More evidence of my growing commie-socialism...

[Tonitrus]

Stuff like this is what makes me crazy annoyed at our current system which seems to combine the worst of options when it comes to how we fund shit:


http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/01/heres-exactly-how-much-the-government-would-have-to-spend-to-make-public-college-tuition-free/282803/


Cost to the federal government to just make public colleges free: somewhere between $40 and $65 billion dollars a year.
How much the federal government currently spends on a hodgepodge of various funding/grant programs, much of which (~25%) goes to private schools: $69 billion a year.

I am surprised that during all the Obamacare debate, there wasn't a similar article on healthcare (at least, I had never seen one).  As the underlying principles/concepts are similar.  A Canadian-esque single-payer system vs. the hodgepodge of Medicare/Medicaid, a variety of state-level programs, Social Security insurance, and the costs associated with all the for-profit private insurance systems.

[Tonitrus]

But on free, college education...I think one of the big arguments that will come up is college education as an entitlement.

Even now, public universities (especially the "Public Ivy Leagues", i.e. University of Washington) can restrict the student population ultimately just on how many students they can accommodate.  If you remove the cost factor, the number of students who want to enroll will almost certainly surge.  And then it will likely be a matter of significantly increasing the academic standards to even apply.

And then you have to figure how the "free" system will work.  Would it allow for the "professional student" who switches majors every semester, or would it be like our Post-9/11 GI Bill system (you have a strict 3/4 year timeframe to get your degree, and you get only one shot at the major of your choice).  What about someone who needs a new education to switch careers later in life (due to layoffs, etc)?

[alfred russel]

It seems he is breaking this down into three buckets:

-work study
-grants
-tax breaks

Work study is a really small piece, but it is actually used to produce stuff.

If grants are referring to pell grants, than that is probably a reasonably clean number.

The tax break number could have a who variety of education related (and even research related) tax stuff in there.

Also, the numbers for all these programs almost certainly includes undergrad and graduate programs. The ~$60b is undergrad only. If the idea is to scrap the current programs and make undergraduate education free, a major problem I see is that poor students may lose much ability to become doctors or lawyers (and we need one of those occupations). If the idea is to add on to the current programs free undergrad education, ~$60b a year is a lot of money. 

[Crazy_Ivan80]

come back when you're calling entrepreneurs national-socialists, as a parti-socialiste big guy said today....

[Admiral Yi]

I don't see the point of taking the money we're giving to students at both public and private schools that they're using on both tuition and living expenses, and spending it only on public school tuition.

[MadImmortalMan]

I want the gubbermint to give me back the money I spent paying off my student loans plz.

[katmai]

Whatever makes it so Dorsey4Russel and Ide stop trying to claim being Hispanic sounds good to me.

[Razgovory]

come back when you're calling entrepreneurs national-socialists, as a parti-socialiste big guy said today....

That would make some conservatives in this country socialists then.

[Ideologue]

How's that tree with Ide?

There is a rather large difference between me and Ide.

Ide thinks schools should be free just because free is good, and who cares what it costs?

You know nothing of my work.

Seriously, that pretty radically misrepresents my views on higher education.  I've said it either needs to be subject to a command economy or to the free market.  No more of the deformed mutant attempts to mix the two have caused.

[The Brain]

Non-STEM degrees = death penalty?

[Josquius]

I am surprised that during all the Obamacare debate, there wasn't a similar article on healthcare (at least, I had never seen one).  As the underlying principles/concepts are similar.  A Canadian-esque single-payer system vs. the hodgepodge of Medicare/Medicaid, a variety of state-level programs, Social Security insurance, and the costs associated with all the for-profit private insurance systems.

If there's one thing I learned from Obama's time in power its that the American right loves inefficiency and waste.

I think all of us will be much better off in the long run if universities were all public and essentially free, except for maybe some few elite ones, and had a significant meritocratic barrier to entry.  That's the only way I see to stop degree inflation and the student debt explosion.

Surely if we can only have a few then it is the elite ones that should be free?