Posted on 05/29/2022 9:07:40 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Five years ago, the Excelsior Scholarship became the first in the nation to cover four years of tuition without being tethered to academic performance.
Still, many students who could qualify don't apply.
Even though college enrollment has slid since the start of the Covid pandemic, many students still want to get a degree, and for some, free tuition programs are the only way to make higher education a reality.
In 2017, the state of New York's Excelsior Scholarship made headlines when it became the first in the nation to cover four years of tuition without being tethered to academic performance.
New York initially said more than 940,000 students with family incomes up to $125,000 could qualify. New York's program applies to all schools at the City University of New York and State University of New York.
But as of the end of this academic year, just under 73,000 students have received the scholarship enabling them to attend CUNY or SUNY tuition-free, according to Angela Liotta, a spokeswoman for New York State Higher Education Services Corp.
A separate research report found that of first-year CUNY undergraduates, only about 25% of eligible students are Excelsior recipients and the lowest-income students are most likely left out.
Roughly two-thirds, or 68%, of program dollars flow to students with incomes at or above $70,000, according to Judith Scott-Clayton, a professor of economics and education at Columbia University's Teachers College and an author of the report.
The application process — "the hoops and hurdles and the fine print" — may be a barrier, she said.
"There still aren't many students at CUNY that are getting this award," Scott-Clayton said. "That was surprising."
(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...
I’m more interested in seeing how this move has affected academic standings and viability of NY graduates in the job market after one year of employment. (When I was hiring STEM graduates virtually all of Florida’s FAMU (historically black and still that way) graduates got a job, but one year later only a tiny fraction was still employed in their degree field.)
Does it come with free apartment, utilities, food and airfare?
If so........ I’m in!!!!!
How about a free cellphone, too.
“In 2017, the state of New York’s Excelsior Scholarship made headlines when it became the first in the nation to cover four years of tuition without being tethered to academic performance.”
It’s not quite free, though, is it?
A recipient has to stay in NYS for a certain amount of time.
Doesn’t sound like too many young’uns think the free **** is worth that.
Note to young adults: It’s less a free education and more indentured servitude, eh?
The “experts” who recommend these programs make the most basic error in statistics—they confuse correlation with causation.
They see that those with college degrees have much higher income that those who do not.
They then conclude that if more people got college degrees more people would have higher income!
The real world does not work like that at all.
Often the reasons that people did not attend college in the first place are exactly the reasons why they will not be able to perform well in the workplace—and college can’t fix that.
Absolutely right.
They aren’t asking enough critical questions. How about:
* What majors are they pursuing? How many are enrolled in useless marxist studies?
* How many graduate? Drop out each year? Go to graduate school?
* Get and keep jobs?
Free college?
Why even bother?
With the woke policies of democrats and people wanting equal treatment and equal outcomes for everything, why not just hand out free college degrees, without people having to attend even one day if college.
Schools doing away with testing and nobody allowed to show academic excellence, is the way of the future. Which meand no future at all, since, nobody will be ale to perform the work needed for the country to prosper.
And, who is willing to hire people who don’t have to show excellence in studies? Should a C or D grade student be worth as much as an A student? Would a C-grade doctor or business manager be as good as an A-Student? We already have the dumb people in charge of Washington and states and cities, but, imagine what kind of products we would have if everybody performed just adequately or below?
China and other countries will be eating our lunch and be in control of our lives. In fact, we’re almost there now.
Terrible program. Makes them take 5 courses a term and no semesters off. To keep the money coming in, the colleges keep shrinking down the courses so poorer kids who are also working can keep up—and enrolled. Half of them are around the middle school academic level.
Free is good. Right? Solves all the world’s problems.
Here is a true story. Several years ago I was involved in a study that purported to show that people who took out sub-prime loans were drowning in a sea of debt due to the high interest they paid and thus the default was way above average.
The study was to provide free loans to one group and standard loan fees to the other group. The study lasted for almost a year.
Guess what happened when the results came in. The default rate was the same with both groups!
So much for “free.”
Imagine a professor that has to GRADE papers from students that don’t have the chops to be in college: like a classroom of football players on scholarship (think UNC).
Nearly all the efforts aim at “improving acess to attending college” are placing the “solutions” at the wrong place(s) - the colleges. All such efforts should be redirected to improving K-12 education, which is where the failure to match the academic rigors of college begins, and must be achieved. That is where education improvement can be made.
However, no improvements in the schools can make up for deficits in the home, deficits in the student’s own diligence and desire to learn and improve academically, nor deficits in intelligence.
K-12 education, particularly increasingly in its later years, should also admit not all children are going to become “college material” and may not desire to be, and need more vocational skills courses preparing kids for “skilled” jobs in industry that do not require a college degree.
The high schools could also pursue joint programs with private professional/technical schools that provide certificates in professional skills, instead of thinking that have to have those special educators on their own staff/campus. They could take what they would pay for many different vocational skills educators on staff, and apply those sums toward paying the private technical schools to take their students. And of course such private courses should merit credits toward high school graduation. Internship programs in business and industry should also be used with high school students and also merit credits for graduation.
Business and industry should also use more “skills testing” of their own, relying more on what tests can show a candidate can do than “academic creditials” alone. In my own periods of hiring staff I learned that the “sheep skins” (college degrees & other certificates) were not the true identifiers of the skills my employees later demonstrated. I found early on that some showed they had not acquired what I assumed they’d have according to their degrees/certificates while others had skills beyond what their formal education record indicated. I began to rely more on tests we gave my candidate employees.
But this time the flunk out percentages are seriously embarrassing, even with all the dumbing down.
We had that sort of thing in California back in the late 70’s, when I was in school. It was clear that almost all were not ready to be there. Sad to say, but true.
RE: A recipient has to stay in NYS for a certain amount of time.
That shouldn’t be a problem nowadays. Many companies allow you to work remotely. You can stay in New York and work for a company in California or even in London.
Only government can make free money undesirable.
“The application process — “the hoops and hurdles and the fine print” — may be a barrier, she said. “
Maybe that in itself is a kind of academic test.
The solution of course, is to do away with those racist applications all together.
AND all the “graduates” will still have to call a plumber who charges $200 an hour to fix their faucet because the “graduates” don’t know anything. Bit they will probably lecture the plumber about how he is a victim of the patriarchal capitalist system.
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