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Free college for kids that come from nice middle-class families?
The last thing we need is a government bureaucrat deciding which kids merit a good life and which kids do not.
I did not grow up in a middle class family, but I was a top student in my school, worked my way through college, and then worked by butt off to succeed. Growing up I never knew anyone in my family or neighborhood that had gone to college or that worked a white collar job. Few had graduated high school. Some hadn't graduated Middle School.
Nowhere did I apply an economic measure for free college. I applied an academic measure. Are you saying poor kids aren't as smart as middle class kids? If so, I beg to differ. I'm not one for class snobbery.
"And it could help shrink our prison population. While racial disparities in arrests and convictions are alarming, education level is a far stronger predictor of future incarceration than race."
So very true. Oklahoma pays to have easily one of the highest incarceration rates in the world. And it easily shows in having about the lowest teacher pay, plus cutting funding for education most every year since 2009.
So very true. Oklahoma pays to have easily one of the highest incarceration rates in the world. And it easily shows in having about the lowest teacher pay, plus cutting funding for education most every year since 2009.
Parenting, parenting, parenting. Until we commit to keeping babies out of terrible homes keep on building the prisons.
"And it could help shrink our prison population. While racial disparities in arrests and convictions are alarming, education level is a far stronger predictor of future incarceration than race."
If you take as a given that the correlation between education and criminality also implies causation, which is a reach.
What I'm saying is prisons aren't going anywhere and prisoners will need to be housed and fed at a cost. So I would propose that ways be found to reduce the cost to society like educating them and helping them get jobs as opposed to doing nothing and letting them rot in a cell.
What I'm saying is prisons aren't going anywhere and prisoners will need to be housed and fed at a cost. So I would propose that ways be found to reduce the cost to society like educating them and helping them get jobs as opposed to doing nothing and letting them rot in a cell.
Your first statement is a tautology so sure. Your second statement is a hypothesis, not a fact. Neither of us can say whether or not the cost of education or job training in the prison context would be higher or lower than the impact of success multiplied by the rate of success. Find a good economist without a political axe to grind for or against either finding, let them run an experiment, and crank the numbers and you'll get an answer (at least for that narrow program of education or training on the type of prisoner it is offered to within that local economy).
Without data I don't know for certain, but I'd bet good money both that you could absolutely design a program that works if you limit recipients, teach useful things, and do it on a shoestring. I'd also bet good money that a program teaching poetry and climate science like the person linked in the OP wants to do would be an expensive failure. Devil is in the details, and you don't know (but can make an educated guess for the best and worst ideas) if the details work until you've tested in the field.
This is the actual title of a recent NYT op-ed written by a Harvard professor. I kid you not.
And almost all of the most liked comments from NYT readers agree that this a great idea. That's how far liberal America is from having a realistic view crime and education.
It sounds like he's advocating that the USA follow the EU system.
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