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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."
As in somebody else pays for it...
But still, it might be ok if the covered courses are useful, and not just "community organizer" type courses. That is to say, something that will train for a marketable skill.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
then no one will. Or rather, the 2 year degree will be worth nothing.
This is just covering the complete failure of the highschool system, and an attempt to buy votes.
We need fewer people in college not more. In many places by 16 you have the 'trade school' kids and the 'college kids'. Hint: craftsmen aren't just guys with a Home Depot credit card, it's hard work and takes time.
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
Now it will be four years for associates, and six for bachelors.
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.
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.
As usual, it's poor people providing subsidies for the rich.
Rich people pay more in taxes... If not, maybe you should address that... But let it be a separate issue.
I'm constantly surprised at how Americans manage to see the bad in every government service provided. In most other modern countries services such as this is what enables poor people to climb. It's the thing that reduces negative social heritage (you have a lot of that in the US)..
Note, just because a government makes it easier to climb out of poverty does not make it trivial. I've never been poor, but because tuition and living expenses was covered for me during university, doesn't mean I didn't have to work hard to earn a degree.
I actually tried to RTFA, but the page wont scroll down. Some horrible web design right there.
That's the only definition of "free" that exists. Even the sunlight isn't "free" by your useless definition. How many innocent Hydrogen atoms died to light your day?
If you look down in the corner of the horizon you'll sometimes see a little note with the text: "Your daylight is brought to you by God Inc." :)
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.
$3,800 x 9 million students x 2 years = $68.4 billion dollars. Perhaps not a lot when you consider the full federal budget, but it's more than we spent on the entire Department of Education last year. The real numbers that matter are 54% and 57%, the Republican portion of the Senate and the House of Representatives.
And why is he doing it? Not because it helps students, but because it appears to lower youth unemployment and reduces the need for corporations to train people themselves slightly.
How is giving every kid with good grades the opportunity to get more than a high school education without having finaces be an overriding consideration?
Of course it helps the students. The best thing in the world to improve the odds for success in life is more education.
And the first 2 years of college/university are worlds apart from what you learned in grade 12.
but because it appears to lower youth unemployment and reduces the need for corporations to train people themselves slightly.
Fascinating world view you have there.
That's two years out of the workforce, two years of not paying into retirement, and no benefit, since those students will simply be competing against each other for the same jobs anyway.
Good point. We should end public education at grade 4. Its just years they aren't in the work force, and of no benefit since they'll just be competing each other for the same jobs anyway; and all it does is reduce the need for corporations to train people themselves.
I mean, everyone does work for a corporation right? There aren't ~20 million sole-proprieterships in the country. And there certainly aren't another 40 million+ people working for small to medium businesses.
It's a gigantic ripoff, both of students and tax payers.
Seriously. Sarcasm off. More available education is one of the best things we can do for the country. This isn't no-child-left-behind sillyness... this is about making sure students who can and would succeed at post-secondary school get to go.
What would be a better use of tax dollars in the long run?
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
amnesty for illegals is a constitutional power to overturn a criminal conviction. for ACA, read the law. most of them are vague enough to give the president a lot of leeway. and go read your own link. unfunded mandates are laws passed by congress
maybe you should go back to high school for some remedial social studies?
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".
Dear Republican Friends,
Don't worry about Obama's community college announcement, it's a great idea.
I mean, clearly the education market is far too competitive as is. With average annual tuition rates of $2,700, who can afford to go to community college I ask you.
Clearly, if we remove all competition in the market, that price can only go down, right?
And I shouldn't need to remind you that the teachers unions have clearly shown themselves amenable to keeping education affordable. Putting all power in their hands is a sure-fire play for better education.
Look at the public school teachers of Pennsylvania! They're absolute saints, taking in a pathetic $62,000 dollars average per annum, after being short-changed with only a 23% raise in income in the last 10 years. Granted, that was with a Republican governor, so they may have gotten a fair 38% with a Democratic governor, but I think the point stands. They never use their union clout in a way that hurts our students.
And just look at what they did with public middle and high schools! The taxpayers of Washington, DC, for example, are paying a measly $29,000 per pupil, and we all know the high quality of the DC public schools! This is clearly a place where government regulation is needed.
No, don't get upset my friends.
Obama is just looking out for the little guys on this one. This has, I assure you, nothing to do with Obama trying to claim back support from the teachers unions after they started attacking him, quite rightly I must add, for instantiating our evil (Republican) decade-long request that poor schools be given the tools to fire incompetent teachers.
Don't fret, big government loves you.
Good luck, and good night, hodwik
Pres. Obama is not going far enough. The U.S., like some other developed countries, should provide free college tuition.
Student loans are dragging down the economy because these people do not have the money to spend. Too much is sucked up paying off the student loans. I would also like to see all student loan debt forgiven.
Yes, I know it is not free. I would finance it through progressive income taxes. I think all government should be financed though progressive income taxes and would like to see regressive taxes such as sales taxes eliminated.
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
True, more available education is one of the best things for the country. But public funding for education reduces available education and causes prices to rise as a simple glance at actual educational reality shows you.
I mean, most of our secondary school system and much of our tertiary educational system is publicly financed, we have some of the highest per-student K-12 spending in the world (second only to Switzerland), and it's been growing faster than inflation. Is our public education system delivering world-leading results? Have educational outcomes been rapidly improving nationwide? No, obviously not. Therefore, the idea that we can improve education by throwing even more public funding at it is clearly completely at odds with reality.
Absolutely. Which is precisely why we should abolish the broken public educational system and why we should certainly not railroad students for another two years in useless and ineffective institutions.
> a 2-year degree from a community college does not knock off anywhere near 2 years from a 4-year bachelor's degree.
You may be thinking of jacking around taking two years of random classes, as opposed to getting an associate's degree. Or getting a two-year degree in liberal arts and trying to apply it to a four-year degree in the hard sciences. Most community colleges have matriculation agreements with nearby universities. These agreements GUARANTEE that those two years transfer.
Of course you want to look at the agreement before you select your program - a two-year degree in Art will probably transfer to a four-year degree in Art. If you switch to Physics at the university, that's when only one year of general education classes might transfer. If you pay attention to what you're doing, though, you can have guaranteed that all of your credits transfer. You just have to select one of the two-year programs that applies to your four-year degree plans.
If you don't know what you want to do for your four-year, you can choose "general education" for your two-year, which means taking all the common requirements, a bit of math, a bit of science, a bit of history, etc. Those will apply to most any four-year degree. It means you can't take American History 101-401, though; because most 4-year degrees only include two history classes, not four.
The important part is use this as part of YOUR plan for YOUR education. Like you did.
Community Colleges are great for taking care of the 100 level pre-requisites prior to University.
Community Colleges are great at expanding your knowledge WITHOUT going for a degree.
Community Colleges are great for bringing up your Grade Point Average (GPA) if you had problems in High School but still want to pursue an advanced education.
Etc.
This program should NOT be the FINAL step in your 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 !
Perhaps our education-overlords are worried too many Americans will learn to speak German and head over to Deutschland so they can get a quality education without going into life crushing debt :|
Nachrichten für Nerds Deutsch
Government subsidies just jack up the price for everyone. It benefits the poor, harms the middle class, has minimal impact on the wealthy.
Education is an investment in the economy, not a 4-year paid vacation.
Of course, investment is not a guarantee of benefit or cost-effectiveness.
It could be argued that the debt is so high because they didnt do this first.
A lot of issues in the US are not the result of spending too much. Its that they spend at the wrong place. If you end up with millions over millions of uneducated people, you then need safety nets and programs to pick them up, as well as spending millions in law enforcement and all that garbage when crime rate goes up.
Its one of those things where if you don't put the money there, it costs you way more later.
Around here community collage is already nearly free. As long as you are a resident of the county and have at least a part time job the grants you get cover a lot of stuff.
Of course if republicans that get mommy and daddy to pay for expensive but useless private schools realized it is a way for poor adults that want to work into a better career, they would probably have the community colleges shut down.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
In fact, do you have a degree from ANY university in America? If so, then you were on the public dole. It is simply a matter of how much support you had. I 'put myself' through school back in 79-83. Of course, rent, tuition, fees, etc were well within the minimum wage amount. And after the first year of living in Colorado, I was given in-state tuition where 95% of the costs was paid by the state. IOW, that I 'put myself' through school was still subsidized.
So, get over yourself.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
>. 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.
I didn't say you "always" can. You're broken.
What's your problem, do you have giant loans and the earlier post gave you a brief glimmer of hope that you could get them discharged or something? If you took the money and spent it on a car and fun in college, it's so sad that you have to pay it back now.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
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.
That may be wrong, but not as far off as you think. Given a flat distribution of 0-70 year olds (to make the math easier), and 4 years of free college, with 1/2 the 12 graders going to college, it's closer to $2100 per person per year, which just under 1/4 of the in-state college tuition average of $9400/yr.
As for the mortgages, there are 13.6T in mortgages. Bailing out the banks was only a couple trillion (all told), but since 2000, we've spent approximately 8.3T on defense alone (not including DHS, CIA, NSA, etc), or 61% of the value of all the mortgages in the US. We could have still been #1 in global military spending for those years and, with the bank bailout funds, paid off close to 70% of all US mortgages.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
"I've made a lot of money on the free market," said the capitalist. "I have decided to donate funds for a local library."
"Sorry," said the socialist. "I need to confiscate all that money to redistribute to others. This redistribution will have the effect of subsidizing and promoting single parenthood and general sitting-on-behinds by non-productive members of society. But they will vote for me, so it's all cool."
The communist, meanwhile, shrieked, "When the revolution comes, you'll both be the first against the wall!"
As it turned out, the communist was close to correct. The communist revolution came, but in fact he was first against the wall, as that's how it often turns out. The capitalist and socialist were merely second and third against the wall, respectively.
I would argue that is is already free. If you are poor you get granted the full education minus books. Ask me how I know your parents were upper middle class.
Cheap storage VM.
If you want tuition costs to fall, you have to stop subsidizing education and start creating a competitive market.
Tuition prices have steadily increased with no jumps matching any of the changes matching changes in student loans and grants for both public and private schools. I find it quite funny that you mocked students attending non-state schools with higher than average job placement rates and pay rates and then argue against competitive private schools. Perhaps you would like students to attend schools like Corinthian?
there still is no tuition crisis
Crisis is definitely a weasel word. But call it what you will, inflation adjusted costs doubling is definitely problematic.
Why is that a relevant statistic?
How much more basic can you get than a statistic than students are carrying more debt than before? You could even just have the statistic be for four year schools and eliminate the med school or post docs. The point would remain the same, debts are increasing. Your first article even points to this indirectly by saying that they have increased by current low interest rates and longer payment schemes are keeping the monthly payment the same. We also know that payrates have stagnated and decreased.
Don't argue ad hominem, look at the facts.
That was my entire point. Only selective facts were given.
in the Brookings study: when you look at the statistics
My point is that they don't include all the statistics. Here is a page with only the numbers and no commentary. http://www.pewsocialtrends.org...