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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?"
It allows poor people to get a university degree, which is really expensive in America, and so build a better future for themselves and their children.
Also, it should be good for the country as a whole, having more scientists and engineers. Those extra beakers and hammers are really valuable!
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
As long as it's retroactive for graduates in the past 5 years who now work in the field, fine by me. :)
But seriously, forgiving the debt of recent graduates who are now working in engineering fields will pump a shit-load of money into the economy.
Because anything that makes the least bit of sense never does, in America.
Cynicism aside, this is a much needed proposal for the future of America. We are being left behind in so many markets due to increased global competition, but we are also lagging far behind in quality accessible education (meanwhile, tuition rates continue to rise).
I wish Senator Baucus the best of luck with this. He deserves our support.
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.
"Tuition at no direct expense to the recipient."
the benefit to society if that extended that to people get business degrees and law degrees? I don't think our country has a large enough per-capita rate of lawyers or salesman, so we could really benefit by offering them free tuition too. Oh and also history majors, because that is a useful major too. :D
"Thank you for using Stop-n-Drop, America's favorite suicide booth since 2008"
Aside from that, don't forget that giving free college education to foreigners is great, considering that you get to choose how long you keep them, and where you let them work.
You save twelve years of fundamental education, and with just four, you get an engineer who will work where you want him to work, and for as long as you wish.
The same thing is done by European countries, they import graduates for example from Latin America, give them a free or a cheap Phd, and they get a cheap doctor in whetever they need, for 3 o 4 years of education. Of course, that money comes back in patent royalties, and expensive technology exports even to the same countries that provided the people.
In a given field, will not increase the amount of jobs in a given field. Actually it probably will, a little bit, as it'll probably be combined with severe reduction in work visas given for those fields. But not enough. Especially not enough for the expected glut of talent that will take advantage of such an offer.
So what you'll end up with is a bunch of people with math, science and engineering degrees asking "Do you want fries with that?", which actually isn't bad. At least they're educated.
I don't see where it says it's limited to residents of Montana. I like Montana - the western portion of it, anyway - but I know what you mean. I don't know why we couldn't have let the Indians keep it. Every time I've driven through it, it seems like we're not using it.
Truth, Justice. Or the American Way.
No, it's a bad idea. All this plan would do is suck a bunch of people into those majors who want the free lunch but don't have the motivation to really pursue the subjects. Much like what happens every few years when Computer Science goes from bust to boom and all sorts of people take it because they think they will make a shitload of money in the field. They make lousy IT people and switch careers as soon as the industry cycles back to bust again.
And the 'Free money!' (of course TANSTAAFL) mentality would totally distort the education establishment even more than the transition of Athletics from a sideline into a major cash cow did.
Democrat delenda est
So if you participate in this program and then lose your job, or become disabled, and are unable to work in the field for 4 years, not only do you have the regular problems of unemployment but you also have the sudden obligation to re-pay all that tuition? From the student's point of view, it seems like quite a gamble that the job market will be favorable 4 years down the road.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
If there is any sort of cap, the "free" tuition will just go to the people who would have paid anyways. If you assume that people who are engineering students are so because they like the field, they are probably the best qualified to be in the field. So if these scholarships are at all merit-based, chances are the same kids would get them. If they are not merit based, then you'll get poorly-qualified people signing up just to take advantage, crowding out the few who are qualified but are too poor.
So either the scholarships need to be available to anyone who meets the simple criteria of graduating and working in the field, or they probably won't have the intended effect of increasing the quantity and maintaining or improving the quality of engineering graduates. They'll just end up being a hand-out to the people who don't need handouts.
Honestly, I think the USA's best bet is brain-drain. We need to tear-down a lot of the post 9/11 every-foreign-student-is-a-potential-terrorist rules, and kill H1B, replacing it with a fast-track to citizen-ship visa (I say go so far as to make citizen-ship a requirement after 3 years on this theoretical visa) so that we attract and then keep all the smart people from the rest of the world.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Aside from that, don't forget that giving free college education to foreigners is great, considering that you get to choose how long you keep them, and where you let them work. Actually, I disagree. If we keep them, they take a job from an American. If we send them home, they compete with us from abroad, and make money for India/China instead of for the US. In either case, Americans lose.
You save twelve years of fundamental education, and with just four, you get an engineer who will work where you want him to work, and for as long as you wish. Since the fundamental education is a sunk cost, why should we shoot ourselves in the foot by stopping there and giving the education to someone who is going to hurt us in either case (see above); instead of giving it to an American, who will also perform the same work, for what is likely a longer period of time?
An Indian or Chinese will often fulfill their obligation, while sending money back to their home country. When completed, they will usually leave on their own, as their US Salary is a King's Fortune there. An American, likely will not be emigrating to India to enjoy the money they've made here. Since you're rather pedantic, let me point out that I said "usually" and "likely" meaning "The number of Indians/Chinese who take their money and run greatly exceeds the number of US students who get free educations here and move to India or China." and not "It will never happen, ever, so a single instance or a small minority percentage is a valid counter-argument."
~Rebecca
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
Well, we've (ab)used parts of it, anyway. I think that "using" the rest more would sort of limit the charm, unfortunately.
-b.
This is the typical attitude in this friggin' country. First comes me, me, me, and me again. Everybody for himself. It's all about who pays what and how much does what cost.
Widen your horizon. Open your eyes. Free or at least affordable quality education is a good long-term investment for everybody. It is an important part of the common good. But as long as you just worry about your own pocket book it will never happen.
It's not going to do crap until engineers, physicists, chemists, and the people who actually do the grunt work are paid what they're worth. Why should extremely intelligent people who've worked 30 years advancing the frontiers of knowledge and technology be paid *MAYBE* 200k/yr when they can get an MBA or JD, learn some buzzwords, and become CEO in twenty years, then be given a 200M golden parachute for driving their corporation into bankruptcy?
I suspect that one of these choices is incorrect. Correct.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
He only has to forgive student loans after the student has been a resident in the state for 5 years. They have been doing this for teachers/doctors for a long time, haven't you guys ever seen Northern Exposure
My only issue is that this is nearly 10 years too late for me. Of my Engineering graduating class I know less than 5 people who stayed in the state.
I always thought of Creationism as the Raving Right's version of the Loony Left's Anthropogenic Global Warming-brightmal
How about the government just gives everyone who graduates highschool on time $1000 cash, no questions asked? To use for college tuition, buying a car, a year of free cheeseburgers, or anything else they want, no strings attached.
It costs the government something like $30K a year to keep a person in jail. Not to mention how much it costs to run the rest of the judicial system, to build the jails, the damage caused by their crimes, or the taxes they could have paid if they were free to work. By the time we're done with the difference between a free person and a jailed person, it's probably over $50K a year. The average Federal jailtime is over 5 years per sentence, or well over $250K per prisoner (many get multiple sentences per lifetime).
People graduating HS on time are less likely to commit crimes and go to jail. So every person who the bonus spares from jail is worth over 250 people who get it, but still go to jail. In other words, if the increased on-time graduations reduce the crime rate even as little as 0.25%, they're worth it. It's probably closer to needing only 0.1% or less to "break even". And that's not counting other benefits, like increased productivity, reduced teen pregnancy, and all the other benefits of on-time graduation.
We can afford a lot more investment in Americans' education. Some targeting high performers who need more money for even higher performance. Some targeting low performers at risk of creating more damage than it costs to prevent. Education is always the investment with the best return. Investing more will pay off quickly, creating more money to invest, and improving the country across the board as a "byproduct".
--
make install -not war
Right. "National service". Make a GOSPLAN while we are at it...
How one stupid Democratic idea can bring others in tow...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
have you ever thought about why these people came over here to learn in the first place? Wouldn't you, for a free ride?
Seriously, when did "Americans" become so hostile towards immigrants? When our politicians gave them free education, and tax incentives to employers to hire them over equally qualified Americans who had to pay for their education with a lifetime of debt.
~Rebecca
You assume that the number of jobs is finite and therefore a foreign person will take the place of an American. At that level of education (and at any level really) many times jobs are created out of the work of this person (and the interaction with other highly skilled workers).So there is no evidence that your main assumption is even valid.
Yes, he/she will send money to their home country and will at the same time spend money in rent, services, not to mention that he/she will eventually start a family and pay for school for his/her American children. Finally most of the people in the most sophisticated fields of knowledge will choose to stay in the US, as his/her colleagues, conferences and job opportunities are all here. The money sent to the home country is most likely a small fraction of the wealth created by the worker.
Whoa, RTFA?
Where in the article does it state that foreign students will be receiving a free education? In fact, it states that there will be incentives in place for high school graduates - implying that these are people who, at minimum, have a green card. Secondly, tax incentives? What? Are you talking about outsourcing? Or immigration policy enforcement?
Your vitriol is completely obscuring your point, to the point where I have to ask, what bridge do you live under?
Since I like helping bigots, here's my link for you: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,276508,00.htm
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
Start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_system/
Sometimes I just want to whip my cock out and fuck every one of those bitches until they don't have anything to complain about.
Dad?
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
One major issue in my own undergraduate education (in mathematics and computer science) was the gulf between those who were comtemplating a future academic career in the subject, and those who merely wanted a credential to progress on to industry.
Yes, there are some students who straddle the fence — in a way, I was one myself — but for the most part the undergraduate student population is rather sharply divided between the research-directed and the credential-directed. The fact that programs have to accomodate both lead to conflicts — the research-directed students complain bitterly about dumbing-down of material and excessive commercial influence on the curriculum, while the credential-directed complain about having to learn a ton of useless theory which will be irrelevant to their future.
I mention this because I speculate that Max Baucus' proposal would certainly change the current equilibrium between these two camps, particularly if free tuition is only for science/engineering students. True, there would be a lot more research-directed types who can't get into university now for lack of funds, but I imagine most of the people who'd come who aren't there now would be credential-directed.
There's also another reason they'd be credential-directed, which is the tone set by the policy itself. There's something a little disturbingly utilitarian about the proposal of granting free tuition only to those people. This sort of philosophy makes me wonder whether the line would be drawn around science/engineering as a whole, or around only those science/engineering programs that have a utilitarian (read: "commercial") appeal. I would think it would be hard for the government to argue that engineering and category theory are "useful" but that philosophy and rhetoric are not.
If, however, research-directed programs are ruled out, the result would likely be a forcible segragation of research-directed and credential-directed students, even more than there is now. Maybe this is where we're headed anyway, but it would be regrettable as the forced mingling of the two has been hugely productive for both in the past.
Tennessee did the same, only it was five years in impoverished areas in Tennessee. The kicker? You didn't get your tuition free at the time... the state simply agreed to pay off your loans AFTER your five years were up. And, to date, I've not heard of them actually paying a cent out...
Unclear... critics of nativists like to claim that it is opposition to non-white immigrants... but I think that it is an oversimplification. I think that the anger is directed at "Mexicans" and "Indians" but I don't think its racism... I think that it's more about the lack of cultural assimilation. There is anger at growing Spanish language television stations and newspapers, which they see as evidence of them not learning English. I think that the percentage of 1st generation immigrants that never really acclimate is about the same as ever, but with two-three already established wealthy Hispanic immigrants, they noticed the opportunity to market them.
:) The same is true in Texas, California, and the South west.
When my friends complain that people in Miami aren't learning English, I try to politely remind them that Spanish was spoken in La Florida long before English was.
Might as well steal the best and brightest from the rest of the world. There are only 300 million or so Americas. There are 1.2 billion Indians and 1.6 billion Chinese? If you assume that the "brainpower" that powers "intellectual property" driven industries comes from the top 0.1% of people, there are 300,000 Americans, 1.2 million Indians, and 1.6 million Chinese? If we can steal 10% of India and China's "top talent," you're talking another 120,000 Indians and 160,000 Chinese, so another 280,000 to your home grown 300,000?
:) Lumberyards need trees. Intellectual Property industries need brains. Since brains seem to be pretty randomly distributed amongst the 6 or 7 billion people on this planet, I figure we might as well bring them in from elsewhere... I don't work that "foreign oil" is taking "refining space" away from domestic oil. The modern economy is an impressive beast, and it needs all sorts of inputs or it will stall out.
Basically, if you look at demographic charts, distribution of children by education, and assume that education is a rough correlation to brainpower (it's not perfect, but there is probably a decent 60%-75% correlation, and it's the best we have), we're artificially getting lower brain power locally, might as well steal it.
If you need oil, you have to buy it from the Middle East or Venezuela, you can't just complain that American educatators aren't creating oil.
Also, American "science types" tend to excel more in creativity, Asian "science types" more in grinding out and implementing. This has nothing to do with genetic differences, and probably very little to do with culture... In America, we judge people on their economic successes, which tends to reward creativity and risk taking here, so people that take risks tend to do better in America. Most other academic cultures punish failure more than rewarding success. The test-happy European and Asian school systems with series of weed-outs, testing = admissions, and degree=economic success has caused the degree to correlate with risk adverse study-aholics, so that's what you get.
Want to get engineers that will work cheap and grind out the process without much creative thought? You'll find that China and India CRANK them out by the hundreds o
Bad form to reply to my own comment, but I had to add this. As an engineering student with an eye on one day being an engineering teacher, I want to be thought of as "the engineer who worked to advance knowledge of ________", not "the engineer who refused to share his knowledge of _______ with people not born within the same thick lines on a map". We're working with SCIENCE, we deal with PHYSICS, the laws of the natural world - we shouldn't bicker over semantics and rules. We already have a description for people who do that: (Slashdot posters? :D) politicians - and nobody likes them.
Actually, I disagree. If we keep them, they take a job from an American. If we send them home, they compete with us from abroad, and make money for India/China instead of for the US. In either case, Americans lose.
Yeah, um... these Americans who are qualified for the job but losing them to Indian or Chinese candidates... Could you send them my way? It is damned near impossible for the company I work for (a semiconductor manufacturer) to get Americans just to apply. I don't like hiring foreign talent over native talent (actually I only give a recommendation), but when we have an open job requisition and I'm looking at 10 resumes (7 from India, 1 from China, 1 from Bangladesh and one native) and the only American candidate is laughably unqualified, WHO ARE THESE GUYS STEALING A JOB FROM?!
I used to be seriously critical of outsourcing and the H1-B program . I was fairly certain that my current employer wouldn't even consider me. I went from phone interview, to face-2-face interview to job offer in a couple days. I almost had heart failure when I told them to bump their already generous offer by 10% and they had the increase approved the next morning.
I have taken ongoing education courses at the local university trying to get some locals just to $*&%ing apply - AND THEY WON'T DO IT. It is 10x easier to hire US Citizens than to get an H1-B Visa sponsored. I hate recommending someone who has only a tenuous grasp of the English language. We need more STEM majors in this country so that I don't have to go through this shit.
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
The US doesn't need more engineers. If it did, salaries would be higher. In 1970, engineering and law salaries were about equal, or so says the IEEE. That's certainly changed.
The US doesn't need more engineers because high-tech manufacturing has gone offshore. Where the manufacturing goes, the production engineering must go, and the design engineering follows. Then the brands go. Then top management. Then the financing.
Read the Lenovo story. They're not a spinoff of IBM. They're a successful Chinese PC company that bought IBM's PC business to expand. IBM is just the company to which Lenovo outsources US warranty service.
The motivation?
Passion, sir. Passion.
Problems over here in Europe are similar.
But, instead of another "let's give certain groups something special" program, how about raising the general level of education in such fields as math?
Many scams and doubtful business methods (including, btw. many insurances) only work because the general public is frighteningly uneducated in math, for example, and can't do even simple statistics.
One of the reasons this is so is that there is no education science of mathematics. There are special branches of education science for almost every other field, be it art, languages or health. But no one seems to care about how to teach math. So it's taught by people who know general pedagogics and try to apply that to math as best as they can - but we all know that math skills and people skills do not very often go together, so you are really lucky if your math teacher is good at both math and teaching.
And that's not his fault, but a failure of the system, which instead of thinking about why so many people fail in math in school, and improve the teaching techniques, dumbs down the curriculum or makes math optional instead of mandatory.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
This is a very insightful point. I've definitely observed this divide within physics. The research-directed types (of which I would consider myself one) are willing to pursue careers (probably in academia) regardless of the financial benefit, assuming of course that it provides enough to subsist on.
The main draw of the credential directed outlook is financial, and I don't think it's schooling expenses, but rather long-term earning potential, and thus a sense of security, which is the main incentives. More research money makes a career in the field more appealing. No one wants to spend their entire life squabbling over a handful of $10k grants, but if you know your field is going to be well-funded, even if your salary is less, you gain a much greater sense of stability. (I think more people who have the inclination to do research would choose to be 'poor' and stably funded than either slightly wealthier and poorly funded or 'poor' and poorly funded.)
Thus, if one really wants to increase US science and engineering power, the first thing that needs to be done is to provide more federal funding of research. The private sector isn't going to fund pure research because of the long timescales on which it pays off. Long term investments are ideal roles for the government. Educational incentives are great, but it doesn't do any good if they're not given the resources to make use of their education.
I've had some pretty awful teachers in my day that were there for various reasons. I have to wonder if someone is forced to teach for X years, will they really care? Will they actually offer a quality education to people or just kind of slide by until their debt is forgiven. If they had to keep up with some kind of quality standards, would they simply teach the test just to keep their scores up? Maybe it'll work, I'm just a little skeptical.
Doing the needful.
It's not true - because it presupposed a mythical golden era where American kids didn't prefer other [era and socioeconomic level appropriate] activities and fields of study to math, science, and engineering.
There never was such a golden age.
How many companies are really driven by passion? Yes there are some but they are very rare. Most live quarter-by-quarter trying to pump up their share price. They do this by following the latest Wall St fashions. Right-sizing, diversifying, refocussing, out sourcing... In that context, passion is a meaningless emotion.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
You might declare it as defense research, but... the US constitution doesn't permit such subsidies.
"What gives you the idea the job market has 'no need' for those people?"
What gives me that idea are the hundreds of thousands of bright, well-educated science and tech workers who are under-employed and unemployed.
It would be far better to implement tax breaks to employers who invest in bringing in US citizens for interviews, in relocating US citizens, and in education and training US citizens... and to adjust such tax breaks that already exist in line with the inflation in costs of travel, education and training in the last 20 years.
They're doing far too little in the way of background investigations of visa applicants. Instead of these stupid instant data-base look-ups, they should be interviewing every applicant, their employers, co-workers, teachers, professors, family members, landlords, class-mates, etc. In a time when it can take a US citizen with ancestors going back to the 1700s 4 years to get a passport, all this whining from visa applicants because the current rubber-stamp process takes a few months is outrageous.
I'm American. so I can say that I know most Americans are ignorant, and only looking out for themselves. Humans in general are driven by two things... pretty much everything we do can be traced back to greed and fear. Some international team of scientists might be working on the cure for cancer, but they want the publicity for the research, hence they are greedy for something else besides money. So i don't think that the rest of the world is as pleasant as you make it out to be. Americans just like to be assholes about it.
"10001110101 - periodic table with a centerpiece of mind" -Clutch