If state universities start offering "free" college education to all, will they start to suck as much as K-12 school

...suck.

No.

The goals are completely different than K-12 education and there are entry standards for universities.

I, for one, think its fantastic that the professors care enough about educating the students that they would work for free! And don't even get me started on the textbook publishers. To offer free textbooks to students? That's yeoman's work!! God bless them all!

dddddddd wrote:

I, for one, think its fantastic that the professors care enough about educating the students that they would work for free! And don't even get me started on the textbook publishers. To offer free textbooks to students? That's yeoman's work!! God bless them all!

Apparently you fail to understand what is implied by putting the word "free" in quotes.

We don't have free public education. In fact public education is very expensive. Our public education system is an unaccountable, high cost, low-output welfare program. Our higher education system is nothing but liberal indoctrination camp that sees white people as the root of all evil so they attempt to rectify this imaginary injustice by unfair racial quotas. Quotas for you and me but not for them. In no other industry will you find a lack of diversity as in the hiring practices of high education.

practice, not theory wrote:

dddddddd wrote:

I, for one, think its fantastic that the professors care enough about educating the students that they would work for free! And don't even get me started on the textbook publishers. To offer free textbooks to students? That's yeoman's work!! God bless them all!

Apparently you fail to understand what is implied by putting the word "free" in quotes.

Apparently your sarcasm detector is not working.

State colleges already suck as bad k-12.

Devil Dog wrote:

State colleges already suck as bad k-12.

You really think that Cornell (a SUNY college) is as bad as a typical ghetto high school?

practice, not theory wrote:

We've tried offering "free" public education, and the results have been disastrous in most of the country. Would "free" universities just fall to the same abysmal quality standards as "free" high schools?

this is nonsense. US high schools are excellent, adjusted for the massive third world population in the US. Those int'l rankings are absurd - what other nation has so many second language speakers and uneducated immigrant parents?

But to answer your question I don't think quality would go down - the vast price break vs. private schools would draw in a lot of smart kids. If the state university of NY were FREE and say the University of Rochester were $250k for four years, a lot of middle/upper middle class kids would go SUNY.

The real losers would be the second tier private schools - they'd be priced out of hte market and fail.

Degrees in mathematics and the hard sciences should be free of charge to those who meet entry requirements. Other subjects, like sociology and gender studies, should never be subsidised.

Devil Dog wrote:

Cal State colleges already suck as bad k-12.

CSU System is pretty terrible. Takes most 5 years to graduate at almost all CSU.

Concerned citizen wrote:

Degrees in mathematics and the hard sciences should be free of charge to those who meet entry requirements. Other subjects, like sociology and gender studies, should never be subsidised.

equally absurd - I bet you look at the majors of entrepreneurs and businsess leaders and you'll find lots of humanities and social science majors. The liberal arts education is not a dumpster.

practice, not theory wrote:

We've tried offering "free" public education, and the results have been disastrous in most of the country. Would "free" universities just fall to the same abysmal quality standards as "free" high schools?

Overall, free public education was a tremendous success and it was one of the main ideas that made us the great nation we are today. It's only in the past few decades that we have seen a decline.

So yes, it could work out quite well.

agip wrote:

Concerned citizen wrote:

Degrees in mathematics and the hard sciences should be free of charge to those who meet entry requirements. Other subjects, like sociology and gender studies, should never be subsidised.

equally absurd - I bet you look at the majors of entrepreneurs and businsess leaders and you'll find lots of humanities and social science majors. The liberal arts education is not a dumpster.

I didn't say it was a dumpster, just that those degrees should never be subsidised.

Yeesh.

That kind of distrust of our educational structure is scary.

You're the guy that votes for the politicians that stand to benefit from the educational "reform" biz.

I feel bad for you if you ever have a special needs child. You'll change your mind real quick about public ed when you can't find a school for your child.

Concerned citizen wrote:

agip wrote:

equally absurd - I bet you look at the majors of entrepreneurs and businsess leaders and you'll find lots of humanities and social science majors. The liberal arts education is not a dumpster.

I didn't say it was a dumpster, just that those degrees should never be subsidised.

But you never said why.

If state universities were to somehow move toward free tuition, the first requirement would be to close down all athletic departments that operate in the red.

Concerned citizen wrote:

agip wrote:

equally absurd - I bet you look at the majors of entrepreneurs and businsess leaders and you'll find lots of humanities and social science majors. The liberal arts education is not a dumpster.

I didn't say it was a dumpster, just that those degrees should never be subsidised.

forget the dumpster part. The point is that those majors you see as wastes of public money...actually aren't wastes of public money. The humanities and SS produce millions of highly successful taxpaying people. And we should all support those people. we don't want JUST STEM poeple.

CSU Grad wrote:

Devil Dog wrote:

Cal State colleges already suck as bad k-12.

CSU System is pretty terrible. Takes most 5 years to graduate at almost all CSU.

Stop for a moment and think of why it takes 5 years.

(Hint: it's not because the "system is pretty terrible".)