I'd rather it not be essential for a decent shot at a good life in the first place. Making it free is a temporary solution and won't fix anything in the long run.

I cautiously support this. I absolutely support taxpayer-subsidized community college, because that also supports people who aren't on the college track and rather focus on trades.

Well, I definitely don't think it should be as outrageously expensive as it is right now, but I'm not sure what the solution would be that doesn't have bad consequences.

I dunno about free.  Ideally, yes.  But I understand money has to work its way in there somewhere.  However, I shouldn't end up in debt until I'm 56 because I tried to set the foundations for a better life for myself.

There should be a federal exam that people who want the government funded tution

The better you do on the exam, the more funds you get

Let's say your family has to be below a certain income level, so people that can afford college don't take advantage of it.

I see no problem with it. You still need to go longer if you want a better like becoming a doctor. For something like becoming a cop or getting your CDL. Those schools cost thousands which is something unless you have money is going to be hard for people to get. Once you do get that job you would be paying back what you ended up costing.

I cautiously support this. I absolutely support taxpayer-subsidized community college, because that also supports people who aren't on the college track and rather focus on trades.

I could maybe get behind that, provided the funds are brought in from other departments and already existing revenue sources.

I would say no, and for several reasons.

One of the reasons college tuition is so unaffordable is government subsidies. Before the government guaranteed student loans, tuition was much lower. It was possible and common for people to hold down a part time job, live at home, and pay for college themselves. Colleges did not charge more than people could afford, because if they did they wouldn't have any students. A side benefit of this arrangement is that people would have not only a college education, but real life experience in a job. Now, many people go to high school for free, get a subsidized student loan and spend four more years as a student, and at 21 or 22 they graduate without ever having had a real, adult job. This makes them much less employable. Free higher education would only make this worse.

You might say the solution is for the government to set prices but this doesn't work. If prices are set by the government, this discourages innovation. European higher education is "free" for students (not taxpayers) but they still come to America because American universisites are widely acknowledged as the best in the world. What incentive is there for a university to hire the best professors, engage in quality research, and attract the best students if all universities get the same amount of money from the government?

The real solution is to end the government subsidies of student loans, which will allow tuition to return to affordable levels. Also, K-12 education needs to be fixed because in other countries they're doing stuff in 6th grade that high school seniors study here. Freshman year for many students is spent on remedial work. A high school diploma is essentially useless, and it's not due to money - it's due to lack of discipline and dumbed down standards.

No. Nothing is "free".

I'd rather it not be essential for a decent shot at a good life in the first place.

I'm for making it free without making it essential. Because it should be free--period, but why should that make it essential? That may seem oxymoronic or futile, but I don't care. I also want the human race to go extinct.

People should get paid to go to college. That wouldn't make it "essential", either. It's just giving people the incentive to not only get a higher education, but to do well.

- University students, right down to undergrads, are not cost-constrained. The use of tuition loans insulates them from their eventual debt burden; the actual problem is that the students can't declare themselves bankrupt if they're unable to pay it back.

I would only consider that part of the problem. I don't know--you say they're not "cost-constrained" in one breath, and then point out that they can't declare bankruptcy in the next. I mean, that sounds to me like some kind of constraint, so to say they're not cost-constrained at all just because of loans seems disingenuous. Student debt is a fucking killer.

Also, I'm ignorant. If you could walk me through in a few words what'll happen to you when you DO file for bankruptcy?

I'm sure it doesn't involve what I'd like to happen--which is eliminating all the debt in one fell swoop.

Which is something that free education would absolve (by not putting students in debt in the first place, because that's fucking insane and evil).

encouraging more people to go to college by making it 'free' would spur credential inflation.

I really don't think it would. Why should it? I don't personally take advantage of everything that's "free" in the world. Do you? All it does is make it accessible, which it very well goddamn ought to be. If more people come to college because of its accessibility... who cares?

I guess the issue would be that future employers might pick up on that and say, "Well, now that any old chucklehead can go to college, let's just make college a requirement"--that would be cunty of them, but I don't think we're incapable of combating that type of behavior. Are we?

The positive externalities of higher education is quite free, so forcing other people to pay for somebody's education just seems rather wrong.

well, how

and please name a few of these positive externalities that i should be concerned about

Quote from: 🍄Tryptameme🍄 on August 11, 2015, 09:52:24 PM

unfortunately something like this is never going to happen in the near future, because when the majority of americans hear the words "more taxes" they flip out and veto that policy to hell.

I would be PROUD knowing that my tax dollars are helping build the next generation of doctors, engineers, and scientists. Yes, even the humble writers and artists. Fuck anyone who wouldn't be. Like, FUCK them. Fuck them with every object within reach.

This brings up an interesting caveat; would you (or anyone else reading this) support free tuition for "essential" degrees like technical and medical fields, while disregarding others like arts?

Education is never free.

The lack of cost-constraints just means that the price of tuition doesn't deter people from going through higher education. Credit is highly available in both the US and the UK higher education systems.

Okay. But as Mordo said earlier, the only reason people are going to college is because they've been essentially fed this idea that they've failed at life if they don't. Which is a problem, but that's your reason. It's not because people don't feel constrained--they are. They just accept it as a "necessary" evil (when it's actually an unnecessary evil). So that's a problem with our zeitgeist. Destroy the notion that college is necessary.

The point is that you can't file for bankruptcy.

Right, and I agree with you that that's a problem. What I'm asking, though, is how much of a solution would it really be if you could? From what I know, filing for bankruptcy sounds like a big hassle that no one should have to go through. And they would.

It is accessible.

Accessible wasn't the right word--affordable would've worked better, even though I know you don't think it's unaffordable, either. Though, obviously, my point is that it ought to be more accessible. More affordable.

Is it affordable now? Yeah.
Yeah, anyone can save up enough cash to eventually pay off all their debt in a timely fashion. Sure. Totally.

...If they also want to starve to death and rot on the streets sad, tired, and alone. But that's not on very many people's agenda.

Quote

If more people come to college because of its accessibility... who cares?

Everybody should if it makes their degrees fucking worthless.

Well, it wouldn't, first of all. You still have to get the degree, you realize, and that takes some hard motherfucking work. Free college =/= free degree. For every brain surgeon in the world, there are probably a thousand people who couldn't quite make the cut. If you're worried that standards would somehow be lowered to accommodate the sheer number of new students, then I'm all for maintaining the high standards colleges have, or at least, should have.

Second, how can you possibly apply such economic principles to college degrees anyway? Worthless? Having more people taking the same degree makes the degree worthless to you? Not even "worth less", but worthless. Do you really mean that? You're gonna pass up having a thousand doctors, because only having a hundred doctors is "worth more"? What do you mean by "worthless"? Is having ten doctors better than having two thousand doctors? Is it really?

I don't think getting a degree should be a matter of illusory, make-believe economic concepts like "worth". That sounds like a really bad joke to me, unless I'm just completely missing your point. I hope I am.

Because I don't think there's such a thing as "too many doctors". "Too many engineers." Whatever.
There could never be enough of either of those two things.

I meant to say the positive externalities are minimal; like, pollution is a negative externality because it incurs costs on third-parties not involved in the transaction. In the same vein, college education doesn't incur any substantial benefits on third-parties not involved in the transaction, so funding HE through taxation is rather pointless and I'd say immoral. You're taking money from other people to fund something they will see minimal benefit from.

i mean, fair enough, but like i said earlier--i'd be proud to help students out

and i think anyone with a good bone in their body would and should be, too