My View: Why not a right to a college education?

Cnn ^

[outpostinmass2]

While in my office, preparing for the new semester, I had the opportunity to watch the president’s speech on college affordability delivered at the University of Michigan. I was interested in the speech in part because I am a political scientist, in part because I am a college professor, and in part because I am an alumnus of the University of Michigan. But most importantly I was interested in the speech because my oldest daughter will be leaving for college in just seven short months. And although being a Johns Hopkins college professor has its benefits (Hopkins gives a generous tuition benefit applicable to any college in the nation) I still worry about my daughter and her four younger brothers and sisters. In his speech President Obama focused on three components designed to ease the burden of middle-class families—reducing interest on college student loans, maintaining the tuition tax credit, and creating incentives to make universities lower their costs. Now I understand for some politics is the art of the possible. He proposes these things knowing that as hard as it will be to pass them legislatively, these things are at least possible to get past both houses of Congress. (It isn’t likely, particularly during an election year, but it’s possible.) But for me, politics isn’t just about the art of the possible—about what we can pass in the here and now. Politics is about expanding and extending that art, about pushing the borders to create space for even more change in the future. How can we do that here? What if, instead of proposing policies geared towards individual middle-class tax-payers that revolved around the assumption that higher education was an individual’s responsibility, the president instead proposed policies geared towards embedding higher education as an individual right.

[vortigern]

College has become largely an industry which exists for the purpose of providing employment and benefits for those working for the college.

[MrB]

My take on this demand for making every “want” under the sun a “right”.

You have no “rights” that involve an involuntary cost on another person.

[blueunicorn6]

Strike Against Tuition! Strike Against Tuition! Strike Against Tuition! College students! Unite and boycott all universities this Fall! Demand that tuition be reduced by 75%! The jackbooted college professors have their heel on your throat! Throw off their tyranny! The students have the money! The professors have the BMWs! The old plantation massah college professors are sipping mint juleps and taking vacations to Mexico while the sharecropper students live in poverty! Cast off the shackles! Boycott the university next Fall!

Hell no!
You can’t go!
You can’t go to Mexico!
Down with the oppressive running-dog university professors!

[Tramonto]

Im confused, who doesn’t have a right to a college education? Are there people who are barred from attending college?

[Myrddin]

Education is a SERVICE. It requires buildings, books, competent teachers and utilities. The parties using a service should be the parties paying for the service. Foisting the burden onto others not using the service is unreasonable. In an ideal world, the service would be provided by a private business. The success of that business would be tied to the quality of their product.

A right is something that an individual may possess without burdening or infringing on another individual. An "entitlement" is a better label for something of tangible value due an individual. The Constitution doesn't contain a "Bill of Entitlements" nor is the list of enumerated "powers" tasked with redistributing wealth from one citizen to another.

[Old Teufel Hunden]

His bio:

"Lester K. Spence is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and Africana Studies at Johns Hopkins University."

That's all I needed to know. He has a bogus degree that is akin to a degree in Midevil pottery making. The only job you get from this degree is to be a college professor. No real world application. So he's immune to the real world.

" For instance, in 2009 the government spent almost $86 billion on home ownership subsidies in the form of the mortgage interest deduction, subsidizing the home purchases of almost 35 million citizens. In 2010 the government spent almost $104 billion."

Mindset of a socialist here. He calls a tax break, subsidizing people. Why? Because all money is the government's money and if the government lets you have more than someone else, you're getting subsidized. But I'm all with you prof. Let's have a flat income tax across the board and no tax breaks for anything. Better yet, lets do away with the income tax and just implement a consumption tax. But don't think for a second that college education is a "right"...

[RedElement]

What this lib is really saying, is that he doesn’t want to save money to pay for his 5 kids’ college education. Or ask them to get a real, paying job, and pay their own way. He wants to tax away the money I saved for my 5 kids’ college education to pay for his kids.

I want the right liberty and freedom to keep these moochers out of my pocket book.

[Longbow1969]

I believe I have a right to a tax payer funded PhD in something useless, and I’d like to spend a lifetime pursuing this degree all funded by my fellow citizens (including housing, food, transportation, etc).

[Mr. Lucky]

A front porche or a back porche?

[MarkeyD]

Second post, right out of the box!

I’m more of that new NSX kind of guy though.

[Old Teufel Hunden]

"Are there people who are barred from attending college?"

Yes, the stupid. Which is why I can't figure out how this professor got his degree.

[SZonian]

Just because you’re educated doesn’t mean you’re smart professor.

[Buckeye McFrog]

Ruth Bader Ginsberg tipped their hand on Egyptian TV.
They want to scrap our Constitution and replace it with one that “guarantees” the right to a job, a house, health care, college education, and Lord only knows what else.

[Hoffer Rand]

Parents who don’t care will produce the bottom tier manual labor force.

More like, parents who don't care will produce the next generation of those who sit on their @sses and live off taxpayer money. That's certainly what's happening now. Although, I agree with your sentiment that we need to have a LOT less government involvement in education, preferably none at the federal level.

[LibLieSlayer]

Why shouldn't we have the right to string you liberals up by the neck and hang you, the minute your evil slips past your tongues? /s It is no more ridiculous than the RIGHT to a college education... what trouble do we have today by dodd and frank legislating that minorities should have the right to a home and a free mortgage? These people are insane and evil.

LLS

[sodpoodle]

After reading the first 50 brilliant posts on this thread - I have to wonder how many of our FReepers are college educated and if so, how was it financed?

There are millions of hard working people without college who have elevated themselves on merit and industry - to well-earned good salaries. They are paying and will pay the freight for others who already feel ‘entitled’ and future generations of freeloaders being brainwashed by the Marxist element in our society.

[Yaelle]

University education was something once prized for its learning and the doors that it would open afterward.

If it becomes, as it is becoming, 13th through 16th grades, it will have a value like the spitballs shot under Mrs. Levinson’s desk in 4th period.

I can homeschool a kid in any grade for a few hundred dollars; if I spent $1000 on each kid I could fly him to a historical site, or buy him a top notch microscope or something EACH YEAR. “Free” public school here costs the taxpayers $12,000 a year PER CHILD. Imagine how much college will cost us when it is “free.”

[Hoffer Rand]

While he’s at it, I want the right to be a millionaire. And a pony.

You want to be a pony? Isn't it going to be a little hard to spend that million while prancing around the corral? :-)

[Yaelle]

I think we should end mandatory schooling. Parents who want their kids to be educated will find a way to make sure they are.

Parents who don’t care will produce the bottom tier manual labor force.

---

Bingo! I’ve been saying this for years. Government OUT of the education business. There are so many ways to educate your kids, and private schools will pop up like mushrooms all over the land. There will be as many different kinds of schools as there are cameras in Best Buy.

I hate seeing the parents (PINOs) who care the LEAST, the absolute LEAST for their children get free goodies constantly from the government. Maybe if children were not automatically the taxpayer’s burden and responsibility from birth through age 26, MAYBE some women will actually close those legs to those losers and not MAKE the kids they can’t care for.

[Sherman Logan]

But for me, politics isn’t just about the art of the possible—about what we can pass in the here and now. Politics is about expanding and extending that art, about pushing the borders to create space for even more change in the future.

Everybody seems to have missed this little gem.

One of the most concise descriptions of the liberal mindset I've seen.

Politics is about a never-ending expansion of government control. Any time you give in to their demands, by definition it means they will just come up with new demands.