Free Tuition for Math, Science, and Engineering?

Gibbs-Duhem writes "Montana Democratic Senator Max Baucus wants free college tuition for US math, science, and engineering majors conditional upon working or teaching in the field for at least four years. From the article: 'The goal, he said in an interview last week, is to better prepare children for school and get more of them into college to make the United States more globally competitive, particularly with countries like China and India. "I think the challenge is fierce, and I think we have a real obligation to go the extra mile and redo things a bit differently, so we leave this place in better shape than we found it," Baucus said.' Do you think this would help with the US's lackluster performance in these fields?"

Comments

Of course it will help

[jcorno]

Cutting tuition will always improve the talent pool, because it removes an arbitrary obstacle. That's why the University of Georgia System has improved so dramatically in the last 10 years. The HOPE Scholarship made college so cheap that anybody can go, so the schools can all be a lot more selective.

Re:Yes, it would work.

[megaditto]

I know millions of Americans who are currently employed because of the good old job-stealers like Tesla, von Braun, Bohr, Bell, Guglielmo Marconi, Einstein, John von Neumann, Sergey Brin.

Since I like helping bigots, here's my link for you: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,276508,00.html

[...]Among the technology companies founded by foreign entrepreneurs are Sun Microsystems Inc., Intel Corp and Google Inc.

The study pointed out the contributions foreign entrepreneurs make to the American economy. It found that 25 percent of the companies founded in those 10 years had at least one senior executive a founder, chief executive, president or chief technology officer who was born outside the United States. The study was based on telephone surveys of 2,054 companies. In 2005 immigrant entrepreneurs companies generated $52 billion in sales.

Re:I think it's good

[tfreport]

Actually the reason is a lot simpler and probably scarier - while the majority of Congress (and Americans) favor ending the embargo, Cuban immigrants do not. They hate Castro and want to make sure that the US puts pressure on him to the bitter end. And while Cuban Americans are a small population nationwide, they are a large percentage in Florida, which is important state in Presidential elections with the Cuban population a swing vote. So no one running for President will ever consider allowing the embargo to end for political reasons (it would be political suicide as you would lose Florida and probably the election), even though the rest of that nation knows what the policy should be.