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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."
Scholarships are one thing, but when you give free tuition to everybody, the rich don't pay when they could afford to and the working poor wind up having to pay more taxes
I was going to comment on the fact that a large proportion of the poor pay no income taxes and thus won't pay more because of this. Then I remembered that local community colleges are funded through property taxes and so, until the property tax rate is increased or a levy is passed to cover it, nobody will be paying extra for this. And since it is property taxes, the cost of the tax will be proportional to the value of the property. Poorer people will pay less extra when the rate is increased than the rich will.
I suspect that this "free education" will either be yet another unfunded mandate on the states, or paid for by federal income tax increases where the poorest already pay nothing.
What I want to know is what he means by "work for it". What work will these students have to perform to get this "free" education?
We don't need a 13th and 14th grade to fail to teach students what K-12 failed to teach them. Because that's what this would end up being; not a start on post-secondary education, but an extension of high school.
Then you went to the wrong school and took the wrong courses and borrowed too much money.
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. She's going to graduate college with a STEM degree for something like $25K if we get no scholarships. However, I'm guessing her 4.0 thus far might get us a few thousand off that. After that, if she wants to move on to graduate school, she's going to have to look for a job and get her employer to pay for some of that.
My youngest is looking at the same schools for about the same price, though he's 4 years away from starting that.
Your mileage may vary, but if you graduate from college facing a 20 year struggle to pay off the debt, you did something wrong and would have been better off going into one of the skilled trades or something. 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. It's a really stupid move... Not the education, but going into debt like that.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
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.
It's incredibly affordable with the amount of federal, state, and county money already subsidizing community colleges to pick up the last 5-10%. This is more likely a program to entice mediocrity into buying into federal school loans for universities after 2 years at the community college level. The GPA requirement is clearly a troll move unless we're going to get honest as a country and start making the 2.5-3 range GPA kids take trades classes at the community college.
Even worse, by making the 2 years free, many students will be skating by on a lot of electives and "fun" classes which will keep them in the perpetual life student mindset. This is the same error that came with making parents responsible for their children's health insurance until they are 25.
Lastly, this is finally saying that the K-12 system is broken and we're not going to fix it. What better way to say that a HS diploma is worthless than making an Associate's degree a freebie.
If you want to incentivize hard work, pay for the last year at a university for students who finish "on time" in 4-4.5 years.
For $10k a year, you should get a shit ton more than you do. My salary and benefits cost about $100K a year and I teach 80 students a semester. Assuming summers off, that's $625 a year a student for tuition to pay for me. Add in 25 percent of the cost of a small lecture hall and an office, phone and internet, and, well yeah, you're getting ripped off. No, the billion administrative parasites give you nothing of educational value, and grants pay for all of my lab, including remodeling and rent (from the university).
It would be far more effective to train people in basic programming skills and back office operations and bring the jobs back from India, Ireland, Israel and Indonesia. Costs there have gone above the US minimum wages, when you factor in all the costs of offshoring.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
We already have droves of graduates who can't find jobs because they paid for a degree with little useful application; now we'll have droves of graduates who can't find jobs because the taxpayer bought them a degree with little useful application. Why not, instead, train a generation to build things and to fix things by expanding the trade schools?
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
The meaning of "free" from the government is obvious to everyone.
No, sadly, it is not. That's the problem. De Toqueville covered this a long time ago. Even if you assume (an unjustified assumption, I fear) that people do know the true meaning, the fact that they simply don't care that others are paying for it makes the problem just as bad.
This has nothing to do with AOL disks, and yes, ignoring the difference between "somebody" and "something" is significantly more pedantic than any statement that a "free" two years at a CC really isn't free. The main reason "AOL disks" are irrelevant to this is because "AOL disks" are not taxpayer funded, they are voluntarily paid for by AOL out of the profits they make from people who use AOL by their own choice.
When the government extorts money from some people to pay for other people's "free" stuff, the word "free" is being misused in a significant and important way. Trying to handwave the problem away by claiming that even sunlight isn't free because some poor hydrogen atoms had to die is just ridiculous.
Here's some new content: we're already facing the issue of requiring remedial basic math and English classes for incoming university freshmen. Imagine how much worse it will be when those who are passed out of the high schools just to get rid of them start appearing on the doorsteps of the local CC demanding their "free" education. Remedial remedial math, anyone?
If this programs saves its average participant potentially $3,800 annually it seems to do so by having someone else pick up the tab. And Community Colleges like most Colleges in this country are a joke. Just like most High Schools are.
The average College Freshmen in this country reads at a Seventh Grade Level. And now we are going to lower standards even more at Community Colleges so that EVERYONE can at least get a C+ and these schools get more taxpayer money shoveled into them. Let's lower standards even more and have the working class get raped for more money.
I went to a top tier university. I received a valuable education there and had great teachers and fellow students to learn from... I highly recommend the traditional 4 year college education path despite the recent anti-intellectualism and anti-education trend on tech sites like Slashdot. However, during the summer I took many of my required courses at community college like Philosophy, Sociology, freshman science classes, and other humanities. Those were some of the best educational experiences I have had. The community college teachers were people passionate about the subject, but didn't make it in a career in academia or a PhD program due to things happening in life... There perspective and approach was very different from traditional professionals... Or they were retired professors who just loved the topic so much they wanted to keep teaching it. I'd still recommend a top tier four year university, but don't discount community college. Maybe I was fortunate to have a good local community college available to me, but I do believe people who do apply themselves and don't have any other option can get a valuable education at community college.
Scrap a bloated super jet program that isn't going to win us any war we're fighting today, and you can pay for all people's tuitions and student loans over a couple years.
And instead of bailing out banks, we could have paid off 70-90% of the mortgages directly.
God spoke to me
That is a pretty dumb claim that two years at grades 13 and 14 don''t give you more than a semester towards college. When I went to a community college, I took classes that I knew would transfer. Why wouldn't I? I did my homework with admissions at Auburn to make sure what I was taking would transfer. I was ahead of all my friends because I was able to pass 76 hours of classes at joke school before I started Auburn. I had all of my non-engineering classes out of the way. I didn't have t pay a penny to Auburn for any of their overpriced classes that didn't apply to my major. Most of my friends had around 60 hours after their first two years. I was an entire semester ahead of them. Your lie that I only got one semester of credit is ridiculous when I had five semesters worth as compared to my friends that only had four. Also, they spent a lot more money and worked a heck of a lot harder. I didn't even have to do homework to get those credits. Grade 13 and 14 schools are great for people like me that don't want to work and want to spend my money on beer instead of education.
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
Lemme chime in with my own experience ...
When I landed on the soil of the United States of America back in the 1970's - yes, I know, it was a long long time ago, but anyway, this is what I had gone through
I spoke no English, I was essentially penniless - unlike those big time defectors, small fly refugees like me never get any financial help from uncle sam. We were already very grateful to be granted asylum and never hope to gain any financial gain in the first place
But anyway, as a penniless refugee who spoke no English my first jobs were in Chinatown. From washing dishes to kitchen helper to chef to waiter, I learned everything, step to step. Meanwhile I saved like crazy (working in a Chinese restaurant we got to eat free and live in very cramped worker quarter free of charge) and I tried my best to learn English any way I could
My first 'investment' in America was the first course I took in community college. It was not actually 'hard', but due to the language difficulties, it took me a while to suit myself in the new and totally different learning environment
First course begat more courses, and I learned of the 'pre-requisite' courses to take that I could transfer to higher learning institutions
So I took all the 'pre-requisite' courses. Of course I already know what I was going to study if I go to real 4-year college, I took all the required math courses, all the basic logic courses, and all the other courses that I could transfer
By the time I enrolled myself in a 4-year college most of the courses I took back in the community college were transferred. Of those courses that they (4-year college) didn't recognize, I took tests to show them that I indeed am knowledgeable enough to be exempted with such-and-such courses
One plus side for me is that most of the math courses that I took in both the community colleges and also in the 4-year college were already 'old stuffs' for me. Back in China we had much *MUCH* tougher math training, when we were in our secondary school (equivalent to 'high school' in the States)
I did the same thing for other degree that I took, including MBA. I took all the pre-requisite courses, such as business laws, economics, accounting, management, marketing, and then transferred them when I finally enrolled into the MBA program
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
You don't need to worry. This proposal has ZERO chance of becoming law. There is no way that a Republican congress is going to run up the debt to fund Obama's pet project. The only reason that Obama is even proposing it is so the Republicans can reject it, and then the Dems can use it against them in 2016.
I don't know--it's community colleges, which should be relatively appealing to Republicans who like supporting hard workers. Republicans hate social welfare programs, but really like the *image* of the hardworking American. By sticking with community colleges rather than going for the elite schools, this may actually have some chance of getting Republican support.
I don't know--it's community colleges, which should be relatively appealing to Republicans who like supporting hard workers. Republicans hate social welfare programs, but really like the *image* of the hardworking American. By sticking with community colleges rather than going for the elite schools, this may actually have some chance of getting Republican support.
I have to say, Americans are really strange.
Only in America would someone claim, with a perfectly straight face that attending a 4-6 year university is "elite". Are you really that brainwashed?
Do you people not understand the first rule of power? Limit education and knowledge. Keep the people ignorant. It seems they have done such a good job of it that folks actually thinks that uni is only for the elite.
I lived in Germany for several years. At the end of the day, what I pay for taxes is about the same as what I paid in the US. What do I get for my taxes in the US? I get to drive on shitty roads, my kids can go to high school, and there was the worlds largest army by a factor of 10.
In Germany, there is a small army but, my kids get a master or doctorate as they like, I have health care, I drive on great roads, and hell, I can even call the fire department to come a remove some bees in my garden.
It is really strange that all the Jesus people in the US have no moral problem with spending trillions on an Army, but rage about money spent to educate the population and therefore make the country richer and more able to compete against other nations.