Posted on 01/13/2015 7:33:12 AM PST by SeekAndFind
The logic behind the “free” community-college program President Obama announced last week is understandable. A high-school education once put many well-paying jobs within reach of Americans. Today, post-high-school work is increasingly necessary. So President Obama has proposed that two years of community college be free for students in most programs, accompanied by more oversight and accountability from Washington.
The problems begin where they did with efforts to improve elementary and secondary education from Washington: Why is a locally provided good the concern of the federal government? And since when was America’s K–12 educational system, let alone the federal government’s attempts to improve it, a model anyone was eager to emulate?
Tuition at community colleges for poor students is already low or nonexistent, making the president’s plan more a transfer program to state governments and middle-class consumers than anything else. A universal free approach to community college would replace a great deal of aid that’s targeted at the poor, which would have the merit of eliminating the implicit tax such aid creates for the working poor. And the cost of attending community college does go far beyond tuition — it’s expensive to reduce or forgo work.
But the main problem at community colleges is not cost, or work disincentives, but the appallingly low rates at which their students finish with a useful credential. President Obama’s plan is not going to fix this.
The plan, like decades of federal policy for elementary and secondary schools, proposes to link funding to a push for accountability and best practices at community colleges. Yet we expect this to work as well as it has in the past: It’s no better an idea to try to run Bunker Hill Community College from Washington than it was to try to run Peoria High the same way.
President Obama announced his plan in Tennessee, where Republican governor Bill Haslam has overseen a program providing the same two free years at the state’s community colleges. But Haslam’s program already has a performance-based funding scheme. Such a system never works all that well, and Haslam’s plan has other problems too. But by funding 75 percent of his proposal at the federal level, President Obama would undermine the incentives state governments have to spend money wisely and try to replace them with federal oversight.
There are simpler ways to impose accountability on community colleges than the inevitable web of federal regulations: Force them to provide transparent data to consumers, and consider requiring them to have skin in the game, taking a share of the risk that students won’t graduate and will default on their loans.
Furthermore, the president’s proposal would hugely benefit one segment of a dysfunctional market, public community colleges — it’s hard to compete with free. For-profit and nonprofit two-year institutions have not been spectacularly successful, but they have managed to fill some demand for professionally useful certificates and degrees. All segments of the market could do a better job if federal aid were made simpler (without being made vastly more generous) and regulations on schools were rolled back. Some of the more successful community-college initiatives across the country have involved closer cooperation with local employers, to suit their needs. The secretary of education doesn’t have much to add to that conversation.
Many of the worries about a market-driven approach to four-year higher education simply don’t register at the community-college level: Their mostly nontraditional student bodies are looking for career advancement more than intellectual enrichment. The fundamental barriers to entry, besides those imposed by the government, are lower. There’s no reason, in fact, that conservatives at the state and federal levels shouldn’t be responding to the woes of our community colleges with their own approach.
The president’s announcement didn’t even come with a gesture toward how the costs, which will run into the billions per year, would be paid for. That, coupled with the plan’s intrinsic flaws, reflects the growing exhaustion of Obama’s agenda. However important a college degree has become, another middle-class entitlement is not the way to provide it.
What they’ll be teaching is the perils of “White Privilege” and Rap harmony.
Right, throwing MORE tax payer money at kids who WILL NOT apply themselves, EVER!
I would support building hundreds of such bridges.
So long as they are one way viaducts to some African Country.
You condemned university in general... so don’t evade.
The community college system is working. I don't want to see Obama mess it up. If anyone thinks it's expensive now, wait until it's free.
It’s a brilliant idea! Here is the curriculum for the first semester:
Yo, white people, it’s all your fault 101.
Christianity: The most destructive force in the world. 101
Why you need gender reassignmenet surgery 101
You didn’t build that 101
It’s not your money anyway 101.
How to pass bills so we can find out what’s in it. 101
You condemned university in general... so don’t evade.
OK, after rereading my original post and the subject of this thread I think Community colleges are the topic. But since I did mention colleges in general in my last paragraph, I will answer your retort with reference to universities.
You ask if I would go to a doctor or send my dog to a vet without a medical degree. I would not. I also would not go to a doctor with a community college degree. And I would not go to a doctor with just a B.S. degree or even a PHD. An M.D. generally comes from a program with many years of hands on apprenticeship. Doctors work long hours in teaching hospitals where they learn to be doctors from doctors.
Colleges such as Johns Hopkins have given up on undergraduate degrees of “pre-med”. They now teach Biomedical Engineering. Most of these classes are on Khan Academy, or in MIT’s free online courses. Calc 1 has not changed as the reprints of calculus text books would suggest. Current professors add nothing new, that could not be BETTER taught by a well presented video freely available on Youtube.com.
A college diploma is a verification of passing the admissions test. And sticking with a program for four years. And reasonable exposure to course work. Its not at all saying that you are more ready for a job than someone who apprenticed for four years.
Please feel free to demonstrate these hypothetical apprenticeships. You steer right into the trap you claim to avoid.
As for me, I vote for the engineers and doctors who went to school.
Allow me to point out that my children are taking a class called “Philosophy of Laughter”. Why, for no greater reason than they can’t get into the course they want and need. I am putting 5 of my own kids through top schools at $240,000 a crack.
There is no real reason for most of college. Most classes can be taught better online. And some colleges are actually sending kids to online courses for their core, while still charging $60K a semester.
As I said, colleges test for IQ (ACT/SAT) and hard work efforts in their admissions. So, by adding four years, you get maturity as well. What the college adds is 7/8s online free courses. And 1/8 actual experience in some majors. In other majors you don’t even get that.
So, why is Obama offering free community college when its already free online? Its because he believes that college actually adds value that the 75% of America, that does not graduate from college, needs. But what he does not understand, is that colleges have already picked the cream kids, and given them a degree. The others will not do well by spending four years in college. If they would, then they could go to their local library and take free courses online. But they can’t and/or won’t.
Oh, and it is not lost on Obama that there is a giant money transfer to local government teacher unions as well.
Hey wise fellow, why not tell them no more of this silliness then. I can see you are kind of bitter over it.
On the other hand it is an ill wind that blows no good at all. Maybe they will crack the formula for writing the best comedy known to mankind. (Just kidding. Why does laughter have to be just for the expensive college set.)
I’m an engineer by schooling and experience. My brief contacts with humanities were perfunctory according to the school’s requirements, and tended to be about things like political science and geology.
My sympathies. Try not to get bitter, but if they are your kids you have the right to expect some common sense.
Amen
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