Fully tax supported public colleges and universities.

[SimpleDon]

Free, no. They should be cheap (something you can pay for with an on-campus job) but when there's no skin in the game people don't behave as well.

You don't think that students put some "skin in the game" by way of the time and efforts they put into their studies?

You really do value money more than labor and people.

 

[SimpleDon]

Complicated.

Not really.

Non-profit University still costs a lot. Someone has to pay. Should an 18 year old high school grad with a "blue collar" labor job pay for the MBA education of another 18 year old that will become his future much higher paid boss?

No, what we need are progressive taxes so that the people who get the most benefit out of society pay the most taxes. State taxes which pay for most public education including higher education, are regressive, falling heavily on the poor and the working class.

Also, plenty of college students already screw off and put no effort into it, barely graduating or dropping out. That's a lot of wasted money other people are paying for zero benefit to society. That would get much worse with completely free tuition.

So you agree with Loren that the only skin in the game that counts is money? That the students time and effort doesn't count?

You do understand that students that screw off in college get kicked out?

Here are a couple of uncommon suggestions that could address these issues:

1) Higher grades and graduation get students tuition refunds up to potentially "full refund" levels, which will incentivise effort and disincentivise students just wasting everyone's time and money spending years in school without real effort or direction.

2) Loan repayment is conditional on future income. Graduates pay back % of their loans, depending upon income during the years after graduation. This has a number of benefits. First, it allows education to serve its other important societal functions above and beyond just creating a skilled workforce. Second, graduates that get more financial benefit from their education will pay for more of that education.

Reread my discussion about progressive taxation. This is a much simpler solution, isn't it?

 

[ronburgundy]

Non-profit University still costs a lot. Someone has to pay. Should an 18 year old high school grad with a "blue collar" labor job pay for the MBA education of another 18 year old that will become his future much higher paid boss?

No, what we need are progressive taxes so that the people who get the most benefit out of society pay the most taxes. State taxes which pay for most public education including higher education, are regressive, falling heavily on the poor and the working class.

And people that get a college education are getting more out or society than those that do not, thus they should pay more. Even with progressive State taxes, the 20 year old high school grad who makes $40K per year in construction is paying taxes that partly pay for 20 year old his neighbor to get more out of society than himself via a college education and free room and board.

Also, plenty of college students already screw off and put no effort into it, barely graduating or dropping out. That's a lot of wasted money other people are paying for zero benefit to society. That would get much worse with completely free tuition.

So you agree with Loren that the only skin in the game that counts is money? That the students time and effort doesn't count?

The point is that many students don't put in the time and effort to begin with, so they have nothing really invested in it. For many kids, college is a way to avoid work and responsibility. The ones that invest the effort are those with internal motivation to actually get an education or at least look like they did, so they can make more money with their degree. For others, they lack this internal motivation, thus more immediate financial cost to themselves or their parents impacts whether they try to get more out of college than it being just a place to hide from adult decisions. For colleges with high entrance standards, they get more internally motivated students. For colleges that basically take anyone with a 1000 on their SAT, the student make-up and number of screw offs is not too different from average high schools.

You do understand that students that screw off in college get kicked out?

After many thousands of wasted dollars and after hindering the learning of most their classmates, the most extreme screw ups who fail most of their class for an entire year get kicked out. However, the more screw offs in a class (and free college will increase their numbers), the more they can get away with not really learning and stumble over the extremely low bar that is a bachelors degree. Course difficulty and requirements get adjusted toward the average student performance. The more screw offs, the lower the expectations and requirements to pass the course, meaning that they and everyone else learns less, meaning wasted educational resources. In addition, all students and profs know that their are many "fluff" courses that only require a pulse to pass. Padding their schedule with such course is a strategy screw offs use to avoid academic dismissal, while still not learning anything. And even a student putting in only the effort needed to get a C average and not get kicked out is still wasting finite resources and thereby harming others who would better use of that aid. Bottom line is that kicking students out after a year of a below 2.0 GPA doesn't come close to solving the problem of students that lack the motive to learn.

Here are a couple of uncommon suggestions that could address these issues:

1) Higher grades and graduation get students tuition refunds up to potentially "full refund" levels, which will incentivise effort and disincentivise students just wasting everyone's time and money spending years in school without real effort or direction.

2) Loan repayment is conditional on future income. Graduates pay back % of their loans, depending upon income during the years after graduation. This has a number of benefits. First, it allows education to serve its other important societal functions above and beyond just creating a skilled workforce. Second, graduates that get more financial benefit from their education will pay for more of that education.

Reread my discussion about progressive taxation. This is a much simpler solution, isn't it?

No, it isn't. My proposals are actually really simple and they actually address the problems while yours does not. First, yours does nothing to incentivize student effort which reduces the waste that inherently harms other people in need, because we don't live in fairytale with unlimited funds. Second, a college education is a benefit one is getting from society, so by your own "principle" (presuming you apply it non-hypocritically) means they should pay more than people making the same income without getting this extra benefit of a college education.

 

[SimpleDon]

Is money the only way to have skin in the game?

For example

Loren,

You are a great proponent parents taking responsibility for turning out good citizens, right? Couldn't these same miraculous child rearing techniques that you tout but never outline, turn out good students as well?

How would you reward people for completing their 4-year degree in 4 years vs. taking 5 or 6 years to complete (which is more expensive)? Cost is a good motivator to get someone to finish their degree on time.

So you agree with Loren and ron that the thing that counts is money, that the students time and effort isn't enough "skin in the game?"

You do understand that we are talking only about free or nominal tuition, that the student has to provide his own room and board?

This argument that students should have to pay tuition so that they have more incentive to do well, to graduate in four years for example, can only lead to one logical conclusion, that the costs of college should be based on the parents' ability to pay. The very rich might not have enough incentive to do well even if they have to pay 50,000 dollars a year.

I went to expensive prep schools, to an expensive graduate school and a public university for my undergraduate studies (all on scholarships). From what I saw the problem of students screwing around and taking longer to graduate is much worse with the privileged students, not the poorer ones. Maybe to give them the proper incentive we should charge say 30% of the parents income no matter what it is?

Or we could just rely on progressive taxation to support education and accomplish pretty much the same thing.

In countries where college education is free, on time graduation rates are lower and failure to finish degree rates are higher. Furthermore, shouldn't the primary beneficiary of the university education (the student themselves) share some of the burden of the cost of that education?

Here we have the basic misunderstanding. Society is the primary beneficiary of educating its members. That is why we provide a free education through high school and why this education is compulsory. Society also benefits from its members going to college. That is why we build public universities.

Not everyone can go to college, so we don't make it compulsory, but many more people can and want to go that can't currently afford it. We have a lot to gain by making college more affordable, by educating these people.

College graduates earn more money and pay more taxes, unless we continue to dismantle our progressive taxation system. These increased taxes in turn payback the costs of the public education. Cue the "circle of life."

Finally, when you make something free, you remove the cost to provide that something from the equation in the decision on whether or not to utilize it. Community college for the first two years of education is a better fit for some. One of the things that make it a better fit is a lower tuition cost. Community college is also a less expensive service to provide. If you make university education free, then someone who may not be fully committed to finishing a 4 year education may decide to go to a University anyway (because why not?) who would otherwise go to a community college, will now enroll at University and be far more likely to fail to complete the 4 year degree (dropout rates will increase). The additional amount of money required to go to the University vs. a community college is therefore essentially thrown away.

I have already commented on yours, Loren's and ron's formulation that money counts for more than time and effort, that is labor.

You seem to be under the misconception that the enterance requirements will be lowered if we provide free tuition. Actually, the exact oppose happens. When the public universities lower their tuitions the quality of the students entering the public universities goes up. You have more students going to the public universities who would have gone to private ones.

We saw this in Georgia when we introduced the hope scholarship. The students that applied to the public universities were better prepared and more accomplished, allowing the public universes to be more selective. This was true not only for the top schools, the research universities, but for all of the colleges and universities including the community colleges.

The effect wouldn't be so pronounced if every state offered free or nominal tuition, but it would be there.

This effect results in more motivated students in the various tiers of colleges and universities, not less motivated ones. I don't know how it would balance out with free or nominal tuition for everyone. It has been a very big change in Georgia with the hope scholarship, where to earn it and to keep it you must maintain a certain GPA, something greater than a 3.0. Since it was enacted the top tier schools here have become some of the most selective in the country. The University of Georgia and Georgia Tech are harder to get into than Emory University, for example.

What are you proposing to add on top of the free at point of entry University education to mitigate these problems? How much additional money is going to be required to be raised from the taxpayers to support this?

As I said, I don't think that this is the problem that you think that it will be. In fact, I think that there is another problem that I see with the countries that do provide free or nominal tuition for everyone. To reduce costs in their free schools they track students at an early age, say 12 to 14 years old as to whether they will go to college or into a trade school.

I am going to have a German boy living with me next year, the son of a German friend, so that he can get into an US university. When he was younger he had a pronounced learning disability and was tracked for a trade school in Germany. As a result he would have little to no chance of going to college in Germany.

Since he was evaluated he has gotten more control over his disability and gained an interest in robotics. He will be able to apply to an US university. He has already taken the SAT test and scored high on it except for the verbal which is of course, in English.

He will come here in the summer and take a course to improve that score retaking the test tn the early fall. It would have been better if he could have come here for two years instead of just one. But he had a girl friend in Germany, the love of his life. That is not the case now and when he came here in the fall to visit colleges he realized that we have women here, that US women love his accent and blond hair, and that there are few colleges now that don't have more women than men.

 

[SimpleDon]

When I went to university, not only were all of the fees paid for from taxation, but they also provided me with a cash award that was enough to live on (albeit frugally, and with subsidised rent from the university). At no time during my university education did I have a job, nor did I get any money from family or friends; I did borrow a few hundred pounds from a bank, but it was never on the cards that I might borrow thousands, or tens of thousands. This was at the end of the 1980s. I was amongst the last people in the UK to have the benefit of that system. I am pretty sure that had I not been able to access this funding from the public purse, I would not have been able to go to university at all.

My subsequent employment has never been in specific field I studied (Molecular Biology), although I did work for a pharmaceutical company in a variety of non-technical roles for about 12 years; I now work in IT, in a technical role that has no relationship to the biological sciences at all. I have no doubt that my education played a vital part in making me a net contributor to society - and I have no doubt that the taxes I have paid since have covered the initial investment made in my education many times over.

The only 'reason' I can see that that system was dumped is because some people (in particular Margaret Thatcher and her government) had an ideological horror of the idea that anybody might get more than their share, or might be able to play the system in any way. They were more than happy to see a worse overall outcome for the United Kingdom, as long as they could thereby ensure that fewer people were able to free-load. Ha! Take that, face. Don't look so pretty now you have no nose, do you?

So you were pretty much on the fence about attending university? Had you needed to take out some loans, that would've pushed you over to not going at all?

I think that having to take out a loan will discourage a lot of people who are unsure if college is for them. As hard as it is to pay off the student loans as a college graduate it is much harder to pay off student loans run up finding out that college wasn't right or that they couldn't do the work, and they are trying to pay off the loans driving a delivery truck.

 

[Axulus]

Fully taxpayer funded higher education? Only the truly useful ones. Science and engineering and medicine and law, yes. Philosophy and Fine Art, no.

And no public funding of any kind for any admission not based entirely on merit. None for athletic scholarships. None for race based.

If public tax dollars are used, it should be used fairly and based on merit alone, and it should yeild results for the general public.

Why Law? And Fine Arts does yield results for the general public.

It yields less benefits - I'm fine with subsidizing it but a greater share of the tuition cost should be borne by the fine art major.

Law is a profession that, in principle, serves the public. And to a large extent it does - public defenders, judges, prosecutors, other public positions that attorneys serve in etc.

 

[Axulus]

So you were pretty much on the fence about attending university? Had you needed to take out some loans, that would've pushed you over to not going at all?

I think that having to take out a loan will discourage a lot of people who are unsure if college is for them. As hard as it is to pay off the student loans as a college graduate it is much harder to pay off student loans run up finding out that college wasn't right or that they couldn't do the work, and they are trying to pay off the loans driving a delivery truck.

I think some of the suggestions that have been presented so far seem fair:

Good GPA (3.0+) gets you a discount.
Completing your 4 year degree in 4 years gets you a discount.
Completing your 4 year degree in 5 years gets you a smaller discount.
Highest value added degrees for society are more heavily subsidized (law, science, math, engineering, technology, teaching, business, medicine).
Student loans guaranteed for everyone attending public institutions, paid back based on your income (payment is done through your income tax return), and no payment is due if your income is below the poverty threshold. Interest rate charged on the loans is enough to keep it revenue neutral or close to it (essentially covering defaults/unpaid amounts in the program).

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Why Law? And Fine Arts does yield results for the general public.

It yields less benefits - I'm fine with subsidizing it but a greater share of the tuition cost should be borne by the fine art major.

Law is a profession that, in principle, serves the public. And to a large extent it does - public defenders, judges, prosecutors, other public positions that attorneys serve in etc.

Don't forget philosophy. If not for people with philosophy degrees, we'd have to flip our own burgers.

 

[dismal]

Did I miss the part where someone pointed out the evidence that taxpayer funded education for all for 16 years (versus 12, or 18, or 42) produces the highest level of societal well-being?

I thought the argument was more like "Unlimited free education is a divine and inalienable right for all. I know this to be true.".

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Um exactly what benefit do we as society get back from funding fine art schools or departments?

Do you think art would cease to exist without these schools?

As for lawyers... Everybody hates them, until they need one.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

Um exactly what benefit do we as society get back from funding fine art schools or departments?

Do you think art would cease to exist without these schools?

As for lawyers... Everybody hates them, until they need one.

Oh right

Art. music. dance.

These are natural talents in need on no instruction, no learned skill sets. they will happen regardless of study.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Free, no. They should be cheap (something you can pay for with an on-campus job) but when there's no skin in the game people don't behave as well.

You don't think that students put some "skin in the game" by way of the time and efforts they put into their studies?

You really do value money more than labor and people.

I've seen too many students who see school as easier than work.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Um exactly what benefit do we as society get back from funding fine art schools or departments?

Do you think art would cease to exist without these schools?

As for lawyers... Everybody hates them, until they need one.

Oh right

Art. music. dance.

These are natural talents in need on no instruction, no learned skill sets. they will happen regardless of study.

Correct. They will happen regardless of study. They will certainly happen regardless of publicly funded schools. Maybe not in the form you expect and demand, but they will happen.

These are forms of expression, passion, and recreation. They existed before there were schools. They will happen all on their own, and it would actually be very difficult (if at all possible) to stop them.

 

[laughing dog]

You don't think that students put some "skin in the game" by way of the time and efforts they put into their studies?

You really do value money more than labor and people.

I've seen too many students who see school as easier than work.

Making the generous assumption your observation is accurate, how is that relevant to the discussion? Whether or not students think school is easier or preferable to work is immaterial to the value of education they may earn.

- - - Updated - - -

Oh right

Art. music. dance.

These are natural talents in need on no instruction, no learned skill sets. they will happen regardless of study.

Correct. They will happen regardless of study. They will certainly happen regardless of publicly funded schools. Maybe not in the form you expect and demand, but they will happen.

These are forms of expression, passion, and recreation. They existed before there were schools. They will happen all on their own, and it would actually be very difficult (if at all possible) to stop them.

Is there some relevant point here? Studying art or music or mathematics makes one better off.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

Oh right

Art. music. dance.

These are natural talents in need on no instruction, no learned skill sets. they will happen regardless of study.

Correct. They will happen regardless of study. They will certainly happen regardless of publicly funded schools. Maybe not in the form you expect and demand, but they will happen.

These are forms of expression, passion, and recreation. They existed before there were schools. They will happen all on their own, and it would actually be very difficult (if at all possible) to stop them.

The same can be said of mathematics and the sciences and the law. Before there were formal schools, there were various disciplines or at least the beginnings of those disciplines. And IIRC, there are still four states where you can read law instead of going to law school.

And I have kicked around the idea that maybe there were other subjects that would fit just as well in an apprentice model of learning.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

Loren,

Do you think school should be hard just for the sake of being hard? Do you think you aren't really learning unless you are really struggling?

 

[Toni]

Oh right

Art. music. dance.

These are natural talents in need on no instruction, no learned skill sets. they will happen regardless of study.

Correct. They will happen regardless of study. They will certainly happen regardless of publicly funded schools. Maybe not in the form you expect and demand, but they will happen.

These are forms of expression, passion, and recreation. They existed before there were schools. They will happen all on their own, and it would actually be very difficult (if at all possible) to stop them.

Sure. No knowledge, no skill, no training, no education required. At all.

What idiocy.

 

[Toni]

You don't think that students put some "skin in the game" by way of the time and efforts they put into their studies?

You really do value money more than labor and people.

I've seen too many students who see school as easier than work.

So?

My husband was very up front about going to graduate school because he wasn't ready to enter the work force. Grad school is a hella lotta work--more so than his current job which he could not have had without grad school.

If your point is that too many students are not willing to apply themselves to school and are simply enrolled because their parents told them to enrolll, well, that is a point worth discussing in its own thread.

Not for nothing, I've worked with plenty of people who were not willing to apply themselves to whatever job they had and simply drifted into the job because of family connections or influence, even influence as slight as: that's the same company my uncle worked for. Or my mom works in HR.

Interestingly, most students actually do learn quite a lot. Even if they don't mean to.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Is there some relevant point here? Studying art or music or mathematics makes one better off.

This is a thread about taxpayers paying fully for schooling. The question is what benefit does the taxpaying public get in exchange for paying for the schools? In the case of Medicine, Law, Engineering, Science, and many other areas of study the benefit is clear. In the case of Fine Art, not so much. You may think it makes you a better person if you can sculpt in the style a school is teaching, but I don't think that benefits anybody else a whole lot. Not enough to justify the tax dollars spent anyway.

 

[Toni]

Is there some relevant point here? Studying art or music or mathematics makes one better off.

This is a thread about taxpayers paying fully for schooling. The question is what benefit does the taxpaying public get in exchange for paying for the schools? In the case of Medicine, Law, Engineering, Science, and many other areas of study the benefit is clear. In the case of Fine Art, not so much. You may think it makes you a better person if you can sculpt in the style a school is teaching, but I don't think that benefits anybody else a whole lot. Not enough to justify the tax dollars spent anyway.

In some states, one can go to law school without a college degree.

In at least one state, one can become a lawyer without attending law school. Why should taxpayers pay for any college classes.

Edison had 3 months of formal education. Why fund any kind of school at all?


Do you believe that only students who wish to become artists take art classes? Do you believe that society as a whole does not benefit from art? Do you believe that art classes are a waste of time for any serious artist?

Do you believe that you are qualified to know what students should study and what would just be a waste of taxpayer's money? What qualifies you to make such judgments?