Posted on 01/12/2015 7:09:58 AM PST by Academiadotorg
It’s one thing for conservative pundits to question the Obama Administration’s latest higher education subsidy. It’s quite another for a writer in The Atlantic to start asking inconvenient questions.
“President Obama wants to provide free tuition at community colleges, a proposal that could benefit as many as 9 million students, according to a White House outline of the plan released Thursday,” Fawn Johnson wrote on the Atlantic blog. “But there's one big caveat in the proposal: There isn't plan to fund it, other than to ask Congress for the money.”
“Without that crucial piece of the program, which would be available to students as long as they maintain a 2.5 GPA, the idea is little more than a pipe dream. It resembles Obama's proposal in 2013 for a universal pre-k program for 4-year-olds. To provide free public pre-k for low-income families alone would cost $75 billion over 10 years, according to some analyses. Early-education lobbyists are struggling to figure out how to persuade lawmakers to pony up for that small part of a larger pre-k proposal. (A cigarette tax is among the items they are bandying about.)”
Although the Obama Administration has, contrary to its claims, shown itself able to work with the Republican leadership in Congress, much to the consternation of the latter’s base voters, Republican governors are another story. And the way the Obama plan is designed, they would come into play.
“Even if this latest White House proposal were to gain approval from the Republican-controlled Congress (an unlikely scenario), states would still need to cooperate with the administration,” Johnson writes. “Obama is proposing a split responsibility between states and the federal government in which the feds would offer 75 percent of the money to send students to community colleges, while the states would put up the rest.”
“The design is, in part, a nod to states, which run the public college system—but it also could be read by some Republicans as a federal intrusion into states' turf.” Johnson is a correspondent for the National Journal, also not a right-wing mouthpiece.
and WALA! he has made it so, with no congressional approval or funding needed.
Just, bizarre! Total denial of reality.
Back when it began in Kansas City, Communiversity was free. Now it is called Penn Valley Community College.
“...which would be available to students as long as they maintain a 2.5 GPA,...”
And, of course, guess what the community colleges will do to keep these students enrolled.
Obviously, they’ll lower their standards down to what Harvard had to do to admit the Dorkbama cretin.
When the whole proposal falls apart, as was intended from the beginning, Obama and the MSM will simply blame the mean, heartless Republicans who don’t want poor people to get ahead.
Another 2 years of political indoctrination ...big deal!
Will they offer real world skills like welding, any vital healthcare trades, plumbing, electrical, refrigeration...NO.
Absolutely every thing and anything the Dems have enacted since the Clintonistas’ has been an exercise in unproductive big government sh!tbirdism...
...and this intellectually challenged, cliftsnotes dependent, post colonial-like, sub-Saharan regime is no different.
Attending free Community College will qualify “students” for taxpayer funded and underwritten student loans which the attendees have no ability or intention of ever repaying.
Kind of like the sub prime housing loan disaster.
A huge portion of current student loan spending is basically giving loans to unqualified individuals who tend scam trade schools such as sham beauty schools. The students have no intention of ever paying the loans back and most never even bother attending class.
Obama is just trying to extend this to the community college system
Obama just wants to
Grubber and Roberts will take care of it.
About a critical essay from leftist craphole ‘The Atlantic’. Thanks Academiadotorg.
It is free, right? Who needs a plan when something is free? All government entitlements are free to those that receive them. Let’s just keep it up and add more free stuff. After all, we know that most Americans are stupid. I didn’t say that, Gruber did. </sarc
It would be far more effective if this were directed to technical schools rather than colleges.
There are many, many who are not college material. Recent generations are losing the “craftsman” and “tradesman” class.
If the exodus becomes significant, the next phase will be a campaign by the four year schools for free undergraduate tuition across the board. I expect that is Obama's real endgame, although he will not be around long enough to implement it. If we're not careful, we will end up with German-style 40 year old professional students who have never worked a day in their lives, and have been supported all along by the state.
It always mystifies me that those who want to adopt this model ignore the fact that it hasn’t worked out all that well in Europe.
Whether it has worked out depends on the objective. As far as education, skill building, and economic growth, it’s not so good. If the objective is disguising unemployment by parking large numbers of people in perptual schooling, then it is a “success.”
As it has been said, "There is nothing in this world that Obama can't break or make worse."
there’s a lot to be said for it. For one thing, you can smoke on the job;>)
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