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If anything, giving the skyrocketing national debt, people are less in the mood to give away freebies than they were ten years ago. What's more, with a huge network of grants, scholarships, and student loans, just about any student with a decent GPA and standardized test scores can get an entirely affordable post-secondary education at a public university or junior college.
Free post-secondary is just rife with unintended consequences. Suddenly, you have 28- and 30-year olds simply staying on the college treadmill forever. There's really no incentive for students to push themselves out into the workforce, and there's really no incentive for parents to keep their kids on the straight and narrow.
Last year congress passed a bill that requires students get there Bach. degree within 6 years - after that point they are terminated from the Pell Grant/Government subsidized loans.
I have a son in college who is a straight A student, and he will still need to take out loans this year to pay for his tuition.
It's still not cheap. Rutgers for in-state students with room and board is $24K a year. My daughter is going to a SUNY as an out-of-state student--where it's $28K a year.
No one should be paying sticker price. Going to a public as out of state student makes little sense unless they threw a lot of aid at you.
No one should be paying sticker price. Going to a public as out of state student makes little sense unless they threw a lot of aid at you.
Everyone's sitation is different. You do not know all the details of this person's situation. My daughter got no fin aid from the U of Colorado. Granted, I would not send my kid to CU from out of state, unless they had some program that the student couldn't find anywhere else. Offhand, I don't know what that would be.
Regardless of whether or not you personally agree, I am thinking about the Montreal protests that are in the news here in Canada. The students are protesting over tuition fee increases, and getting pretty serious -- engaged in actions like trashing the education minister's office, and walking out of classes etc.
I don't know how the media coverage portrays it in the US, or if it is on the news much etc., but there are a lot of people with the viewpoint that these are spoiled brats raising a racket and causing trouble, but also (just based on perception) small but fair-sized number that do seem to agree with the students' protests and feel solidarity with their ideals. Most of the rest of Canada outside Quebec also does not seem that pleased/supportive, based on media sentiment. However, there is a small minority that still thinks college should be more affordable, even if not free.
In the world forum, I started a post about attitudes about having free post-secondary education in many countries (obviously in most developed countries, elementary school and high school are free or even required) and how many people believe it should extend to college. It was mentioned that there was free state university education in California, until the Reagan years.
Now, regardless of what you personally believe, do you see in the United States any movement like this? Is it completely a non-issue in the United States for the most part, or do you feel in your state/area etc. there are some people who believe that this is an important/political issue?
California is the only State in which I know of any student who would do such a thing. I remember when the cost of attending a community college rose from $7 to $11 a credit and students practically rioted, citing that the costs were becoming unaffordable.
But, no, there is no movement in the U.S. to garner free education although a good amount of universities are putting course content online for free public consumption. I see this as something that will eventually develop into a legitimate free "online university" sometime in the future that would more-than-likely support itself through targeted advertising.
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Originally Posted by CowanStern
As you have posted this same thread in two different forums, I will give the same response in both of them:
The California state university system was free until the Reagan governorship. One of the top lines in Reagan's personal agenda was to abolish free higher education in California, and a $600 fee was imposed starting in 1971.
In Louisiana, as part of Huey Long's promise, university students in the 1950s paid only a $35 per semester fee to enroll at state colleges and universities.
I was born and raised in California and I never heard of the CSUs being free. I know the community colleges were free until around Reagan's time, though. However, technically, California residents do not pay tuition, only fees.
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Originally Posted by YouJustHatetheTruth
Which will happen. You can't have an entire generation of college graduates working at, say, Starbucks while trying to pay off 100k in debts. That's the ingredients for a revolution, not a government movement. You're talking about the termination of the American dream.
Sigh, the old university graduate who works at Starbucks meme that will probably never go away. It is simply not true for the most part, yet everyone continues to speak of it as if it is fact. By the way, depending on the market, position, and shift, one could make good money working at Starbucks. My ex GFs ex husband was an assistant manager. He had a $60K/year salary with full benefits, all with only a high school diploma.
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Originally Posted by NCN
The first step to lower college costs should be to lower the salaries of the teaching staff. Last time I checked on it, college teachers were some of the highest paid people in America.
You need to recheck. Some college professors make some seriously obscene salaries, but they are a tiny minority. The professors I know make average salaries ($40K - $50K give or take), and I know a few that do so only because they teaching at two or three separate colleges (which, also, excludes them from benefits since they do not teach full-time at anyone particular college).
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Originally Posted by sheena12
No it's not a non-issue, but there are people who are actually against such a thing.
The pull-your-self-up-by-your-own-boots straps/ college of hard knocks crowd.
A strange subset of Americans who see huge value in making things difficult for their children, and is against the government helping out at all.
I am not a member of this subset.
I can understand the ego boost and pride that comes from doing something yourself as I felt proud of myself when I managed to navigate through some difficult times without asking for help, but I do not understand this mindset placed on a larger, societal, scale.
Call me what you will, but I see no problem with redistributing our tax-payer money amongst the population in ways that are beneficial to all (er, well, the majority).
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Originally Posted by sheena12
The Reagan years are a time from which we may never recover in my life time.
Most people are not aware that when Reagan cut Federal funding to colleges/universities, and thus resulting in the raising tuitions to cover the difference, his administration created the Federal student loan program that we know of today. Incidentally, this also opened the door to many "average" and/or poor people who otherwise could not afford a college degree, spawning the notion that anyone could go to college.
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Originally Posted by Crazee Cat Lady
Last year congress passed a bill that requires students get there Bach. degree within 6 years - after that point they are terminated from the Pell Grant/Government subsidized loans.
The Pell Grant has the 6-year limit placed on it, not the loans, and the six years are cumulative, not successive.
Everyone's sitation is different. You do not know all the details of this person's situation. My daughter got no fin aid from the U of Colorado. Granted, I would not send my kid to CU from out of state, unless they had some program that the student couldn't find anywhere else. Offhand, I don't know what that would be.
My daughter did apply also to Rutgers, which is our state university. But she'd gotten a D in a math class at her original (non-public) college, and that was enough to put her a decimal point below Rutgers minimum for transfer students. Her other grades were mostly As. She accompanied her application with a written explanation, but Rutgers was packed with all the kids going to state schools because of the economy and she got a letter back within on week saying she couldn't transfer. She was accepted at NY and MA as a transfer student. NY was less expensive, so that's where she went.
Not every school offers Mandarin and Russian, and that's what she needed. And within a few hours of the NY/NJ metro area. She didn't want to go too far from home. And then she went to China for a semester, lol. But that was paid for by the PRC. They want Americans to come to their country and learn their language.
The point is, having good grades, good test scores and a lot of extra-curriculars does not guarantee you a full ride.
When the student is at a certain academic level, it works in a very similar way that athletes get full scholarships. The schools pick you and court the students. It becomes a kind of elite pack with many of the students knowing each other from various national and international academic competitions. As a parent, I felt like I was a talent manager working together with the HS guidance counselor who was like a talent agent to get the best "deal." I think you mentioned you were from CO? We met one lovely girl who attended Denver School for the Visual Arts. Met her and her family and kept in touch with them through attending various academic events . She was originally set on Yale, but decided on Duke because they offered her a free ride. Kids like her set the bar pretty high for getting free rides.
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