Quote: (06-21-2015 01:28 PM)samsamsam Wrote:
I am not a fan of a free college education. It just raises expectations of what else should be free. If you take on debt etc then you are forced to be responsible about your choices. However, on the other side of the coin there are so many BS colleges that exist because they straddle kids with debt and since the kids can't BK college debt no on gives a fuck about fucking kids over. Not everyone needs to or deserves to go to college.
I have read high school kids whine about an hour of homework a day. Think an hour of homework in college is going to help you learn anything meaningful or useful? Not in any STEM degrees. Maybe in womans studies.
Free college will also never happen because it devalues the product. People now treat college like BMWs or houses in swanky neighborhood. It's a status symbol.
If you make it free, that won't be the case. People might talk about wanting free tuition, but if it was, then they'd have to find something else to brag about.
I don't think it's a coincidence that college tuition has gone through the roof just as the female population at colleges exploded. Colleges now function, to a large degree, as finishing schools for upper middle class girls.
Back in the old days, I was able to pay for most of my tuition by having a pizza delivery job in the summer. If I'm not mistaken, the University of Maryland cost just over $1000 a semester until the early 1990s. My parents picked up the rest of the tab.
We don't live in that kind of a society anymore for many complex reasons. But one reason is that people don't want it. They want Trump Towers and glitter, not Horatio Alger rags-to-riches stories.