Posted on 10/08/2014 6:57:16 AM PDT by Buckeye McFrog
For decades, free high-school education helped strengthen the middle class and generate prosperity. So isn’t it time to extend the same thinking to college?
The idea might seem impractical, since college costs more than high school and higher education isn’t for everybody in the first place. Yet it’s also obvious that a high school education alone isn’t nearly as valuable as it used to be, which is why some researchers and policymakers are now studying ways to make college as accessible as high school for those who want it. College is free in Scandinavian countries and highly subsidized in much of Europe (snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
a high school education alone isn’t nearly as valuable as it used to be,
No sense of irony at all, some of them.
In 1980, more often than not, college consisted of the school, dorm,and cafeteria. Today, most campuses have first rate facilities and the administration has grown by about ten fold.
$50 to $100 for textbooks are the norm.
I sold mine back at the end of the semester and got good money for them.
My brother-in-law lived in Germany. They pay taxes out the wazoo.
Anything but have to hire the men who were only halfway through their careers when all of this “new normal” and HR movement came along.
Does this mean that the pompous arrogant professors who now wax fat on our tax dollars are going to forgo their salaries? Or does it just mean that the MSM want to further plunder the hardworking to support the irresponible turkeys that colleges seem to graduate in ever greater proportions these days.
The rise in tuition seems to coincide with the rise of the lottery to "fund education" movement in the 1990s.
Well, (low) tuition was only introduced a few years earlier, university being free for centuries. Also, educational matters are decided at state level in Germany, so "Germany" didn't announce this but one state (Lower Saxony, IIRC). Some states never introduced tuition in the first place. Where it was introduced, the students (predictably) protested, and now the states are caving in one by one. Lastly, Germany isn't alone in charging no or low tuition, as the article points out. Why latch on to a minor change at state level in Germany?
I have a solution:
1. Pass a tough, competitive exam for admission to ANY college.
2. Once passed, serve a complete 6-year term of service in the Armed Forces. Early exit from the term of service voids all rights to free tuition unless injured in the line of duty and medically discharged under honorable conditions. Receive an honorable discharge and a completed term, and you get paid tuition and fees, but NOT books, dorm, or meals, for a bachelor’s degree. An additional 6 year term will pay for another 4 years of tuition and fees.
3. No equivalent service will be accepted.
4. Don’t meet the criteria: pay for it yourself. . .
The public may not WANT a government of student loans — but it has already happened.
Stand by for “loan forgiveness” for the politically-correct.
Community colleges and public universities don’t have endowment funds.
They survive thanks to the assistance of the taxpayers.
Let me put the free tuition in Germany into prospective....since I’ve lived here for twenty-odd years as an American.
First, NO German university has any NCAA-related action. No football...no million-dollar coaches...no massive sports complex....no alumni program...no volleyball team for ladies sports...no softball program.
Second, if you screwed around and played drinking games all the way through your first semester...they’d invite you to leave, and you wouldn’t find much sympathy with a second chance.
Third, German university programs don’t have a bunch of support staffs with imaginary job descriptions and ample incomes.
Fourth, towns around the university programs in Germany have a high value on the students...mostly because they go to recruit them to sign up as residents of the town....getting to the 100k, 200k, or 300k level....which means more handouts from the national government. This relationship to the town, makes the university a pull partner of the local city and of value. Most cities run more transit buses through a university district...subways are added...and they are part of the local community.
Fifth. Cops who protect the university...are city cops or state cops. There are no hired thugs or wannabe cops patrolling a German university, nor is the cost dumped onto the college. Nor are the legal proceedings separate. If you do something stupid on a German campus...you get a city judge, and the DA after you....so you don’t have to worry about getting expelled....you get actual real jail-time, with no campus lawyer helping you.
Sixth and final, all these instructors and professors are part of a national level of pensions and benefits. Some guy is watching the whole trend, and ensuring that stupid individual university administrators aren’t lining up some guy for a $300k a year pension deal. If some German governor woke up tomorrow and got wind that some professor in his state is about to retire and get more monthly income than his job....someone would be dragged to the state capital and be asked some pretty difficult questions, and it wouldn’t be a pleasing situation.
They can offer free tuition...the question is....would US university programs be willing to offer the same deal? My guess is...NO. I should point it....it generally takes 4.5 to 5 years to get a bachelor’s degree in Germany. And it’s around seven years if you count in the master’s degree.
I should also note....they also don’t run up bogus ethnic studies degrees, how-to-feel-good physic 116 classes, or Bigfoot studies courses. Got a professor who gets into trouble with some student for relationship woes? They turn the evidence to a state prosecutor and let him handle the mess from that point on...no worries for the university in terms of legal issues.
Books have not risen nearly as fast as tuition. I earned my MBA from Minnesota State University for the rate of $106 per credit hour/ $318 for your typical 3 credit graduate level class in the mid 1980s. It was actually possible to work full time at a lousy paying job and pay as you go in those days.
The public may not WANT a government takeover of student loans — but it has already happened.
Stand by for “loan forgiveness” for the politically-correct.
So, “higher education” is an unlimited resource?
“Everyone” can get it for “free” and there will be no degradation in quality or in availability?
These people need to be beaten with economics books.
Here's how you do it. If you're a good student, you'll have scholarships and you'll be able to commute to some decent schools. If you're super smart, you'll be able to live away at some of them.
If you're a so so student and mom and dad have no money to give you but they make too much for Pell grants, you commute to your local community college. All the money you earn goes toward your tuition and commuting costs. If you live in the boonies, and there is no public transportation and mom and dad can't help at all, you should be able to find someone with whom you can commute, either a worker at the community college or a fellow student.
At this point, some so so students who live in remote areas may want to take some loans to finish up their last two years. In the Philadelphia area, there are so many options to go to college debt free, I have begun to think that kids who take on debt in this economy and then cry about it are immature, entitled losers.
I can only imagine the screams from the XXX Studies and Fluff Course Faculty if we were to import that system into the United States.
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