Isn't free college already a thing?

[quote]beato wrote:

please list the Supreme Court members who attended community college

beato wrote:

Going to community college does not disqualify one from being on the SCOTUS. You also don’t need to be born into wealth to be on the Court.

Please list the Supreme Court members who went to community college.

Hardloper wrote:

You can nitpick over the details, but affordable college certainly already exists and many people don't take advantage of it.

Your statement needs clarification. What was your parents' net worth when you went to college? Do you have a trust fund or do you have a trust fund now? Context of affordable needs to be defined by you. I went to a state school years ago. Semester tuition was $700+ a semester. I took out a $2500 student loan just for a cushion. Graduated in May, partied in June, looked for a job and obtained a job in July then paid off my student loan before Christmas December of the year I graduated from college. My parents without the student loans did the same thing with private school education. Have you seen the polls? The more letsrun complains about Senator Sanders, the stronger he gets.

It is? I had to pay.

Community colleges in my city raised their tuition 3 fold in the last 20 years.

wowza wrote:

[quote]beato wrote:

please list the Supreme Court members who attended community college

Please show me where someone who attended CC is prohibited from being on theSCOTUS.

We haven’t had a female POTUS. Do you think since there hasn’t been one that there is some provision against it?

Smh

There are plenty of poor kids attending the Ivies for free. You might say that they don't count because they are smart. Making all college free will have the same impact to the population that we would be trying to help, poor minorities. There would be an even greater gap due to middle class all of sudden having free college as compared to today where they have to make difficult decisions. The poor already have free college but don't take advantage. So there will just be more people in society pulling further away from poor minorities. I guess that is the goal of the democrats.

Still waiting for the name of the Big 10 school.

My family was working class. That meant that we made too much money to receive any financial aid, but we certainly did NOT have enough money for my parents to write fat tuition checks ever 6 mo+ pay for any living expenses, cars, insurance, etc..

If not for my partial track scholarship I don't know how I could have made it through. I had to run and work to pay for school, plus take out a few loans.

Nothing that is given to you is valued. If college is "free" it will lose what little value it has. Also colleges can't and should not let everyone attend, that means that a lot of people are paying for a benefit that only a few receive.

I'm just more comfortable paying my own way. Personal responsibility- it's still a thing.

StuckInDaMiddleWitChew wrote:

My family was working class. That meant that we made too much money to receive any financial aid, but we certainly did NOT have enough money for my parents to write fat tuition checks ever 6 mo+ pay for any living expenses, cars, insurance, etc..

If not for my partial track scholarship I don't know how I could have made it through. I had to run and work to pay for school, plus take out a few loans.

Nothing that is given to you is valued. If college is "free" it will lose what little value it has. Also colleges can't and should not let everyone attend, that means that a lot of people are paying for a benefit that only a few receive.

I'm just more comfortable paying my own way.Personal responsibility- it's still a thing.

You did not argue against k-12 public school education. You do know Libertarians and some Republicans want to do away with k-12 public school education. Charter schools are step 1 of a 2 step process to ruin k-12 public school education. Pay your own way, according to some of your Libertarian friends can go as far as no police, just private security for the rich and mob/vigilante rule. You have been brainwashed by Alisa Rosenbaum. France specifically and many European nations have had tuition free college for awhile. Have you noticed: French citizens are not attempting to become U.S. citizens. Make friends with Sanders supporters. It's a coin toss for Senator Sanders winning Texas in November. If/when Senator Sanders wins in November, get ready for a better nation for all in U.S.

Parents be crazy wrote:

Ever heard of Stanford? $70k per year.

You missed my point. Yes, there are expensive private schools in California. But a very high percentage of residents go to more affordable UC's or CSU's which mostly give really good educations.

As far as Stanford that is one of the best Universities in the world and a degree there is so valuable. Taking on debt to go there is not like taking on debt to go to a lot of these lower-tier private colleges. A Stanford degree puts you in a great position to pay off your loans and then some.

Plus I'll reference that. Like the Ivy's, if you come from a lower-income family, or middle income Stanford will offer a lot of support or free tuition. The government shouldn't be stepping in for the upper-income families who suck at saving money.

+1, Elvin.

Doctors don't get paid their current salaries because "they justify it with the high cost of their education" - they get paid that much because that is the amount people are willing to pay them.

So much generic boomer bootstrap pick yourself up opinions

Lil' Pistol wrote:

yeah, because "most" people get accepted to multiple schools and are able to choose to go to one where they get a full ride, right?

and "most" students who live well below the poverty line have plenty of resources to apply to multiple schools and the luxury to choose the free one, right?

you're living in a fairy tale if you actually think that free college is available to "most people."

To be fair to the OP, most students who live below the poverty line can get a ton of financial assistance even if they aren't the most gifted academically.

And to the others complaining about the application fee, it took me less than a minute of googling to find the application fee waiver form on CU's website for people with low income.

I'd be fine with expanding the grant system and making community colleges free if you maintain a B-average. I'd even support free public college if you maintain a B-average.

People like Bernie are going to get push back from people and all he would have to do is add a tiny bit of pragmatism to his free college plan. What this shows me is that Bernie is an ideologue that is unwilling to compromise. Which is worrisome to me in a much broader scope than just college funding.

beato wrote:

wowza wrote:

[quote]beato wrote:

please list the Supreme Court members who attended community college

Please show me where someone who attended CC is prohibited from being on theSCOTUS.

We haven’t had a female POTUS. Do you think since there hasn’t been one that there is some provision against it?

Smh

Where did I say anything about there being a provision against it? In fact, by using the term de facto I was clearly implying that were wasn't a provision against it.

StuckInDaMiddleWitChew wrote:

My family was working class. That meant that we made too much money to receive any financial aid, but we certainly did NOT have enough money for my parents to write fat tuition checks ever 6 mo+ pay for any living expenses, cars, insurance, etc..

If not for my partial track scholarship I don't know how I could have made it through. I had to run and work to pay for school, plus take out a few loans.

Nothing that is given to you is valued. If college is "free" it will lose what little value it has. Also colleges can't and should not let everyone attend, that means that a lot of people are paying for a benefit that only a few receive.

I'm just more comfortable paying my own way. Personal responsibility- it's still a thing.

Did you pay your way through high school too?

Or did your feeling of personal responsibility not count then?

Community college can help highly motivated students a great deal, but it is no panacea because it has an exceptionally high dropout rate and the education is generally substandard with very low expectations in many cases. I know from having taught at what was considered to be a good one (standard textbooks had summaries, no original text, and most classes had required texts edited by the department chair) and from looking at the statistics.

Free college is a very good idea. Unemployment rate for those with a bachelor's degree has always been well under the overall unemployment rate. Currently it's around 2.7%. That includes humanities majors. Note that a lot of people drop out of college (a lot less than community college) and a big part of the reason is the need to work to afford it and the loss of time to study. Lowering standards for 4 year colleges and universities is not a good response to it but it has been happening for years because of stats-conscious administrators who pressure faculty to fail no one and to accept core classes (general ed) with no standards. Few argue against free K-12 education. But that's not adequate for most jobs today, so it makes great sense to extend it to college. Even Republican legislators in Tennessee agreed to do it for community college. But we should recall that it's not only done in many countries (or token fees charged) but used to be done in this country. For instance, it was only Ronald Reagan who first charged fees for the University of California system.

Also, to respond to the ludicrous premise of the OP, the heavily tuition-based funding model of colleges and universities obviously does not allow for everyone to go for free. Think about it. Colleges and universities spent $584 billion in 2016-17 in the United States. $372 billion of the expenses were at public universities, which educate by far the most. For private, non-profit, 59% was spent on academic support, vs. only 30% for instruction. For four-year public, it was 28% to instruction, 22% to academic support (maybe a lot of that is admin costs), and just 3% to grant aid! For private four-year non-profit, it was 32 (instruction) to 30 (academic support) and no clear amount on grant aid (maybe covered under other areas).

In short, grant aid is a small proportion of university expenses. By contrast, tuition and fees generated 20% of revenue (government gave 41%) at public post-secondary institutions and 30% at private (gov't account for 11% of their revenue!) (tuition was 91% of revenue at private for profit).

In short, there's nowhere near enough money in the current university budgets to provide full scholarships to anything but a tiny minority of students.

https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=75

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cud.asp

the weigher wrote:

Hardloper wrote:

You can nitpick over the details, but affordable college certainly already exists and many people don't take advantage of it.

It’s not nitpicking to point out that the original premise of the thread, that we currently have the infrastructure in place that would allow most people to go to college for free, as being laughably false.

I think you're still misunderstanding what it means for something to be available to most people.

If I tell you that free healthcare is available to all Canadians, would you interpret that to mean that every single Canadian citizen could show up at their PCP's office right now and be seen? Of course not. It means that any Canadian who chooses to do so can see a doctor for free.

Again, free or very affordable education being available to most people doesn't mean that most people could simultaneously attend college for free. It means that the people who could individually choose to take advantage of said education constitute a majority of the population.