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Obama Proposes 2 Years of Free Community College
An anonymous reader writes with news about a White House proposal that would provide 2 years of free community college for good students."President Barack Obama announced a proposal Thursday to provide two years of free community college tuition to American students who maintain good grades. 'Put simply, what I'd like to do is to see the first two years of community college free for everyone who's willing to work for it,' Obama said in a video filmed Wednesday aboard Air Force One and posted to Facebook. He made the announcement as part of his pre-State of the Union tour and will formally lay out the proposal Friday in a speech in Tennessee. The White House estimated it would save the average community college student $3,800 annually and said it could benefit nine million if fully realized."
In my state they made preschool "free". Within the year the tuition costs tripled from previous levels that were flat the previous 5 years. Every time the government offers something for free it's cost becomes unbearable.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
They'll both fight it because it cuts into the profiteering of the ECMC Group. These are the debt collectors who have just taken over Corinthian to transform their schools into "non-profit" so that they can keep the federal student loan money train flowing which in turn guarantees a steady stream of defaults that they can profit from.
Free education from the federal government will be lobbied against heavily by these parasites.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
How many innocent Hydrogen atoms died to light your day? Something had to pay, even for sunlight.
You've taken pedantry to an entirely new level. Maybe it's you can't understand the difference between "somebody" and "something". Or you don't care.
It's time more people realized that when the government uses the term "free" it truly is a lie, and the word should be reserved to actually mean something instead of being turned into useless filler to keep the politician's lips moving during sound bites.
Not many people making $30k/year could afford to pay $10k/year per kid to educate their 2 children. I guess they could always resort to crime. If we had a highly regulated or at least competitive market, people could make a livable wage and could then send their children to private school. All we need to do is fix everything wrong with our market.
My first is in college right now, and we are paying just about $600/semester (Plus books) for full time at the local community college. She can go there two years then head to the 4 year state school where the costs is something like $5k/semester plus books.
Community colleges are great, but a lot of people fall into traps that sound like what you are describing. In >>99% of all cases, a 2-year degree from a community college does not knock off anywhere near 2 years from a 4-year bachelor's degree. Generally that 2-year degree knocks off one year and maybe a couple miscellaneous lib-ed requirements. Yeah, it saves you some money but it costs you some time. You could have gone straight into a 4-year program and - assuming you knew what you wanted to major in (which a lot of kids do not) - graduated in 4 years. Instead you started off at community and now your 4-year degree is taking you a total of 5+ years.
Now, those 5 years might actually be a really good investment. For a lot of kids it certainly is - a lot of kids finish high school without any real ability to adapt to college. Nonetheless it does not lead to the dramatic money savings that many people (or more so, many people's parents) hope for.
It never ceases to amaze me when people get 70K into debt going to a 4 year school getting a secondary education degree or something, where the starting annual pay is half their debt load.
This varies a lot from one state to another but a lot of states now require a master's to teach at primary or secondary level. $70K is actually doing quite well for student loans for a bachelors and a masters. Most physicians - who have generally done only 8 years of school (2 years more than a teacher) - are well into six figures of debt by the time they start a residency.
As for the relation between debt load and salary, I would say that your observation says more about how little we pay our teachers than anything.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Yes, absolutely.
The older people where I grew up, grew up in a time when high school was not compulsory and was attached with real costs, and most did not partake in it. There is a sharp educational distinction between them and the younger generations which had University at least, and usually University.
(I'm in Canada, so it's not exactly the US system.)
What's bad is that the Republicans will fight against it for being too expensive, yet will give $100b a year to fight in a middle-eastern war.
Obama was the one who went to Lybia, and almost Syria, against Republican objections.
Obama was the one that kept troops in Afghanstan until recently, while electing to withdraw a few bases of troops from Iraq only to have to send them back in to prevent the complete collapse of the country to ISIS.
Obama also loves the drone strikes and targeting military assassination...
What was that complaint about Republicans again? It seems awfully partisan and misdirected.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The federal school loan program is turning out to be wildly profitable new tax program for the federal government. The loans are exempt from bankruptcy and are typically $40+k per student.
I don't know where you're getting your data, but you should never trust that place again. The average is less than $30k, you can discharge it in bankruptcy, and it's not profitable for the government. It would be, if everyone always paid their loans, but then the banking crisis never would have happened, either.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Not really, then I have to compete with them for jobs.
Economics is not zero sum. More educated people means more companies and industries that require educated workers. Educated people are paid the most where educated people are common (big cities and technology hubs) and are paid the least where educated people are rare (rural areas, and third world countries). That is the exact opposite of what you would expect with a zero sum supply/demand situation.
>. You will need to talk to the 4-year university (not the 2-year college) to see which 2-year college courses apply to what before you take them
Yes. As an example, I live next to Texas A&M. Next to A&M is Blinn, a community college. They have very specific agreements that this two-year degree counts as two years toward this four-year. So IF you plan ahead, you have a guarantee. A large percentage of students follow that plan, both to save money and some students need a good GPA at Blink before they are qualified to be admitted at A&M. That's probably pretty typical of major flagship universities.
The Texas A&M System has six other universities, such as Prairie View. One flagship, six other state schools in the system. Which means MOST state universities aren't the big-name flagships. Prairie View and the others are a bit more lenient on transfer credits. Some accept any class that's ACE accredited - which includes some that aren't even taught by colleges. That class taught by the Forest Service may be ACE accredited and accepted by many non-flagship universities.
I recently went back to school after having run my own companies for twenty years, riding the internet revolution. I chose a university that is a state school in Texas and 18 other states, Western Governors University. It is designed largely for adult students with job experience, so they'll accept all sorts of things for transfer credit. For example, industry certifications; if you have one of Microsoft's or CompTIA's more advanced certifications, they accept that in place of a similar class.
So you don't HAVE to take another three and half years if you already did two. You CAN get your degree from a state university like Prairie View rather than Texas A&M, or you can even do WGU and get credit for that system you designed and built at work, if it proves you know the subject matter.
If you want to go to a major flagship school, the kind where most applicants don't get in, then you better plan ahead and be aware of the specifics of the matriculation agreement.
Source: I manage a campus where we offer ACE accredited courses and have matriculation agreements. We're part of the Texas A&M System, but we're not a university.
Saw an AD for a HVAC technician...$2200 a week.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock