Should college be free

Author: Alec

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#1
Alec
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The battle of ideas.  I may play Devil's advocate for either side, but I'm currently against it for everyone, unless you get it from a scholarship, then you earned it, so it's fine.  I don't want people graduating from college with debt though, so my plan to get consenting people educated is to:

1) Show them where good paying jobs are that only require a HS degree.

2) Let them save and invest enough money from that job to earn their college, so they take it more seriously.

3) They earn their degrees, debt free, and they get better jobs on their own.

#2
Dr.Franklin
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no.

Governments need colleges to be paid so people can be in debt, it's a lot useful to the rich elites than skilled trade school graduates
#3
bmdrocks21
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@Alec
You need to pay for my gender studies degree, you fascist!
#4
HistoryBuff
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in my opinion it should be no different than a primary school education. The modern work place needs people with advanced degrees, both college and university. There are less and less jobs available for people who don't have a secondary degree. 

Since we know that our workforce needs this level of training, we should make sure that everyone has the opportunity to get this training. I mean, you should still have to get the grades to qualify to get in, but having money should not be requirement to get an education. 
#5
Athias
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@Alec
That depends on the service provider. If a college wants to offer free education, then yes, admission and tenure in that college should be free. Now if you're asking, should the government interfere and either force colleges to provide free education, or subsidize the entire cost of a college education, then no--not ever.

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#6
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@HistoryBuff
You said that good grades should be a requirement for free college.  2 questions:

1) How good do the grades have to be?

2) Would you also require people to have an approved degree (so they can't pick something useless, like identity studies) so the degree isn't a waste of money?
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#7
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@bmdrocks21
You need to pay for my gender studies degree, you fascist!

Would you be willing to pay for a degree that is useful to society?  If someone wanted to be an actuary, an engineer, or something STEM, would you be willing to pay for that degree?  I would agree with you that gender studies are trash, but a STEM degree would be useful to society.
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#8
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Here's how much I predict it would cost with my work shown:

327,200,000 current US citizens.

*4/76 (4 years of college/76 years of life)

*30,000 (cost of college for 1 year)
_________________________________

$516 billion per year.
/327200000 taxpayers
___________________

$1579 per taxpayer.



#9
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@Alec
I am less likely to throw a fit about a government project if I will personally see tangible benefits from this. If these people eventually reduced my debt burden by having better jobs, then I'd be okay with that. However, the government will just continue to grow and I will end up paying the same or more anyways, so I don't really see myself supporting universal free college.

I will say that generally, I would be okay with offering grants to STEM and business students who show promise to finish their degrees once they get to college.

However, I wouldn't be willing to pay for musicians or drama degrees because they add nothing tangible to the economy and certainly isn't an investment on the part of the taxpayer. 

#10
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@HistoryBuff
Let us see where there could potentially be some agreement. You say that the modern work place needs people with advanced degrees. In some fields, there are shortages of individuals with said degrees. However, in other fields, like drama, music, gender studies, sociology, etc, there may not be a lot of job openings and there is little demand for these jobs.

Do you support the taxpayer paying for people's degrees who are very unlikely to find employment related to their degree and if so, why? Should we or should we not steer people towards degrees that will be more beneficial by in some form subsidizing them, while requiring people to pay for their essentially worthless degrees?

#11
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@Alec
the government should use price controls to keep college affordable. every other developed country uses price controls as the main way to spend half as much as we do with healthcare, with better quality care.... so i dont know why we can use price controls with college. there's no point writing open checks and throwing money at that problem. 

do you support stopping all college loans from the government? cause the debt problem we have is strangling the economy. you could stop those loans, or keep throwing money at the situation, but either way, it's still a strangle on the economy to keep things as they are . 
#12
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@bmdrocks21
Do you support the taxpayer paying for people's degrees who are very unlikely to find employment related to their degree and if so, why?
i'm not 100% sure. I can certainly see the argument to why those are worthless degrees. But how would you control for that? Would you have a government agency that decides which degrees are valid and which are not?


#13
TheDredPriateRoberts
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@Alec
first please be more accurate with your wording, it's impossible for it to ever be free, it will be tax payer funded, someone MUST pay for it.

do you believe that for the average person, most things of value are earned or given?

how about people who aren't really committed to go to college, but since it won't cost them anything, they could

how about YOU pay for college and based on your grades and job prospects you are reimbursed.
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@HistoryBuff
There could be specific guidelines based on job placement and ratios of median income to tuition cost for the government. Job mobility and max income in that field would also be considered. I don’t have access to all of that data, but perhaps you should be projected to pay tuition back in income taxes within 10-15 years based on the norm in that industry.
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@bmdrocks21
There could be specific guidelines based on job placement and ratios of median income to tuition cost for the government. Job mobility and max income in that field would also be considered. I don’t have access to all of that data, but perhaps you should be projected to pay tuition back in income taxes within 10-15 years based on the norm in that industry.
i agree that some sort of system might be necessary to determine what sort of post secondary education is frivolous. But my concerns about letting the government decide what is/isn't frivolous are:

1) it is open to abuse. For example they could agree that specific right/left leaning political studies are good, but the opposing views are frivolous. Or they could decide that studies in an industry they have ties to are important, but that other industries are frivolous. This would hurt the economy and the students. 

2) it would be slow to react. If you prove that lots of jobs in that industry exist, then you needed to start training people like 4 or 5 years earlier. In a world where technology changes radically every few years, letting a government agency decide what people can or can't take would likely make the system very slow to adapt. 
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@HistoryBuff
how do you feel about only letting the majors be allowed for grants that produce a certain amount of income upon graduation? that means the majors are marketable, good for the economy. 
#17
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@n8nrgmi
how do you feel about only letting the majors be allowed for grants that produce a certain amount of income upon graduation? that means the majors are marketable, good for the economy. 
How would you make those determinations though? For example, a psychology major doesn't have great job prospects. They will need a masters or a PHD to really use it. Do we cover a psych degree?

How about a new kind of degree for a kind of job that is emerging? For example a new type of tech job. We would have little to no stats about the job prospects for that degree because the job is just emerging. 
#18
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@HistoryBuff
i think u r being too picky and critical of the idea. the vast majority of majors the income test would work for. even with new tech, generic degrees like engineering might be adequate, and if it's not, it's a sliver of a faction of the whole world out there that the income test would work for. as for psychology and such, i say let em not be funded, cause the vast majority of folks who get those degrees shouldn't be getting them. leave it to people with money, or folks capable enough to get scholarships. smart people are the only ones who should dare those degrees anyway. it gives rich people a leg up, but who cares? overall, you have to do a cost benefit analysis on this, and the benefits clearly outweigh the cost. . 
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@HistoryBuff
I don't want to project, but I feel like liberals would be likely to fight for those specific majors I mentioned because conservatives are near non-existent in those majors, while they are very present in business and economics majors.

I'm not sure that the concern of politicization would be too bad if you go by purely objective measures of income or job placement rates. I am sure that the parties may fight over where to draw the line based on the student-types that support their party. But I wouldn't support the party in power cherry-picking majors. The market decides what is important at the time based on wages and job creation pretty well, so the aforementioned measures would work pretty well in my opinion,

2) it would be slow to react. If you prove that lots of jobs in that industry exist, then you needed to start training people like 4 or 5 years earlier. In a world where technology changes radically every few years, letting a government agency decide what people can or can't take would likely make the system very slow to adapt. 

I'm not sure how much better it is to let people choose any random major. It would probably just be better to steer them towards what we know to be useful with incentives. Technology does change pretty frequently, but the majors required to complete these tasks don't seem to change too much (I am in a business school, so not entirely certain). The same basic programming knowledge is needed as far as I can tell, there just might be some slight tweaks for specialization.


#20
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i say give grants to STEM degrees, and non-dischargeable loans or no loans at all to people stupid enough to get arts degrees and such. of course we should use price controls to keep costs down, as i argued in the previous post. 
#21
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@n8nrgmi
folks capable enough to get scholarships. smart people are the only ones who should dare those degrees anyway. it gives rich people a leg up, but who cares?
this is one of my problems though, both with how the system works now and how you are proposing. You would be giving the wealthy education advantages over everyone else. 

overall, you have to do a cost benefit analysis on this, and the benefits clearly outweigh the cost. . 
the benefits of paying for college and university would significantly out weigh the costs. 
#22
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@bmdrocks21
I don't want to project, but I feel like liberals would be likely to fight for those specific majors I mentioned because conservatives are near non-existent in those majors, while they are very present in business and economics majors.
I'm not sure that is accurate. 

I'm not sure that the concern of politicization would be too bad if you go by purely objective measures of income or job placement rates. I am sure that the parties may fight over where to draw the line based on the student-types that support their party. But I wouldn't support the party in power cherry-picking majors. The market decides what is important at the time based on wages and job creation pretty well, so the aforementioned measures would work pretty well in my opinion,
I still think they would be very easy to mess with. The government could just choose how they want to interpret the information or just add exemptions because they feel like it. It seems like a system that would not function well. 

I'm not sure how much better it is to let people choose any random major. It would probably just be better to steer them towards what we know to be useful with incentives. Technology does change pretty frequently, but the majors required to complete these tasks don't seem to change too much (I am in a business school, so not entirely certain). The same basic programming knowledge is needed as far as I can tell, there just might be some slight tweaks for specialization.
oh god no. I took programming in high school about 15 years ago. Literally everything i learned is entirely obsolete. In alot of tech jobs, if you have been out of school for more than 5 years, than a decent chunk of your knowledge is obsolete. If the schools can only train people for things that already have a proven job market, then it will always be years behind the trends and struggling to catch up. 
#23
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The standard should be that you borrow money from the government for college interest free. The payback will be from taxes. In other words if you make more then minimum wage then your tax money goes to pay off the loan. no other taxes until the loan is paid off.

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#24
Alec
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@TheDredPriateRoberts
how about people who aren't really committed to go to college, but since it won't cost them anything, they could

Only people who have goo enough grades get the college free.  Slackers won't get it, but if the following applies to someone:

-They are getting a STEM degree.
-They have good grades in that STEM degree

Should they be allowed free college?  They would have to be committed if they are getting good grades.
#25
TheDredPriateRoberts
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@Alec
just because you CAN do something doesn't necessarily mean you should

what about trade schools?

again if you have to pay for something and if you work hard at it and are successful you could get all more most of that money back, that would be the best incentive for success.  entitlements and handouts rarely lead to success which i believe is obvious when you look at the ones that already exist.

#26
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No, because going to college carries opportunity costs (namely, delayed entry into the workforce "for real"). If the "return" at the end of that investment is not going to be worth paying this cost, then you shouldn't go in the first place. I've heard that in many European countries most people don't go to college, because it's not such a streamlined experience as it is here. Perfectly average people with no clear end goal in sight wouldn't get much out of it anyways so they go without it, and in those societies there's absolutely no shame in the fact of having never gone.

What we should be asking is "Why will companies discriminate against you in hiring if you lack a degree?". Also, "Why won't companies hire you for a decent-paying position if you lack prior experience when they can just train you to do whatever it is they need done?".
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#27
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@TheDredPriateRoberts
just because you CAN do something doesn't necessarily mean you should

I don't think people would pursue college unless they want it and are willing to study hard to get their degree.  If they fail college, they don't get it for free.

what about trade schools?
Trade schools are good, but I don't know where a non-highschooler can get a trade under their belt.  

if you have to pay for something and if you work hard at it and are successful you could get all more most of that money back, that would be the best incentive for success.
This is true, but some people are understandably afraid of taking out tens of thousands of dollars of student debt.  If it turns out to not be right for you, you ended up paying tens of thousands of dollars.  If they didn't have to focus on debt and could focus solely on their studies, then the passing rate would increase.
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#28
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@HistoryBuff
There are less and less jobs available for people who don't have a secondary degree. 
There are 13 million jobs avaliable according to the University of Georgetown that pay $55k or more per year that only require a HS degree.  There are 1.6 million adults working minimum wage jobs.  Hook them u with a better paying job, and they are out of poverty.

#29
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@Alec
I don't think people would pursue college unless they want it and are willing to study hard to get their degree.  If they fail college, they don't get it for free.
hmm if it's free that means free room and board, no need to work, party etc, people go to college for those reasons now and even graduate.  If they fail you think they will pay it back?  How long would that take?  How about the expense to collect that money if they don't willingly pay it back?  Sue them in court for it?  Do you see how costly that would become?

Trade schools are good, but I don't know where a non-highschooler can get a trade under their belt.
if that's the case, perhaps that is your answer, there should be some created.  Trade schools for high school aged children already exist, the structures etc are already there.  However they are generally not used at night and on weekends.  Maybe better use what already exists?

understandably afraid of taking out tens of thousands of dollars of student debt.
if they aren't that committed then they shouldn't be going.
If they didn't have to focus on debt and could focus solely on their studies, then the passing rate would increase.
if they can't handle that, they aren't mature enough to even go in the first place, they should wait until they are ready.
#30
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@TheDredPriateRoberts
hmm if it's free that means free room and board, no need to work, party etc, people go to college for those reasons now and even graduate.  If they fail you think they will pay it back?  How long would that take?  How about the expense to collect that money if they don't willingly pay it back?  Sue them in court for it?  Do you see how costly that would become?

This is why only the government will underwrite school loans now.