Do you think college should be free?

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Socrates92 said:
I agree. I also think that free public schools and high schools are inherently communist.
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How do you have a democracy with an illiterate and utterly uneducated electorate? More to the point, how do you compete as an economic power with an illiterate and utterly uneducated work force?

Besides, providing education for everyone, even the children of the poor, is a Catholic ideal, not something the Communists invented.

Learning without piety produces a proud device; piety without learning produces a useless one.
St. Jean-Baptiste de La Salle

Having said that, educators who provide higher education ought to see themselves as having a responsibility to use their students’ time well. The time students spend in school is not time that the teachers have to waste, regardless of whether the tuition is high or it is free. Colleges and universities ought to feel they need to make an accounting for the courses they require. That isn’t to say they don’t, but sometimes academics can be blind to how widely profitable the courses they teach and the teaching methods they use actually are.
 
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No it should not be free. Even that question has a false premise…the very idea that it even could be free is false because it costs money. I know AOC, Sanders, Warren, and the other crazies are selling that nonsense but their math (if they even bother) is all a lie. Somebody WILL pay, and it will be the ALL the taxpayers, not just the rich.

So where to start? First of all, college is way too expensive and their needs to be an accounting as to why. It makes no sense. I would like to know where the money really goes, because it shouldn’t cost anywhere near what it does. I think there needs to be a national outcry to hold public universities accountable for their costs by investigating where the tuition dollars are really going. It’s kind of like medical costs. Nobody who uses it knows where the dollars end up because the insurance company is paying.

Wanna drive down tuition costs? How about banks stop giving out student loans? Colleges see that as guaranteed money, and as long as banks keep giving out loans the universities will keep raising tuition with no end in sight. It’s a horrible merry-go-round that needs to stop. Cut the loans, and tuition will have to go down or universities will go bankrupt. And they will have to cut their costs. Do we really need that new world-class gym? How about that new dorm building that’s nicer than the apartment you’ll be living in after graduation? No and no. What we need is the classroom instruction and the piece of paper at the end. The rest is wasted money.

There are also too many people in college who academically should probably not be there. They would be much better off in trade schools learning a valuable skill/trade that doesn’t require $100,000 and 4 years of finding yourself. But our K-12 schools push college too hard and make kids feel like failures if they don’t go. That’s a big mistake. There needs to be much more emphasis on finding what’s right for the individual and not push college on everyone.

Also, unless you have a big scholarship, why waste so much money on going to a 4-year school the first two years? Go to community college. Much cheaper. Use that time to figure out what you really want to do. Then if you still really need that 4-year degree, transfer as a junior. You get the same degree for much less money and you also skip the pressure of the SAT/ACT.

Gone are the days of going to college to “expand your horizons.” College is so expensive now that it must be a business decision. If the return on investment isn’t there, it’s not worth it. Translation…if your college degree doesn’t directly lead to a good job than you are wasting a tremendous amount of money and you will be in debt for decades. There are so many great careers out there that don’t require it.
 
I do not think it should be free in the United States for several reasons (here are just a handful of my reasons).
  1. public colleges have become extremely expensive because of two main reasons:
  • they have been building luxury dorms and other luxury items all over campus in order to complete against other public colleges
  • they have been raising professor salaries in order to attract the best professors, not to pay professors their just salary. For example: they pay a famous law professor $400,000 a year while other professors in the law school are just low paid adjuncts (unless there is a famous adjunct)
  • In other words, the public universities have been more concerned with research & their rankings than with students.
  1. there is NO way the United States can provide free college to everyone, attending whatever college they want to attend. If free college comes, it will be paid by the states and will most likely be just for the smaller local, state colleges - not flagship public universities.
  • typically, these are the colleges that are already cheaper and where many students can live at home.
  • if these colleges become the free ones, it will negatively affect the poorer students & the ones who didn’t have the best grades in high school or at another college their first 1 or 2 years.
  • free college will make the competition at these schools sky high and will hurt the students who currently attend them the most.
  1. Free college will result in limits on what students can major. The states are not going to want to pay for someone to be an art, music, philosophy, or theology majors. They most likely would not be interested in majors like anthropology, archeology, etc.
  • The govt is only going to interested in paying for the degrees that are going to help the state’s economy or public good.
NOW - what I am in favor of is govt cracking down on the WASTEFUL spending many public colleges have been doing since the 1990s (which skyrocketed in the 2000s). For example: the flagship university I attended decided to tear down 28 dorms and replaced them with luxury dorms. And people wonder why it’s becoming very expensive for IN STATE students to attend these public flagship universities.

If the flagship public universities had a little more govt oversight (and while we are at it, the Catholic colleges having more bishop oversight) all the problems we have in the public and Catholic colleges would be a lot less.
 
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Scott84 said:
Sorry, I’ll pass on socialism, and you should too. Socialism is one step away from Communism. Remember Communism is an offense punishable by excommunication.
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From wikipedia:
“A further dubium dated April 4, 1959 from the Holy Office made the provisions of the 1949 Decree more specific, stating that it implied a prohibition on voting for parties that were helping Communists, even if such parties themselves had inoffensive doctrines or even called themselves Christian.”

So is anyone who votes for Bernie Sanders automatically excommunicated?
Suppose you confess that you voted for Bernie Sanders, would that then release you from the excommunication? I understand that his wife is Roman Catholic and I haven’t heard anything about her being excommunicated for supporting her husband.

It is strange that if " Communism is an offense punishable by excommunication" then why does a Roman Catholic publication publish an article giving the “Catholic case for Communism”

 
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Glennon_P said:
My youngest is starting college this fall…the same state-supported University is $252 per credit hour. Dorm fees are $12,000 per year. Throw in a few grand for books and you’re looking at $20,00-$24,000 depending on how many hours you take.
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$252 per credit hour today is DIRT CHEAP. I think one of the major issues with colleges prices today is dorm fees. 252 per credit hour but $12,000 per year for dorm is INSANE.

When I started college in 1995, I paid $4000 a year for tuition and $4000 a year for room and board - $8000 per year for everything (in-state). Today, that same college is $27,488 for room & board for IN-STATE students!

If you saw my previous post on this thread… the same University tore down 28 dorms and build luxury dorms in their place. Students SHOULD NOT be paying that much for in-state tuition.

The problem is that these universities are WASTING MONEY
 
meltzerboy2 said:
Since the days when I was a college student in the 1960’s, there has developed a situation in the college environment that most people not in the profession do not know about. That is the plight of the part-time (adjunct) instructor. Today, part-timers make up about 60-70% of the academic workforce. They are underpaid, have few benefits, if any, relatively poor working conditions, and are often treated as non-entities by full-time instructors and administrators alike. To make ends meet, they often have to teach several (undesirable) courses at times that full-time faculty do not want or so that full-timers can focus on their research, electives, or seminars, and they also teach at more than one college, usually two or three, during the same semester. There is frequently heavy turnover as well. Most have their Master’s degree and are doctoral candidates, while others have their doctorate but cannot obtain a full-time position because college administrators prefer their cheap labor rather than hiring full-time faculty. In sum, the situation is an EDUCATIONAL SCANDAL, which adversely affects students, full-timers, administrators, and the whole system. Making college free would decimate the adjunct faculty as well as some of the full-time faculty in colleges’ efforts to economize without cutting too much into administrators’ salaries.
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I think a big part of the reason you have this is two part:
  1. a lot of schools are overpaying famous professors
  2. the universities are all spending a TON of money on luxury items for the undergraduates.
 
It really does not matter what I say about the matter. The national debt is at 22 trillion. The likelihood that Congress is going to pass free tuition for college is no more than a figment of the fevered imagination of the radical Democratic candidates running for the presidency, and appears to be an attempt to sway millennials and younger that if elected, the President will do such.

And given the educational awareness which has been publicly shown (or, honestly, the complete lack thereof) as to how government functions, and depending on whether or not they can be bothered to be registered to vote and then show up at the polls, they may or may not be a swing vote.

We have a significant number of students who are taking on their college administrations over “hate” speech - being anything which is not progressive. They should have learned something about the Constitution in high school, a topic which appears to have been overlooked. They certainly did not learn much of anything about the 1st Amendment, such as the fact that the ACLU twice represented the Ku Klux Klan in court to win their right to parade their hate speech down the center of town, one of the cases being the right to parade in Skokie, Illinois. This is only a small view into the ignorance college students exhibit; They seem to have no clue how law is created on the federal level.

Which segways into a related topic; the absolutely abysmal level of education the average - and even above average - high school student has upon graduation. whether that is because of the “teaching to the test” routine I hear about routinely I cannot say. The fact remains that public education at least through high school has gone seriously down hill, and it seems the lower the level of knowledge base incoming freshmen seem to have, the more expensive the college tuition becomes.
 
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PetraG said:
High school guidance counselors typically do not advise students to consider the financial implications of their college choices. It is all about whether they have the academic capacity to get into such-and-such a school and into such-and-such a career field. It’s as if looking at the return on investment is too gauche to talk about or something?
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This is true too. Far too many high school guidance counselors are pushing the kids to go to the best school possible.

Far too many high schools (even the public ones) want ranking scores by having X number of Ivy Leagues and other Tier One schools.

It’s crazy. The High Schools and Colleges all only care about one thing today… rankings.
 
PetraG said:
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Scott84:
Pope Pius XI decreed any Catholic who is a Communist is excommunicated from the Church.

Sorry, but you cannot be a Catholic and a Communist. The two are mutually exclusive.
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Free public college isn’t inherently Communist any more than free public grade school or free public high school is inherently Communist.

I don’t see the taxpayers of this country agreeing to foot the bill to go to Harvard or Notre Dame, or at least not above what they would pay for public universities.
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The problem with this, from my point of view is this:

Grade school is required by law. College is not.

Everyone (by law) must attend elementary, middle and high school. Now, it’s not law that they must graduate, but they must attend and can’t quick until at least 16, 17 or 18 (depending on the state).

No one is required to attend college. And college isn’t for everyone.

So it’s NOT fair to have free college, but not have free automotive mechanic training. It’s not fair to get a free education to become a French teacher, but you have to pay to become an airline pilot. It’s not fair to become a business major for free, but need to pay to learn how to become a landscaper.
 
I will stick to the teachings and decrees of Pope’s Leo XIII, Pius XI, and Pius XII over someone’s personal opinion. Personal opinion doesn’t trump Church teaching and decrees made by previous Supreme Pontiffs.

Again, it is shocking to see any Catholic argue the case for an ideology that murdered millions, including Catholics and actively suppressed them.
 
Strange, but this is the mindset of many of the American people, even against their own self-interest.
 
Free College?
Wouldn’t be a terrible idea …
But we’d need to have a fully humanity-loving world - yes?

Back in the day at least one Engineering College charged $200 per semester
If you graduated you’d be facing multiple offers.

Back when, many could own a home… have no problem w/medical, and retire and live a normal life.

Today- Kids are placed into incredible debt and the Jobs/Wages aren’t there…

SINFUL…
 
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The most famous professor does not make as much money as the least famous administrator. Nonetheless, there is the matter of false advertising, such as, enroll in University X and study with the great Professor Y. It is only after the student enrolls that they find out Professor Y does not teach many courses, and certainly not the basic level ones, and instead spends much of their time doing research and teaching only the advanced seminars.
 
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Scott84 said:
I will stick to the teachings and decrees of Pope’s Leo XIII, Pius XI, and Pius XII
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Those are past teachings. the present papal teaching is that capitalism is the dung of the devil and that capitalism is terrorism against all of humanity, and that capitalism gives a moral cloak to inequality. Also, according to present papal teaching:
“Working for a just distribution of the fruits of the earth and human labor is not mere philanthropy. It is a moral obligation. For Christians, the responsibility is even greater: it is a commandment.”



 
meltzerboy2 said:
The most famous professor does not make as much money as the least famous administrator. Nonetheless, there is the matter of false advertising, such as, enroll in University X and study with the great Professor Y. It is only after the student enrolls that they find out Professor Y does not teach many courses, and certainly not the basic level ones, and instead spends much of their time doing research and teaching only the advanced seminars.
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Here’s a great example of what I mean (granted this is UPENN and not a public school, but it’s happening at public ones too)


https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...e9-b570-6416efdc0803_story.html?noredirect=on
 
Anicette said:
Sorry, I think we have a cultural difference in our view,
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Annicette, there is a deep difference that is not dependent on the Cold War …
Christianity was first and any good priest will explain it to you if you take the time to ask for an appointment .Start from there.
We have very different worldviews.
That doesn t mean that we are going to chase people because they think differently, but it is worth the time and effort to learn well at least our own first.
And it is a whole life endeavor to try and live it for all of us…
 
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snarflemike said:
Playing devil’s advocate, this will convince more people to go to college (even those who won’t benefit much from it), and encourage more people to take worthless degrees. Neither of those things helps society.
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A better educated population is always helpful to society. A population that has the ability to comprehend what they are reading, communicate effectively through writing, hear and analyze conflicting opinions… those will all benefit society.

There are more objectives to a college education than a job.
 
Socrates92 said:
I agree. I also think that free public schools and high schools are inherently communist.
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Like the schools set up by all those religious orders that devoted their lives to providing free education to the poor?
 
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