Obama proposes free community college program

  • Thread starter Thread starter gilliam
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Really? This is foolish. A good number of my friends went to community in order to save money instead of enrolling in a four year college/university. Then after two years went on to finish their degrees. Plus, CC is relatively cheap.

The man wanted universal health insurance, then he vouches for gay “marriage”, goes on an apology tour and now wants “free” CC? The Chosen One, for sure.
 
Midwest88 said:
Really? This is foolish. A good number of my friends went to community in order to save money instead of enrolling in a four year college/university. Then after two years went on to finish their degrees. Plus, CC is relatively cheap.
Click to expand...
You know that CC is relatively cheap because it’s already subsidized, right? It’s not just relatively cheap by magic.
 
It deserves to be mentioned that the program will not be free. It will either be funded by an increase in the taxes or an increase in the debt.
 
gilliam said:
Obama wants community college to be free for anyone “willing to work for it” apne.ws/1tRNODK
Click to expand...
For those that live below the poverty level it is mostly free with federal Pell and State grants. If you keep a 2.0 GPA you can continue receiving the grants to pay for books and tuition until you earn a certificate or degree. I attended a Community College to learn a trade 25+ years ago with Veterans Education Assistance and Pell grants. It didn’t cost me a dime. A friends daughter attended community college on Pell and State grants to become a certified assistant accountant last year. The only thing she had to pay for was the monthly bus pass.
 
It’s seems to be a well a intentioned move to promote opportunity and social mobility-perhaps he may be trying to cement his legacy.

Though community colleges have always been **substanitally ** more affordable than universities and they’ve been managed by local boards and entities. Federal support may very well end up into Federal Control(or at least a bunch of mandates and regulations) which could turn a diverse system of community education institutions into a standardized mediocre entity.

While there are issues(i.e transfer rates) the system appears to be working and functioning well(not perfect but alright). Why try to fix something that isn’t broken.

And to address issues like transfer rates,one could always run for a regional college board. I feel like people(from my vastly limited perspective) look to much to higher levels of government(Congress,President),to fix education issues when the problems are in their backward(where local solutions could work better).

Just my :twocents:
 
Perhaps they could fix secondary education first?

“The average U.S. college freshman reads at a seventh grade level, according to an educational assessment report.”

campusreform.org/?ID=6174
 
AAS degrees are pretty much worthless (outside of trades, nursing, dental hygiene) and those curriculum are usually the most difficult.
I envision a lot of students enrolling in photography, culinary, hospitality, journalism…fields where you won’t be able to get a job, or only low paying jobs.
Now days you need to get a Master’s degree just to get your foot in the door at a decent employer to earn a living wage.
My kids both graduated with Bachelor’s degrees , and found they were unable to get a good paying job. So they both went on to get their Master’s degrees, and found great jobs in education and gov’t.
Which is a good thing, because they owe more than $50K each on student loans (and guess who co-signed for them).
 
Just how cheap are your community colleges? My tuition for a year at a decent Canadian University was about $6700. Going for an Engineering degree would have cost more (approximately $9000). Even our medical schools have a tuition that is allegedly lower than your universities (~$24,000).

But I digress. As others in the topic have pointed out, there are plenty of degrees that can lead to a good job (e.g. the trades) and plenty that do not (e.g. liberal arts). Subsidizing the former may actually save money in the end (if one is educated and has a decent paying job, they are less likely to turn to crime and government assistance). Subsidizing the latter would have some benefit for society, but I’m not entirely sure that said benefit is enough to justifying paying.
 
jarn98 said:
AAS degrees are pretty much worthless (outside of trades, nursing, dental hygiene) and those curriculum are usually the most difficult.
I envision a lot of students enrolling in photography, culinary, hospitality, journalism…fields where you won’t be able to get a job, or only low paying jobs.
Now days you need to get a Master’s degree just to get your foot in the door at a decent employer to earn a living wage.
My kids both graduated with Bachelor’s degrees , and found they were unable to get a good paying job. So they both went on to get their Master’s degrees, and found great jobs in education and gov’t.
Which is a good thing, because they owe more than $50K each on student loans (and guess who co-signed for them).
Click to expand...
Spot on.
 
Obama’s major appeal is, and has always been, “I’ll give you free stuff that someone else will pay for.”
 
I suspect this is something businesses want. They keep saying that people need to be trained before they can hire them, God forbid they should have their own training programs.
 
Ridgerunner said:
Obama’s major appeal is, and has always been, “I’ll give you free stuff that someone else will pay for.”
Click to expand...
That is not unique to Obama though. For example, Bush signed Medicare part D, while not totally free, it was a giveaway to seniors that other people are paying for. Same thing with the wars, he didn’t have his supporters sacrifice for the wars, he made future generations do it.
 
WKW_69 said:
For those that live below the poverty level it is mostly free with federal Pell and State grants. If you keep a 2.0 GPA you can continue receiving the grants to pay for books and tuition until you earn a certificate or degree. I attended a Community College to learn a trade 25+ years ago with Veterans Education Assistance and Pell grants. It didn’t cost me a dime. A friends daughter attended community college on Pell and State grants to become a certified assistant accountant last year. The only thing she had to pay for was the monthly bus pass.
Click to expand...
I tend to sympathize with students when this issue comes up.

Maybe some people end up attending free or “mostly free” but I’ve known people who don’t go to college or who have quit for financial reasons. The original article mentions a figure of $3,800 per year for a full-time student which might not sound like much, but if your family isn’t helping out it can be quite a lot.

And on the “monthly bus pass,” there are individuals who don’t attend community college because they don’t even live on a bus route.
jarn98 said:
AAS degrees are pretty much worthless (outside of trades, nursing, dental hygiene) and those curriculum are usually the most difficult.
I envision a lot of students enrolling in photography, culinary, hospitality, journalism…fields where you won’t be able to get a job, or only low paying jobs.
Now days you need to get a Master’s degree just to get your foot in the door at a decent employer to earn a living wage.
My kids both graduated with Bachelor’s degrees , and found they were unable to get a good paying job. So they both went on to get their Master’s degrees, and found great jobs in education and gov’t.
Which is a good thing, because they owe more than $50K each on student loans (and guess who co-signed for them).
Click to expand...
Community colleges, though, make a point of saying that students can get their associate’s and then transfer to a four-year college and get the bachelor’s at a lower cost than if they had spent the whole four years at the four-year school. At least that’s there as an option for some people.
 
Of all the government programs, supporting community colleges is probably one of the least dumb ones out there. They are probably our most efficient part of our higher education system and where we probably get the most bang for our buck. We have a lot of federal aid that goes to support private colleges (indirectly, usually) that really don’t need the money, so they use the extra money to build climbing walls and basketball arenas and give the professors fewer classes to teach. At community colleges, the focus is on the classes without the frills.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top