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NYU Makes Tuition Free for All Medical Students

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Re: NYU Makes Tuition Free for All Medical Students

#171

I feel like all the collage should be free people are not thinking far enough ahead to what that actually means. 1) A free collage will end up being more like extended high school. 2) At some point new institutes of for pay higher education will pop up. They just won't be called colleges. People who can afford them will clearly have a advantage and top companies will start to seek out people who attended these organi…

If you look at the UK, which has in recent years gone from free to firstly low tuition fees and more recently exorbitant tuition fees, the reverse seems to be true.

In making university a £9k a year proposition universities seem to have significantly increased student expectations along the lines of "I paid for this, I expect top marks", along with vast increases in appeals etc. It does not seem to have increased educational expectations - just transactional. This seems to be particularly prevalent with overseas students who pay even higher fees.

Universities have, in the main, happily adopted the profit mentality by providing and offering less and increasing class sizes.

My conclusion is by adopting a high fee model we have significantly weakened further education in the UK.

Re: NYU Makes Tuition Free for All Medical Students

#173
post #150

This is probably the other piece of the puzzle regarding the implementation of single payer healthcare. Because who in their right mind wants to sacrifice 16 years of earning potential, take on 500K of debt only to become an MD with long work days and now prices that are fixed with no other form of negotiation leverage in sight.

Does anyone know if the single payer models we use in the US keep Dr. salaries on par? I've only heard of savings from negotiated drug prices, and insurance overhead; but, if Dr. salaries are also decreased, OP's got an interesting point.

Re: NYU Makes Tuition Free for All Medical Students

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You prefer an under-educated population? The most valuable asset we have in the technology and service based economies is human capital. We need a creative and educated population to continue to compete. I think we should eliminate all for-profit education and preferably make all universities public.

Under educated population is a disaster, but that problem starts about 12 years before college, in a different all public/free education system. Jamming more people through mediocre and worse college programs to get worthless degrees is a waste of time and money.

Why do you assume that degrees are "worthless?" How are you defining "worthless?" Based on the research, getting a degree significantly increases your earning potential. But I would argue that even if that wasn't the case and everyone got philosophy, literature, and history degrees, our country would be significantly better positioned globally.

And I agree with your statement that the problem starts earlier. Although most of our issues with primary and secondary public education can be traced to poverty and racism. So, I think we should raise taxes to address those as well :D.

Re: NYU Makes Tuition Free for All Medical Students

#175
post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been in many different socio-economic backgrounds. First school I went to was the lowest performing school in Georgia, in which I was the only white child. By high school I had moved to the highest performing high school in the state, where the senators sent their kids, etc. "Real Housewives of Atlanta" was from my school district then. Drugs, alcoholism, bullying, and domestic violence happen in every environme…

Out of curiosity, if it wasn't the environmental or family differences, and if the cops aren't preventing crime in the higher-income neighborhoods, what do you think caused the first school to be low-performing and the other to be high-performing?

I don't think it was negative environmental differences, but the positive ones.

The kids in the burbs had been taught to read before they entered school. The teachers are just better, as they're paid better there (school funding comes from property taxes). The kids are pushed to succeed, internalize that, and push eachother to succeed, whereas school in the city felt more like daycare going into prison.

Also, your teenage screwups are far more likely to be swept under the rug or not be noticed in the burbs. Saw more guns in school there. Saw kids get busted for literal pounds of drugs, but because their dad knew the DA or something they got a sealed misdemeanor possession, and had it expunged as quickly as possible.

You know the saying "you're fine as long as you aren't breaking more than one law at a time"? Like don't speed if you have a joint in your car, etc.? That comes from a huge position of privilege that isn't afforded to a lot of the population.

EDIT: Also I was told (but haven't confirmed) that apparently colleges were weighting grades from the higher background school in such a way that you could be a B or C student, and after weighting it was the equivalent of off the charts in the other district. Like literally unattainable, straight As with AP classes (if they were even offered) would still be weighted as less.

Re: NYU Makes Tuition Free for All Medical Students

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Raise the income tax, create a VAT, kill the mortgage-interest tax deduction, add a Financial transaction tax, tax capital gains like normal income, stop subsidizing fossil fuel extraction, add a carbon tax, and lower the threshold for the inheritance tax and raise the percentage.

All that for a worthless degree in antaractic penguin studies from Shady St Univ. You still graduate unemployed, unskilled, but instead of you paying the debt, someone else does. Also, with no skin in the game, I’m sure college will get even less serious.

What's wrong with zoology / ornithology today?

Re: NYU Makes Tuition Free for All Medical Students

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Raise the income tax, create a VAT, kill the mortgage-interest tax deduction, add a Financial transaction tax, tax capital gains like normal income, stop subsidizing fossil fuel extraction, add a carbon tax, and lower the threshold for the inheritance tax and raise the percentage.

All that for a worthless degree in antaractic penguin studies from Shady St Univ. You still graduate unemployed, unskilled, but instead of you paying the debt, someone else does. Also, with no skin in the game, I’m sure college will get even less serious.

People will still go for the degrees they go for today, which for the most part are degrees they believe will provide a good return on their investment of _time_. On top of that, unis would need to limit how many people are accepted to a penguin program, because how many qualified teachers can they throw at that?

Beyond admissions quotas, I imagine that if gov’t does decide to fully subsidize unis, they too will impose limits per field of study. This is already done in European countries that subsidize uni.

Finally, I think with “guaranteed” gov’t loans, unis have already taken a lot of their skin out of the game. They don’t have to worry about that student defaulting on their loan later, the gov’t does. Or even for private loans. If you had a seemingly infinite bank account, would you penny pinch or see how many new toys you could buy?

Re: NYU Makes Tuition Free for All Medical Students

#178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just make college free. Sure, have some funding ideas?

[flagged]

Wow! You are right! Nobody is entitled to anyone's labor! We should make sure we let the capitalists who use the labor of everyone around them to extract profits.

Re: NYU Makes Tuition Free for All Medical Students

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a wealthy Stanford alumni Grammar tip: In English, the word "alumnus" is typically declined as it would be in Latin. Especially amongst academics, I'd say. So if you're writing for that audience, the appropriate forms of "alumnus" are, I think, as follows [0]: "alumnus" - One male, or one person of unspecified sex. "alumna" - One female. "alumnae" - Multiple females. "alumni" - Multiple persons whose sex is all mal…

My Latin is a little rusty and mixing Latin grammar with English is doomed to be an exercise in futility, but IIRC that declension is only correct if you're using alumn- as an adjective for another noun which is masculine or feminine (which doesn't necessarily match the gender of the person, e.g. agricola is a masculine noun but can refer to a female farmer) If you're using it by itself as a noun, it's 2nd declension…

> mixing Latin grammar with English is doomed to be an exercise in futility

I agree. When thinking about the use of "proper" English, I find myself conflicted.

One the one hand, I truly believe that languages evolve, and it's silly to put any one particular version of English on a pedestal. That includes the version(s) one might associated with English speakers who are well-educated and/or wealthy.

On the other hand, I was raised to speak "proper" English, because my father believed that it strongly affects others' first impressions of the speaker's intelligence. I think my father was right about that, although I'm still undecided about how much it matters, and whether or not it's a concern worth catering to.

Re: NYU Makes Tuition Free for All Medical Students

#180
post #32

I'll probably be downvoted on a forum like this, but I worry about the most successful universities using their funds to subsidize those who would be fine without it. I was actually made aware of this by a wealthy Stanford alumni which has a fairly broad program for undergraduate tuition assistance. Graduates of mid/low tier universities seem more and more likely to have to compete with better credentialed people wit…

> a wealthy Stanford alumni Grammar tip: In English, the word "alumnus" is typically declined as it would be in Latin. Especially amongst academics, I'd say. So if you're writing for that audience, the appropriate forms of "alumnus" are, I think, as follows [0]: "alumnus" - One male, or one person of unspecified sex. "alumna" - One female. "alumnae" - Multiple females. "alumni" - Multiple persons whose sex is all mal…

When I was at University, I worked for the Department of Annual Giving, at first on the phones. I still remember one of the other callers always starting her spiel with "We're calling all the alumnis." With an English plural on top of a Latin plural, for good measure, I suppose. I cringed every time.

(Though, to be fair, the native English word children is in fact a double plural as well. [The -re is plural, thus early/dialectal forms childer "child [pl.]", and then later with a plural -n slapped on top of the already plural word, presumably because the -re plural ending had become somewhat obscure, just as Latin plural endings are for some modern English speakers.] Doesn't make me cringe any less at "alumnis", despite that.)

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