Posted on 06/12/2019 7:44:24 AM PDT by reaganaut1
Student loan debt has become a major concern for young people. In response, some Democratic candidates for president are offering “free college” proposals.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders was the first presidential candidate to propose this in 2016. His plan came with a price tag of $47 billion and had the federal government covering two-thirds of the cost. In 2019, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren proposed a more ambitious plan that would forgive student loan debt for everyone with a household income of less than $100,000.
Some states, too, have embraced free college: Currently, 21 of them offer some kind of tuition-free college or a statewide scholarship program to help students afford college. These programs range from making two-year schools tuition-free to offering a full ride to some public colleges.
But in Louisiana, we have an example that should give even the biggest proponents of free college some pause. Louisiana is the poster child for a program that started with the best of intentions, but has become uncontrollable in size and cost. Expanding free college has been easy, but taming it has been difficult—if not impossible.
Louisiana’s near-universal college program is the Taylor Opportunity Program for Students (TOPS). It is based on a promise that oilman Patrick F. Taylor made in 1988 to a class of eighth-graders in a New Orleans school. He promised the class that if they held a “B” average throughout high school, he would pay for their college tuition.
Taylor’s program began life as a privately funded initiative for poor students. Taylor grew up poor and put himself through Louisiana State University when doing so was still possible. His program caught the attention of lawmakers who wanted to expand it statewide, and the state took it over in 1989.
(Excerpt) Read more at jamesgmartin.center ...
If you think it’s expensive now, just wait until it’s “free”.
$45 Billion? Seriously?
Nothing justifies that. If the HS did their jobs, people would graduate from there with the skills to AT LEAST find a way to pay for college.
But the ED sys is broken so now college has become the new HS, doing what HS should have done for kids. I work at a University and it’s remarkable how few freshmen arrive who can write or even speak coherently. Many flunk out in the first quarter... and should never have been admitted at all.
In the meantime, an UG degree has become a joke
When I was teaching undergraduate economics, my first lesson was always “...there is no free lunch.” Somebody someplace has to pay for stuff.
I know a young man that was a Bernie bot.
He was all for “free” college until I explained to him that he was going to get to pay for someone else’s college after paying for his own.
Shut that down quickly.
Republicans should propose that the rich are offered a tax break for contributing 50 million or more of their own money to fund college for all. And this is for all, regardless of income, race, religion.
Let’s see what the rats would do.
Makes me sick anyway. I paid my own way. My parents promised to help but they didn’t Back then 1969-1973 it was much cheaper but I also had zero money. I worked shift work, summers, in Oklahoma. Factory had no AC. Was 106 outside and 110 inside. I got regular bank loans. Even though I had no money, I managed to save up a few hundred bucks in the summer, I had to make my own clothes... I was pretty much broke. I had a 1954 Plymouth Savoy. My parents meager salary disqualified me for student loans. SO I got a regular bank loan. Tuition was $11 per credit hour 1969, by 1973 it was more like $14 an hour. I took about 15 hours per semester. I graduated in 4 years and repaid all my loans (my parents reneged on that, too, they had promised to help me repay them). I didn’t ask my parents to help repay my loans. We lived cheaply while we repaid my loans. We had a 1967 VW beatle. We had a cheap apartment and rented furniture. We cooked MOST of our own meals, we took our lunch to work ( I was a sub teacher). I know people who had it even harder, having to work a semester and go to school a semester, repeat. But we didn’t graduate from college with HUGE LOANS back then.
It killed me when I heard my mother complaining to friends that she had 2 in college at same time. SHEESH! She didn’t help pay for anything!
Damn snowflakes
Excellent!
My daughter just finished college while working full-time too. So it's not just for my generation. Even though my wife and I budgeted for years and saved up to put her and her siblings through college, my daughter was big about maintaining a work ethic and investing for her future. I challenge you to find a father more proud of his kids than I am.
1. None of this does anything to reduce the cost of higher education.
2. All those who want higher education to be “free” should work at colleges/universities for free, without pay.
3. Colleges/universities with significant endowments and reserves should use them to provide rebates to students to pay off student loans.
4. My children worked, got grants, and had their parents help to pay for four years of higher education without student debt. It’s not right that we should help pay off other’s student debt.
5. It’s not right that those who have already paid for their own or their children’s education should get nothing out of any of this.
Patriots, military training purposes aside, beware of any federal involvement in INTRAstate schooling.
From related threads…
More specifically, consider that both President Thomas Jefferson and pre-FDR era generations of state sovereignty-respecting Supreme Court justices had indicated the following concerning so-called federal power to deal with INTRAstate schooling.
The states would first need to appropriately amend the Constitution to give Congress specific power to dictate policy, regulate, tax and spend in the name of intrastate schooling before Congress could actually do so, something that the states have never done.
"Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States.” —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
"The power to regulate manufactures, not having been confided to congress, they have no more right to act upon it, than they have to interfere with the systems of education, the poor laws, or the road laws, of the states [emphases added]. Congress is empowered to lay taxes for revenue, it is true; but there is no power to encourage, protect, or meddle with manufactures." —Joseph Story, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1, Commentaries on the Constitution 2
”From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited [emphasis added].” —United States v. Butler, 1936.
The states need to wise up and eliminate the unconstitutional middleman, the unconstitutionally big federal government, from “helping” the states to manage their revenues, such revenues stolen by means of unconstitutional federal taxes according to Gibbons v. Ogden excerpt above, shown again below, unconstitutional federal interference in intrastate schooling in this example.
"Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States.” —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
Both constitutional lawmaker Rep. John Bingham and Justice Brandeis had put it this way about unique state powers to care for the people.
”... the care of the property, the liberty, and the life of the citizen, under the solemn sanction of an oath imposed by your Federal Constitution, is in the States, and not in the Federal Government [emphases added].” —Rep. John Bingham, Congressional Globe, 1866. (See about middle of 3rd column.)
"It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.” — Justice Brandeis, Laboratories of democracy.
Note that constitutional limits on states as laboratories of democracy is that states cannot establish privileged / protected classes or abridge constitutionally enumerated rights, and must maintain a constitutionally guaranteed republican form of government.
Also, by milking the feds for all the unconstitutional federal educational funding that they can, constitutionally low-information school administrators are unthinkingly raising school costs for everybody imo.
After all of that, the question is how can any state afford to establish the kind of schooling, healthcare and retirement programs its citizens want since the corrupt, post-17th Amendment ratification federal government is continuously stealing state revenues from all states by means of unconstitutional federal taxes?
Remember in November 2020!
MAGA! Not Democratic MADA (Make America Dead Again)
"The “Holy Grail” of organized crime is to control government power to tax." —me
"The constitutionally undefined political parties are basically rival, corrupt voter unions, “union dues” paid by means of unconstitutional federal taxes.” —me
"The smart crooks long ago figured out that getting themselves elected to federal office to make unconstitutional tax laws to fill their pockets is a much easier way to make a living than robbing banks." —me
"Federal career lawmakers probably laugh all the way to the bank to deposit bribes for putting loopholes for the rich and corporations in tax appropriations laws, Congress actually not having the express constitutional authority to make most appropriations laws where domestic policy is concerned. Such laws are based on stolen state powers and uniquely associated stolen state revenues." —me
$45 billion over how many years and how many students? Without context the number is useless.
However we could assume 10 years so 4.5 Billion/year. There’s 360 million Americans, assuming the annual class size is 1/40th the total population, that makes the annual class size 9 million. $4.5B / 9 million students is only $500 a student.
If we could get every >B level student a college education for $500, I’d be all for it. That’s cheap and the goverment would be repaid through the aditional income taxes those students will produce in the future.
Why can’t college be closer to free? Free college isn’t a bad idea just because the Socialists are pushing it. It is bad because the Socialists are trying to get everyone to pay for an already expensive system and hide already spiralling costs behind the cloak of government services, but what if government used it’s powers for good and not evil for once?
Coursera somehow teaches college-level classes for around forty dollars a course, maybe some are free, maybe some are more. MIT has invested a lot of effort into an open college project with hundreds of courses even into higher level math andbengineering. We all know that the textbook racket is just that. Just about every gen-ed course could be delivered for free to anyone who wanted it, maybe with a pittance to be paid for on site test proctoring and site maintenance costs. Maybe college campus lectures would still be held for video delivered instruction or small group work, whatever folks need to feel like college is still a physical thing and place, but without all the costs.
If the states actually cared, they could even throw in a bounty system for reducing wastes, excess costs, and opportunities to eliminate redundancies.
All those people put there suffering under college loan debt, there are ways of helping them out without just transferring their debt into public debt, and they don’t have to be framed as idiots for taking on debt as youngsters by folks on the right. That group of people are only courted politically by the left, so they think the only people who have answers are on the left. It doesn’t have to be only the Socialists trying to fix the problem.
You are justly proud. My daughter took the toughest academic route possible (IB) in high school that earned her a full ride scholarship at a state university. She graduated Summa cum Laude and finally dipped into the money I had saved for her to get her Masters. They can make "your cup runneth over".
Right-but just given the track record these people have for their ‘accountability’- It’s not something I could be optimistic about
Very true. Government rarely does anything efficiently. So that “IF” in “If we could...” is just huge.
Get government out of the formula.
No lottery scholarships, no loans, etc.
Colleges will then have to compete against each other.
I also bet they'd start dropping some of the SJW majors. They can only offer them because one, they're easy as pie; two, there is a guaranteed source of money.
Way to go!!!
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