Democratic Primaries
In reply to the discussion: Why Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren Will Win the Presidency with Robert Reich [View all]PufPuf23
(8,878 posts)When I hear the proposals for "free education" I think back to the original tenets of the University of California, the California State Colleges and Universities, and the two year community college system to provide low cost quality educations to Californians appropriate for the innate varying potential of the students. Now those systems are ever more popular and viewed by Californians, other Americans, and foreign students as sources of quality education but they are much more expensive, not just in student fees but also in the costs of living. So I see low cost public education proposals as going back to prior to the 1990s of California higher education as a model.
I see the very structure of education and student loans as the problem. A college education is viewed now as was a high school education in the past. Plus education is and should be more than the means of getting a job and earning money, you tie the two aspects tightly together and perhaps you are correct as far as reality versus an ideal. But educated citizens are more informed voters and so on, many social benefits to an educated population. Education has in part become more expensive because of the availability of student loans, a chicken and egg situation. Young folks get out of high school and they are expected to go to college and frankly there is not much they can do unless they obtain more education. On completion they often have problems finding employment using their education. The world should not be this way. Some folks scam the student loan system but more frequently they are victims, whether they recognize this or not, of the ever more neo-liberal educational complex run to maximize profit. So I am pretty forgiving towards those that have student loans and not much to show for the money spent and effort. Looking at the individual level (examples are you and I), one finds stories that did not work out so well.
People are happier and more productive when their needs are met. There can still be private colleges but the public colleges need to be more rather than less accessible and not leave students with a legacy of debt. I was extremely fortunate to obtain a quality education (besides the two degrees I attended a year of grad school as a Fed being paid as a GS9 and GS11) and in mid 40s left corporate world to work in research and teach at Oregon State and have an incomplete free PhD from that experience derailed by family matters where I needed to be in California). My Dad lived his entire life except 3 years in Europe WWII in the town nearest to where I live that has maybe 600 people and a 3 room elementary school, HS is 30 miles away on an Indian Reservation where I also graduated. My Dad was educated through 8th grade and drove heavy equipment, crushed gravel, and grew alfalfa among other things. He was way red neck and would love Trump (as he did Nixon and Reagan. I 100% paid for my own college education. Cal was that "hippy school" and about the worse thing I could do was work Fed.
Hope you have a good day.
primary today, I would vote for: Undecided