of value for the money already being spent -- any deficiencies compared to other countries aren't for lack of money. The US also spends a lot of money on the milita…
> The US also spends a lot of money on the military. Whether prudent or not, at least that spending produces an objectively superior product. We spend even more on education with ambiguous results.
Nice. Didn’t think I’d see “bombs over books” argued so early in the morning.
Re: Stop Arguing over Elite Schools. Just Make Public Colleges Free
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Sometimes the costs are hidden from most people. [..] It’s like immigration The costs of immigration are not hidden, nor are its benefits. Financially speaking and from the point of view of the state, immigrant are net negative in the first couple of years - and then they are net positive for the rest of their lives. Immigration exists because market demand for workforce exists... I always find hilarious that it is…
> I always find hilarious that it is the most free market advocates who tend to ignore that. A lot of free market advocates don't seem to understand how markets work. One of the main ways you grow an economy is to add people to it. You are adding jobs, by both creating labor supply and demand for goods and services. It's really very simple. The economy is made of people, stupid!
Require immigrants to be self-sustaining at some minimum amount. Have a job ready or otherwise prove the ability to pay for your housing (someone willing to board you).
Otherwise, instantly applying government handouts to someone without any skills - language or otherwise - and often with kids and disabled relatives - makes the idea of unlimited open immigration a daunting cost.
Re: Stop Arguing over Elite Schools. Just Make Public Colleges Free
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US spends more on education than the military, it is difficult to defend the idea that spending on education has not been prioritized. Per the OECD, US spending per student is among the highest in the world by a large margin, which raises the question of value for the money already being spent -- any deficiencies compared to other countries aren't for lack of money. The US also spends a lot of money on the milita…
Could you please support this statement: "The US spends more on education than the military"? This view ( https://www.usaspending.gov/explorer/agency ) suggests Defense spending is $1.1 trillion in 2023 while Department of Education funding is $208 billion.
The entire US military budget is federal, but most of the education budget comes from the states.
You're comparing apples to oranges.