Posted on 04/23/2016 4:51:24 PM PDT by MtnClimber
There’s no such thing as a free lunch, as the old saying goes, but is there a such thing as free college? There is if you believe the claims of the populist Democratic Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. However, even fellow Democrats seem skeptical, with several former Democratic chairs of the Council of Economic Advisers arguing his plan is harebrained. Sanders rebuts such claims by pointing to nations like Norway and Germany, where his ideological predilection toward democratic socialism holds greater sway, which are able to offer college tuition-free. If we could make college free here, as well, then why not?
As Economics 101 tells us, when demand for a good goes up, so do prices until they reach equilibrium. Yet despite the extremely high tuition prices at American universities, demand has yet to subside. Both local and international students have shown themselves willing to pay exorbitant fees for the chance to study at our universities. However, the tuition sticker price is highly deceptive.
For instance, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the state school, University of Massachusetts Amherst, is a more affordable alternative to its elite, private liberal arts cousin, Amherst College. And it is if you’re rich. However, the net average costs differ by less than $400 per year. According to the Dept. of Ed’s College Scoreboard, if your family is earning six figures, Amherst College will cost you nearly twice as much as UMass ($40,162 vs. $23,821). However, if your family is earning less than $30,000 per year, you will pay $1,936 at Amherst vs. $12,116 at UMass. Nearly 50% of your household income goes to UMass if you’re poor, while only 6% would go to Amherst. In this sense, tuition is actually a form of wealth redistribution, taking money from the rich and giving to the poor.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearscience.com ...
Feel the bern, suckers.
Just what America needs. A bunch of very low intelligence, low information “snowflakes” walking around waving diplomas, taking “selfies” and “hookin’ up”. Great.
Liberal indoctrination paid for by those who disagree.
Points for correct use of “harebrained.”
Get rid of prima-donna professors. Get rid of campuses (campii?). Get rid of textbooks with inflated prices. Put all the information online. Go back to $50.00 per hour tuition. Your parents’ basement can be your “safe space.” Graduation ceremony in your back yard. Graduate in a year or two. You certainly won’t learn any less than is being learned now.
Hopefully the interwebs will get this straightened out in a few years.
Why take basic College Physics from anybody besides Feynman?
Free educations can be the most expensive of all because all the money saved getting a free education can be dwarfed by all the time and money spent getting a real education thereafter.
Yea, and Bernie thinks food rationing and food lines are more efficient than our grocery stores.
What these pinheads don’t realize is, by the time they get around to giving them “Free College” it will be too late for most of them to get it.
I guess they think the Bernie has a magic wand. No surprise, they are all delusional.
This is the next generation of voters !
If you think it's bad now , ..just wait a couple of years !
COMMON CORE and indoctrination encourages this level of participation and understanding
I am not sure that college is valuable. It can be very expensive. But the value difference between a virtually free online or community college and one you spend $60,000 a year for seems to be dubious. Now with Khan Academy and other online free programs, some even from top colleges, its clear that the cost and availability of education is not the difference between a good job and a hamburger flipper.
The reality is that the college does little to change a young person into something better. Several surveys show that college graduates make more than those who don’t graduate. But that does not explain Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerburg. All coming from middle class homes and becoming filthy rich without a diploma. The reality is that they all got into selective colleges. And its the selection of colleges which picks the creme from every class that dictates success. These kids were going to be successful. The college did not make them better. They simply identified the good ones.
Also, colleges depend on two other things to sway the surveys. They take in 18 year olds, and they graduate 22 years. For the most part those 4 years of sitting around drinking, matures students. So they do come out more mature. And the fact that they hang with mostly intelligent friends, allows them to figure out their next steps of cleaning up their resume, dressing up and showing up on time to their first interview. They speak well and know what to say.
And thats pretty much it. If you take the bottom half of a class or even random kids and send them to Harvard as a class, instead of those highly selective kids, you will find that they don’t do much better than the norm. Additionally, if you take those Harvard kids and send them to community college as a class, they will get out of college and excel. Harvard, itself, is doing little more than selecting the good ones.
It’s WELFARE. Nothing more. Nothing less.
If students are in fields where they cannot earn enough of a living to pay for their college, they don’t need to be in college.
I paid for my college by working as a door-to-door salesman. These students don’t deserve anything more than me.
I would not mind States having free or nearly free college tuition at State schools __ IF __ there were rigorous entrance requirements to get into the college and __ and IF __ the student were required to keep up high academic standards every semester to continue getting free tuition. The student should still have to kick in some for books, living expenses, etc.
However, this would never happen as it would not be ‘fair’ for students who less academically inclined.
You mean, like now.
I'm paying for college now, and in a year, I'll be paying for two kids, and due to close age spacing, I'll be paying for two until 2024, when I drop back to one.
I'm glad I can afford it, but, truth be told, the pricing is absurd, the differences between private schools in the same brackets (Bates-Bowdoin-Colby, Williams-Wesleyan-Amherst, Bucknell-Lehigh-Lafayette, Kenyon-Oberlin-Denison, etc) HAS to result from price-fixing.
If it were free, everybody would be paying much higher taxes, but the travesty of non-STEM "education" really wouldn't change all that much, IMO. The horrible results predicted by the anti-Bernie people are already here, in spades.
No, they don't, but you didn't earn $60 000/year as a door-to-door salesman.
What blows my mind is that there’s not been one mention of setting up a federal university. The university of the US. IF SUCH A THING EXISTED IT WOULD MAKE SENSE THAT THE FEDERAL GOV MAKE IT FREE.
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