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I Owe It All to Community College

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Re: I Owe It All to Community College

#101

Post by Retra »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #81
romaniv wrote: post #71

I'm glad that it worked for him, but my community college was a complete waste of time with the exception of two (just two!) courses and the internship program. I think the true way forward is in replacing community colleges with certificates from online courses (with some in-person labs, probably). It's cheaper and would make for better quality of education.

Colleges as a whole should be completely replaced with something like certificates. Bachelor degrees are way too expensive for what they provide. The vast majority of people would be much better off with focused, relevant learning and skills. I went to a CC as well, fantastically cost-effective, I had some real gems for teachers, but I can think of at least one who had no business teaching anything. If we make CC fre…

What you're saying is mostly true, but it may not be all that relevant. The vast majority of people would be better off if you just gave them everything for free, but the _society_ as a whole would not be. Bachelor degrees, for instance, aren't supposed to be designed to serve the student, but to serve the community. (I.e., that's why they teach the 'classics' in the western/greek tradition.)

You are not supposed to be purchasing an education for yourself alone. It is supposed to make you a better person in terms of supporting your community, and your community is _supposed_ to support you for doing so.

I think you are being too narrow-minded in supposing we'd all be better off by adapting a policy that essentially maximizes selfishness and division of skill. One cannot have the flexibility to make good plans by refusing to make any sacrifices.

Re: I Owe It All to Community College

#102

Post by kghose »

es09 wrote: post #51
Domenic_S wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today, the cost is somewhere around $50/unit, not too bad. If I could allocate my tax dollars toward programs like Community College and other non-University options (Coursera?) I would be all about higher taxes for education. But I get fatigued and resentful when public institutions cry poverty and then we see things like this: > UC Berkeley Police Chief Victoria Harrison retired with a lump-sum package of $2.1 mill…

The 95$ per semester figure is for the State University at Sacramento - not for the community college. The current fees work out to ~5500$ per semester[1] for the same university. [1] http://www.calstate.edu/budget/student-fees/fee-rates/sacram...

To put that into further perspective, it costs us about $20000/year for day care for our baby. This is near Boston.

Re: I Owe It All to Community College

#103

Post by knorby »

mindcrime wrote: post #9

I have issues with the Obama plan, not because I'm against community colleges, but because I have issues with how this will (probably) be funded (read: taxes). As a libertarian / ancap who believes taxation is theft, I don't support anything involving spending tax dollars, no matter how noble the end. That said, I'm a community college grad myself, three times over. I have an A.G.E. (General Education) from Brunswick…

> I have issues with the Obama plan[...]

It started as a Republican plan in Tennessee, funded with state money in a fairly anti-tax state as states go.

> Some local rich millionaire type (a real estate tycoon) setup an endowment to provide free tuition at BCC for any graduate of any Brunswick County high-school.

What happens when no local, benevolent millionaire decides to dedicate their fortune to free tuition? That takes many millions. Besides, sending kids to college for things you don't care about is boring--most rich philanthropists want to influence what their money will do. You are much more likely to see a real estate tycoon build a new building, which happens all the time.

> I'd love to see a concerted, nationwide effort to build a coalition of philanthropists of this nature to fund this "free college for everybody" thing, instead of taking it out of the federal govt. budget.

Because a tax is far easier and is almost exactly what you describe. This is absurdly inefficient and would only serve your worldview.

Re: I Owe It All to Community College

#105

Post by srandazzo »

moskie wrote: post #86
danielweber wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we just buy everything that is cheaper than the Iraq war, we will very soon be bankrupt.

Let me know when you hit the bottom of that slippery slope.

Agreed, Nearly 40 percent of working-aged Americans now hold a college degree, according to a new report from the Lumina Foundation. In 2012, 39.4 percent of Americans between 25 and 64 had at least a two-year college degree.

Looks like we have a lot of room for improvement at which it is going to take a very long time to truly devalue higher eduction where a bachelors degree is looked at like high school diploma.

Re: I Owe It All to Community College

#106

Post by danielweber »

smeyer wrote: post #100
danielweber wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they are thinking of the bottom 10% of their class, and then imagining more students like that in the classroom. We're talking about expanded community college for the marginal student: that is, the student who just barely cannot get into community college today but could with a little more help.

I don't think that's relevant, is it? At least where I grew up (California), community colleges tended not to have admission standards and anyone could attend. Making it easier to afford seems to imply you'll be getting people who just barely cannot pay for it now, not people who "just barely cannot get in".

Community college is already very cheap, and Pell grants often completely cover the cost if you are low income.

Re: I Owe It All to Community College

#107

Post by coupdejarnac »

thoth wrote: post #30
mindcrime wrote: post #9

I have issues with the Obama plan, not because I'm against community colleges, but because I have issues with how this will (probably) be funded (read: taxes). As a libertarian / ancap who believes taxation is theft, I don't support anything involving spending tax dollars, no matter how noble the end. That said, I'm a community college grad myself, three times over. I have an A.G.E. (General Education) from Brunswick…

>As a libertarian / ancap who believes taxation is theft, I don't support anything involving spending tax dollars, no matter how noble the end. That's pretty hard core. How would you fund services like police/fire departments or infrastructure improvements (roads, electricity), basically anything where its existence benefits many (as opposed to say redoing education to require parents to pay for individual tutoring o…

Reminds me of the recent cases that made national news where a property owner didn't pay the fire department fees/taxes, and when the property caught on fire, the local fire department watched it burn to the ground.

Oh, here we are: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/firefighters-watch-home-burn-own...

Re: I Owe It All to Community College

#108

Post by 542458 »

slayed0 wrote: post #85
cgore wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're way past bankrupt already. That's what debt is. Zero was a long time ago.

debt =/= bankruptcy. Unrecoverable debt is bankruptcy. While the argument could be made that our debt is past a recoverable point, it is not a certainty.

"While the argument could be made that our debt is past a recoverable point..."

I'm not sure it could, unless I'm misunderstanding. The US could print up 15 trillion dollar notes tomorrow, and pay off all of it's debt. Of course, this would cripple the economy in a matter of hours, but it would still pay off the debt.

Re: I Owe It All to Community College

#109

Post by ashark »

v64 wrote: post #87
thoth wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>As a libertarian / ancap who believes taxation is theft, I don't support anything involving spending tax dollars, no matter how noble the end. That's pretty hard core. How would you fund services like police/fire departments or infrastructure improvements (roads, electricity), basically anything where its existence benefits many (as opposed to say redoing education to require parents to pay for individual tutoring o…

The Wikipedia entry on Anarcho-capitalism[1] dives into these details. It's a fascinating philosophy that, in my opinion, severely underestimates the human affinity for greed and manipulation. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

Over all my other problems with anarcho-capitalism and minarchism, the biggest is how much more time I'd waste and how much more anxiety I'd have.

Just thinking about all the new stuff I'd have to keep up with to avoid getting screwed gives me a headache. Food safety guarantors, some sort of court and law associations, drug safety certifiers, all kinds of insurance I don't have to worry about now, and so on.

Having to keep track of all that, who's best, who's had scandals and should be avoided, who's (known to be) subject to regulatory capture (think only the government is vulnerable to that?) or various other forms of corruption. Which ones give me bundle deals, are those actually better than buying the things individually from other providers. Ugh, it'd be miserable. Like all the problems of government and all the problems of real-world, imperfect-information markets in one. In my head it's like shopping for individual health insurance in the US (which is please-kill-me bad) or buying cars, but having to do that every. single. day. for one thing or another.

But I guess in all the relaxing free time I'd have left after that stuff (none, to be clear), I'd be really, really free to do whatever I could manage to pay for?

I don't see the appeal.

Re: I Owe It All to Community College

#110

Post by rstupek »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #99
caseydurfee wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an initiative that will lead to higher earning potential for Americans, leading to higher tax revenues over the long term. Will it pay for itself? Probably not, but it's juvenile to act like all government spending is equal when it comes to the country's long term financial health.

Yes, potential. It will also further devalue high school diplomas as well as make good high schools less of a priority across the nation (everyone is going to CC anyway, right?). It probably makes bachelor's degrees even more of a requirement for decent jobs, making people more likely to take on student loans and spend their 20 and 30s paying them back for a piece of paper, restricting their mobility and options. Thr…

Also raising the price of colleges everywhere because of the influx of additional money into the system.
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