College Education Should Be Free!

[AlphaCentauri]

Last year, I wrote an article about the leading presidential contenders’ stance on issues of higher education. As a college student, these issues are of particular relevance to me as many students look forward to year of paying back 5-figure, even 6-figure student loans. While the economy is collapsing around us, I applaud moderator Bob Schieffer of CBS for asking this question as way to close the debates: “The U.S. spends more per capita than any other country on education. Yet, by every international measurement, in math and science competence, from kindergarten through the 12th grade, we trail most of the countries of the world. The implications of this are clearly obvious. Some even say it poses a threat to our national security. Do you feel that way and what do you intend to do about it?”

http://cornellsun.com/node/32750


Fuck all those who say if you can afford college there is trade school

[slackmaster]

1. I have only one question about free college education, which I think would be fantastic

Who would pay for it?

[YOY]

3. Taxpayer essentially.

If we but take a small portion of the MICs ravenous need to gouge us it would be covered.

Foreign students tuition would be a big income as well. Sporting events based on College Teams are another revenue source.

Most Universities are run like businesses big on profit in the first place. I would like to see the overhead needed to cover yearly standard expenses versus what they gain from tuitions.

[slampoet]

9. Also REMEMBER Many colleges get Research money and then don't get a share of what they invent.

For example....


Columbia University should have gotten a little from every computer maker because they (with others) invented the computer.

If every computer maker in the USA had to pay $1 to Columbia for inventing the computer, they wouldn't need to charge tuition and the grant money for research could keep going to more research.





(and yes for all the uber-geeks out there i realize that Alan Turing really invented the computer but didn't get credit.)

[fishbulb703]

10. I go to U of Florida, if anything, we need to charge more tuition.

Sporting events and dining services are a good way to offset some of the costs of education, but we both know it takes a lot of money to run a university, and I think the current system of tuition plus available federal aid is a better system for insuring an adequate budget for colleges and universities, rather than making it free and trying to come up with other direct sources of income.

And I disagree that most universities are run for profit, I may just be biased because I go to a public Uni, but as far as I know most universities invest any surplus (if they have any) directly back in to the school, to improve quality of education.

[YOY]

13. I think we need to see some spreadsheets before making any real calls.

I recall my undergrad getting more expensive in my senior year and very unjustifiably so. This was a state school in Ohio. The major changes to the university were the addition of a "sports complex" and improving the football field (in a school that nobody gave a shit about football...Kent State is NOT Ohio State.)

There was some serious profit going on there. It was obvious. The Dean was well disliked for listening to the board of directors over ANYTHING the students ever asked for and the professors viewed her as a complete anti-academic.

[slampoet]

28. Having worked for a few universities, they DON'T invest surplus.

You are simply mistaken. A college department that has money left over will get their allocation cut the next year.

So every department MUST spend all their money in order to get a decent amount the next year.


This is why on almost every college campus there is some technical machine that was bought for tens of thousands of dollars and is now just sitting in a storage room going obsolete.

I tried once to get a $200 repair made to one of these $200,000 machines and was told that if the machine were running the school would take thousands out of the next years budget.

[Bigmack]

8. The GI bill...

paid for itself in higher wages.. ergo higher tax payments... by those who got the benefit.
Here's a piece that helps explain.... http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/06/22/sunday/main4200692.shtml

When I got out of the Corps in 1968, I went to college.. something I couldn't have afforded on my own. My state paid for my tuition after the first quarter (when I'd proved I could do the work). The GI bill payed me every month. The NDEA loaned me money at superlow interest, and payments didn't start until 10 years after I graduated. Because I went into teaching, 10% of my loan was cancelled up to 50% of the loan total. I finished in 2 1/2 years.
Maybe the GI Bill robbed the world of a great electrician, but it gave the world a pretty damn good teacher.

Compare that to the situation today.

It is my belief that the ruling class understands that higher education is the key to moving up the economic/social ladder, and they are determined to keep us from climbing. The costs of higher education have increased much faster than the general cost of living.... over 10% per year in some cases.

[anarch]

21. a trivial percentage of the "defense" budget, maybe?

just a thought.


As far as I'm concerned, health care first, and then we worry about higher education. But I do think that higher education should be publicly funded...I mean, isn't that how it is in much of Europe, or at least mostly so? If we can have public education up through high school, why not a couple more years?

[Wapsie B]

2. Yes it should be free.

But it's going to take a massive societal shift to get to that point. I'd like to think we'll get there someday. However I do not know whether I will live to see it.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

4. As a former college professor, I would say, "Yes, free college, BUT

only provided that entrants prove that they have the academic skills required."

There are too many dumb rich and upper middle class kids who have no interest in learning, who are in college only because their parents can afford it and it's a convenient place to stash little Throckmorton III for four years so he can have his wild parties at the frat house instead of at home.

In countries where college is free, they have stringent entrance exams, as well as highly developed vocational tracks so that those who don't make it into college can still make a decent living.

[BanzaiBonnie]

11. Absolutely

Let's look at what works best in other places and then work with it.

[GreenPartyVoter]

19. Excellent post. Glad you brought up the entrance exams and vocational tracks.

[PVnRT]

20. Thank you for putting into words what I was thinking

And also, what the hell is wrong with trade schools? My engineering company employs hundreds of drafters for CAD stuff, most of whom either went to trade school or learned it on-the-job. Most of them are perfectly happy with that, and, frankly, if I wanted to do graphic design work, I wouldn't want to spend four years at school getting a degree I don't need for it.

[Dr. Strange]

32. Excellent point.

I'm astounded at the number of students coming into college who have to take remedial math courses to learn/relearn junior high and high school math.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

35. If everyone goes to college, then college becomes meaningless

especially if you have to dumb it down to accommodate the dumb rich kids who are using it as a four-year holding tank.

Other countries manage to produce literacy and general knowledge superior to that of the typical mediocre American college graduate through their high schools.

One college where I taught required a math exam for graduation. I was told that it was at the level of second-year high school algebra.

My Japanese assistant, who was an exchange student, was worried about her math exam, because math had always been her worst subject in school, but she gamely went in to take it.

The next day I asked her how the exam had gone, and she laughed. "Here I was so worried about it, and it turned out to be stuff that I'd learned in ninth grade."

The difference between Japan and the U.S. is that the Japanese consider school to be the child's most important job. The curriculum requires everyone to study everything--there's no way to say, "I'm not going to take math or science or English because I've heard that those are hard." Achievement is, of course, rewarded, but so is effort. They don't lose any potential scientists or foreign language experts to parents who say, "You don't need to learn that stuff."

There have been cross-cultural studies of American elementary school kids and elementary school kids from Japan, China, and Korea, in which groups of three or four children were given math problems that were definitely too hard for them--calculus problems like finding the area of an irregular shape. The American kids worked for a few minutes, concluded that the problems were too hard, and gave up. The Asian kids from all three countries kept trying different hypotheses and acted as if they would have gone on all day if the examiner hadn't called time.

I used the idea of praising students for effort in my own teaching, and it was effective with a lot of students. At the end of each semester, I gave awards, not to the students who had the highest grades, but the ones who had improved the most since midterm. I had students who never made it above a B average in my class but were sincerely interested in Japanese culture and clearly worked hard, and I would note on their papers that their effort was allowing them to do better than some students who had more natural talent.

If we're ever going to make free college into more than glorified high school, we're going to have to start by changing attitudes among the younger kids and making it as cool to be knowledgeable and well-read as it is to be athletic. Then we'll be able to accomplish more on the K-12 level and leave college for specialized study.

[JerseygirlCT]

66. And continue to nurture kids' innate sense of curiousity about the world

They don't start off bored with the whole idea of learning. They LEARN it.

But I don't think college, with high standards, is meaningless, even if everyone attended. The key is the standards, of course.

[intheflow]

53. Well...

I had to take remedial math in college because in the 20+ years I had been out of high school, I never once used algebra or geometry (the only two math courses required for graduation). I honestly couldn't remember a damn thing about any of it. I wasn't even interested the first time I took those courses in high school. Now I've been out of my undergrad program for about a decade, and you know what? I've never once used algebra or geometry in that time--though I have received a Masters degree in a field that needs no math skills.

[fascisthunter]

38. agree

merit should determine entry


PS - and not wealth

[RedCappedBandit]

43. Agreed.

I'm a senior in college. I can't tell you how disgusted I am when I read some of my peers work.
It really bothers me that some people put in absolutely no effort, have very little intelligence, but walk away with grades comparable to people who are obviously much more interest in the scholastic aspect of college life.
I'm not being picky either. Some of these adults write at a third grade level.

[Selatius]

44. I agree. Entrance standards need to be jacked higher, and trade schools need more development.

College isn't for everyone, and for those who can't make it into college, there should be a viable option in high quality trade schools, and the social stigma that a person didn't make it into college and is therefore inferior should be destroyed.

[a la izquierda]

56. As a soon to be college professor...

I say "here here"!! I'm not trying to be elitist, as some have claimed (not on DU), but quite honestly I think it was much more difficult to get into college when I was 18 than it is now...and that was only 13 years ago. I'm not sure what's going on, but the standards seem to have plummeted.

[JerseygirlCT]

65. Makes sense.

And having something serious to strive for would be good all around.

[MattBaggins]

5. No thanks

I think the sky rocketing costs need to be adjusted and more opportunities made for people to attend; but free would be bad. I would actually like students to have a more direct role in seeing the bill so that they might actually learn about spending and budgeting. It's bad enough that kids nowadays go from kindergarten to college never having worked a day in their lives and "home economics" courses being absent or not even teaching things as simple as balancing a check book.

[AlphaCentauri]

17. We are importing scientist from countries where college education is free

China and India for example, those scientist didn't have to waste their time learning spending and budgeting their student loans, they probably spend that time getting better in physics, math, biology, medicine etc.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

27. I don't know about India, but when I was in China in 1990

only 1% of the population went to college. Of course, 1% of a billion is ten million, but still, that's 990 million who didn't have a ghost of a chance of attending.

I doubt that the percentages are very much higher today.

Those other countries produce quality by limiting enrollment, and having a bunch of really bright and motivated students in a rundown classroom with poor equipment still allows you to accomplish more than state-of-the-art facilities with a bunch of layabouts who are in college only because their parents don't know what else to do with them.

[AlphaCentauri]

30. I guess that 1% are the best qualify not the ones who can afford it n/t

[Juche]

31. Thats my impression too

For all the talk of China being an amazing place of education it seems that about 75% of the nation is still living in rural poverty and of the 25% in urban areas there are tons of destitute menial workers.

I support entrance exams, but the goal should be an educated workforce capable of critical thinking, not a situation where 5% has advanced educations and the other 95% are told they are not allowed to get a higher education. If you want to get into grad school in the US you have to study for the GRE and placement tests. But you are not forced out of the system just because of low scores, you can still get in if you find a way to improve your abilities. It only means you have to try harder. It seems like some of these systems we are so worried about basically force huge segments of their countries out of higher education. A college dropout/forceout rate of 50-70% is not something to be proud of.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

33. I think we're confusing college with vocational training

In years past, a liberal arts graduate could enter the management training program of a major corporation and learn on the job.

Now companies want not only business majors but majors in specific AREAS of business, such as finance, marketing, and human resources. They won't even look at an English major.

This has been true since the early 1980s, and it changed rather abruptly. After coming back to Minneapolis in 1982 to type my Ph.D. dissertation, so I wouldn't have to pay tuition at school, I did some informational interviews about opportunities for liberal arts people in the many major companies that are headquartered in the Twin Cities. I thought that my language skills might be an advantage.

In all of them, I talked to people who had been hired as liberal arts majors between 1962 and 1978, as well as my cousin, who had been promoted from teller to loan officer with only a couple of years of college. All of them said that they would not be considered qualified to work at their companies if they were applying today, that companies no longer wanted to do in-house training. Yet they admitted that some of the best people in their companies were liberal arts grads hired before about 1978.

When I asked about using my language skills, they all said things like, "These days, you'd have to get an MBA to be employable."

The small companies were even less interested. "We do all our business in English. If someone sends us an inquiry in another language, we send it back to them."

Perhaps part of the problem with American business is that our companies are full of people who know nothing but Operations Management, Human Resources Management, Financial Management, and Management Information Systems. They know how to "manage," but they don't know science, history, geography, psychology beyond marketing strategies, political science, the arts, literature, philosophy, foreign languages, ethics other than how to avoid getting caught in illegal scams, or just plain common sense, such as "Runaway overseas outsourcing will eventually destroy your customer base."

[MattBaggins]

45. I rest my case

you find personal finances a waste of time.

[Uben]

6. Abuse would kill it

Too many people try to subvert the rules to get everything they can from our government. I do think they could stretch public education to 14 yrs instead of twelve, giving students the opportunity to get a bachelors degree without having to pay the high price of tuitions, lab fees, and books. To me, this sounds the most doable.

[Two Americas]

58. what?

"Too many people try to subvert the rules to get everything they can from our government?"

You must mean Halliburton and Blackwater and the Carlyle Group and Unocal and Wall Street. Yes?

Funny, because I was just having a discussion with some local republicans, and the discussion was going pretty good about what the wealthy and powerful are doing to all of us, the need for anither New Deal, the corruption of the system. But then one them came out with those very words as the end-all reason why we can't have UHC or other social programs, and therefore why they are voting Republican - "too many people try to subvert the rules to get everything they can from our government."

Not only is that a right wing argument, it is the most potent and destructive right wing argument of any because it shuts down any and all consideration of the traditional principles and ideals of the Democratic party and the Labor movement.

[mwooldri]

64. I had a hybrid UK funded degree course in the early 1990s.

The way around the abuse is simple. The government will fund one bachelors degree course of your choosing. You will not be permitted multipe re-takes. I got funding for the maximum - four years - and even then I never completed, due to a recurring medical condition that only got properly diagnosed three years ago.

What I meant about hybrid funding was this: my education and tuition was paid for, I got a grant for some of my expenses and got student loans for the rest. I'm about $8500 in student loan debt to the UK Student Loan Company as we speak, and that's 4 years worth of debt, index-linked to inflation.

[mike_c]

7. agreed, 100 percent....

America was once a prosperous nation-- a genuinely prosperous nation-- but we squander our wealth on the military and on enriching our already fabulously wealthy business class.

[Norrin Radd]

12. Agree

[dysfunctional press]

14. undergraduate education should be free to those who are serious about it.

with stringent entrance requirements, and certain minimum avademic standards that need to be maintained.

also- room & board costs would be the responsibility of the student.

[deaniac21]

23. It already is. I believe they are called scholarships.

[Bill McBlueState]

39. lol n/t

[dysfunctional press]

55. i didn't realize that there were enough scholarships to cover every student who wants one...

nor that they all cover 100% of tuition costs...:shrug:

you learn something new every day, i guess...thanks for that. :hi:

[pitohui]

57. there USED to be 100 percent free ride scholarships...maybe that poster is much older

i was surprised how quickly things changed, kids not much younger than me no longer had the grants/scholarships that we had in the 70s

we can thank ronald reagan, me thinks, for making education so costly

[dysfunctional press]

59. there seem to be A LOT more scholarships available now than there were in the 80's...

or maybe the internets has just made them more accessible to more people.

[LWolf]

15. Your passion is admirable.

When the parties, and the nation, gets behind the candidates who lead on issues, instead of Those who win media circuses and support from the corrupt main street, this issue has a chance to fly. When elections are about issues. 100% publicly funded elections would help, as would a fairness doctrine.

It's not like one of the primary candidates hasn't supported "your" idea for many years now.

Did you vote for him in your primary, or was it too late, like it was for most of us?

[Lex]

16. It's a solid investment in the future of our country.

I agree.

[Gormy Cuss]

18. Not until we have fully funded and supported elementary and secondary education.

In the meantime, increasing need-based scholarship grants would be a good start at the college and trade school level.

[vanderBeth]

22. It would be nice, but that's never going to happen.

Despite the cost of the US universities, they have broke away to become the the top university system. While most countries have one, maybe two or three top ranked universities internationally, the US has scores. Many of them are private. That brings something else into this. You might be able to get the Government to foot the bill, but you can't force Harvard to drop their $40,000 tuition.

While many people want to have free education like the schools in other countries, they are often overcrowded, poorly funded, and don't produce the research like the U.S. universities.

And, uh, no. It should not be limited to the very few if they choose to go free. The purpose of the free tertiary education is to produce an educated society, not produce an educated elite and then a class of workers.

The "from kindergarten through the 12th grade, we trail most of the countries of the world" is a different subject that has to do with America's approach to primary to secondary education.

[Greyhound]

36. You've drawn an erroneous conclusion based on no evidence.

The first line of your reply shows this. The California State University system was one of the best in the world and produced large numbers of world changing intellects, all with no tuition for residents.

Raygun killed that too.

[vanderBeth]

41. One example doesn't mean that I'm wrong.

I can show you university systems that charge no or little tuition but aren't that are by no means the best in the world.

[Greyhound]

47. Of course that is exceptional, but so is Harvard. You said would never happen,

I showed you that it already had.

It is about quality and has nothing to do with fees. Investing in our citizens education is like investing in national infrastructure, the payback is great and continues long after the investment is recouped.

Do you honestly believe that Harvard is so good because it is far beyond the financial reach of nearly everybody? Are you familiar with Pepperdine?

[vanderBeth]

49. I shouldn't have said never

but I'm saying it isn't viable any time soon.

I'm saying one of the reasons the some US universities do so well is that have money. And Harvard isn't out of the financial reach of everybody. They have one of the most generous financial aid programs. It will, in fact, give you a free or almost free tuition if you really cannot afford it and are good enough to get in (which oddly enough is what most people seem to want on here). Pepperdine, which according to the websites charges $36,650 for undergraduate tuition as compared to Harvard's $32,557, is much less likely to give out aid.

I'm not against making free education for state schools, but it is also likely that the brightest student, with the help of scholarships and grants, go to the top schools. The US system could become like other systems where the state schools and their students suffer. A lot of low-cost systems were like the free UC system used to be, top in field and well regarded, but the trend is that they are have been slipping.

[Greyhound]

52. No problem, and I don't want a fight.

We're just tying to show that it is viable as it has already been done. The tuition at a Harvard is more than the total income for the majority of Americans and that puts it out of reach.

Scholarships and grant do allow a few students to attend schools that they could not afford otherwise, but the number of qualified students far outstrip the number of slots available, each of those not chosen is a tragic loss to them and the rest of society as well. Had Albert Einstein been an American today he would be relegated to anonymity as a bureaucrat if he was lucky, more likely he would be working as an incompetent sales clerk in some mall.

We hurt ourselves with this short-sighted philosophy of money-over-everything. Pure scientific research, and all the benefits we might have gained from it, has come to a stand-still in this nation and the rest of the world has passed us by. The only major source of research $$$ left here is DoD. How many brilliant students have elected other fields because they don't want to spend their lives finding new and better ways to slaughter people?

As demonstrated by the recent "no billionaire left behind act", we do have the resources and could do this tomorrow if we had the will. Our priorities have become so skewed as to be suicidal.

[Thothmes]

67. Actually he was a low level bureaucrat

his first job out of university was as a patent examiner in the Swiss patent office.

[423aaron]

24. Many states have the equivalent of this.

In TN via the lottery scholarship anyone with half a brain and just a little motivation can go 4 years to a state university.

[Juche]

25. 16 million college students

There are 16 million college students in the US at any time. If you assume (wrongly, as I'll explain) that each one required 8k a year to fund higher education that will cost $128 billion a year, or slightly less than what we spend in Iraq.

Of those 16 million I am assuming that many are grad students (many of who already are getting a salary) or are in community colleges (which cost far less and are only 1-2 years). Some large states like California & Florida already heavily subsidize education to the point where yearly tuition & fees are only 3-5k/year, so they need less than 8k/yr to fund college. Some people have private grants or military assistance. So after you subtract the grad students, 2 year students, people in lower cost states & people with safe funding from other areas (all of whom need less than 8k/yr of help but still need help) we could probably give everyone in college the ability to get an education for $0-2000 a year for about 50-100 billion a year. The war in Iraq will cost $3 trillion when it is all over.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2007-10-22-state-tuition-table_N.htm

I am not including private or out of state schools in those calculations. Not that I am opposed to them, but I think funding in state public colleges for 8k/year is a better investment than 25k/year for private colleges.

As far as the benefits of college they are numerous.

http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/press/cost04/EducationPays2004.pdf

Higher wages, more tax revenue, less tax spending on prisons/healthcare/unemployment, higher voter turnout, better health.

However I don't know if its a cause or effect. Is a person who goes to college just more likely to behave in a way that makes them more likely to vote and have better health or does college itself transform them? I know for me my time at college was a period of amazing self discovery, personal skill building and personal growth which I would not have experienced had I spent that time working in retail or manufacturing.

[Chovexani]

26. People against free education on a supposedly liberal site. Unfrickinbelievable.

WTF is wrong with DU these days?

Anyway, your post is spot on. Hell, we had excellent free college right here in NY for many years (City College), and one of the most prestigious engineering schools in the country is free (Cooper Union).

It will never happen though, TPTB realized how they fucked up with the GI Bill; an educated populace is a dangerous one. A nation of "Jaywalkers" doesn't question anything, and doesn't demand anything more than moar Cheetoez while they're watching the latest Fox reality show.

[vanderBeth]

29. Way not to adrdess any of the concerns about free education.

It is free so it must be right and all liberals must get behind it.
:eyes:

Cooper Union is the exception, not the rule. It is a private college that decided to go free, but many of the other private schools won't. And it also doesn't say what happens to the qualified students who didn't get into Cooper Union.

[Chovexani]

42. "It would be abused, therefore we shouldn't do it" is not a legit statement for a liberal to make

It's not the "free" part, that makes it a liberal notion, it's about making education accessible to as many people as possible. The "free" just makes that simpler for the people trying to get educated. We're supposed to be for educating as many people as possible for as little cost to them as possible, even if it's hard to figure out how to do so (newsflash: nothing worthwhile is easy). Because, you know, liberals understand that education is the cornerstone of a free, prosperous and democratic society. Lord knows a whole bunch of people in this thread could benefit from some education.

Bullshit and lack of reading comprehension on DU? It's more likely than you think!

[vanderBeth]

46. If you read my post, I wasn't one of the people who said "abusing" it was a problem.

And then I also addressed the people who want free education but also the stringent examinations aren't trying to make education more widespread. It will NOT lead to a more educated society. It will lead to a small class of educated elite and a large, less educated working society.

[jmowreader]

61. How about very, very affordable education?

If we made it free we'd have a LOT of Shrubs--guys who just go to school so they can sow their wild oats away from their hometown, so when they attempt to get a job the hiring officer won't look at them and say something like "I remember you! You were the little bastard who got drunk off your ass and beat the shit out of my mailbox six weeks ago. Don't fucking TELL me you want a job here!"

At less than $1000 per year, the people who actually want an education could afford one, and the Shrubs of the world (well, at least the ones whose bank accounts aren't full of Hitler's money) would sow their wild oats somewhere else.

[aikoaiko]

34. Public college tuition is FREE in GA and some book money too.

As long as you graduate from a GA high school with at least a 3.0 or pay for your first year at college if you move to GA.

Its a good deal and I welcome fellow Democrats or their kids to GA.

[fascisthunter]

37. Absolutely

[Bill McBlueState]

40. Education through 12th grade is available for free

Extending this to "16th grade" is going to require some money, but to anyone who supports public K-12 education, there's no philosophical hurdle to overcome.

Besides, the cost to do this is probably a lot less than what we're spending on our military's overseas adventures.

[Leftist Agitator]

48. Anybody know where I can find a job w/ my Masters in History that pays well enough...

That pays well enough to pay off my $80,000 in student loans?

Anybody?

Well?

Yeah, I didn't think so.

How about a job for my next-door neighbor who has a Ph.D in Computer Science and $100,000+ of student loan debt?

Hello?

ANYONE???

:shrug:

[Runcible Spoon]

54. hey, throw me in with my MA/ABD in anthropology and $75K of loans

Even when I finish my PhD I will have a long hard road to walk when it comes to finding decent employment, in academia or not :evilfrown:

I'm starting to wonder if it's even worth finishing, the job market for tenure track profs is bleak.

[carlyhippy]

60. my kid is in her 2nd year of college and we are already over 30,000 in

hopefully a psych major can make a decent living.

[timtom]

50. It was -- in California

under Gov. Brown (Edmund G. "Pat" Brown, Jerry's dad).

Merritt College was completely free (2-year college).

UC Berkeley cost $85 PER QUARTER!!!

In 1968.

Then....along came Reagan...

[LeftyMom]

63. Community colleges are still free if you're income eligible.

The books are a bitch though- those can run a grand a year.

[Regret My New Name]

51. heh,,, Check out this "argument" someone put out against free/cheap college education...

A interesting effect of Obama's plan is it (his subsidies) will make colleges much less useful. Going to college shows you are willing to take a financial risk to get a degree: you are betting your tuition that you will recover the money through an advanced degree good job. When there is no risk, there is no reward: college will essentially become meaningless to employers: _everyone_ will have degrees, and many employers will simply ignore them. This will lead to fewer college enrollment and more stupid people like tom. (no offense)

I'm not sure if the person was screwing with me or not though... I tried pointing out that earning a degree doesn't just require money, but requires effort and probably some sort of brain power. And how by this persons logic, if they come from a wealthy family or they themselves are wealthy, that any degrees they earned in the process are not worthy (his mommy and daddy paid for his degree, I believe)
Anyways, I wonder how common this sort of stance is... It seems far too ridiculous to be real though, so I pretty much stopped arguing with him since I felt like I may be taking troll bait. Anyways, just thought I would share that.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

62. Yes, it should be free. nt

[Generic Other]

68. The state of Washington gives high school students free tuition to attend community colleges

Many earn high school diplomas and associate degrees concurrently. Most of the students are very capable. The students do not pay tuition. They merely buy their own books. The program has allowed many the opportunity to attend college who would not otherwise be able to afford it.

[machI]

69. Kick

[Cid_B]

70. I'm reminded of the book "Friday"

by Heinlein. It covered a future hyper "democratic" society. It was deemed unfair for some to have High School and college degrees and for some not to have them so it was voted on that every citizen would be deemed to have a degree. Just to be fair.