Did free college exist when you were growing up?

[sightseer 895]

I think our nation would be better as a whole if more people could actually see a future worth living through education and what it could bring.  I don't see anything wrong with offering free education to those with good grades.  I had to get good grades in order to get(and keep) the assistance I got.  If people don't want to go to school they simply won't.  There should be the Vo-Tech schools that used to exist (maybe still do?  teaching blue collar jobs?)

I started this thread because apparently we used to provide good education in exchange for good grades and we apparently were doing just fine at that time.  Now, my nephew will have to pay twice the amount he borrowed, to go to nursing school, in interest payments because apparently lenders are allowed to do that and he had no other way to get all that money upfront like they wanted. I don't really know the ins and outs of his situation.  I just think its a bit sick that he owes so much because he wanted to be a good citizen.

PS: Any return greater than inflation is literally free money.  Federal reserve says household net worth has increased 21 trillion in the past year.  Current value is 159 trillion.(see stlouisfed or federal reserve Z1 Flow of Funds report)  What exactly is the purpose of money anyway?  At what point do we say the US in totality has enough wealth to fund initiatives for the collective good? and surely education is good.

Edited November 7, 2021 by sightseer

[sightseer 895]

5 hours ago, Fielder said:

Student Aid is a very old idea. Kwai Chang got into Kung Fu U on a musical scholarship!

is that from Circle of Iron?  It looks like it.  That movie is only so so but its one of my favorites.

[Luke 782]

4 hours ago, w6kd said:

I'd be OK with government-funded advanced education if degrees were apportioned out in some relation to the job skills needed in society, and only the best-qualified were admitted (on the basis of ability/aptitude and nothing else).  We can all benefit from government-funded engineers, doctors, bioscientists, mathematicians, physical therapists, nurses, etc.  But if you want to major in something where a degree is unneeded and often useless--like a degree in music, art, theatre, sociology, etc

University isn't vocational school, and we don't need a central planning bureaucracy determining what degrees are "valuable" or not.

4 hours ago, w6kd said:

There's plenty of room in a 4-year degree program for elective courses in the arts, but to major in them and enter the work force with no better job prospects than a high-school graduate isn't something society should pay for.

The most valuable skill you can learn in university is the ability to think, reason and apply information to new situations in a consistent, logical and usable manner. Almost every degree program can teach that, and almost any degree program can fail to teach you this critical skill if you approach it as vocational school rather than an abstract grounding in learning and reasoning.

This history graduate has been able to code around a lot of people with CS masters in the past. Now when I hire I don't even pay attention to the degree, the school or the field of study. I've found it to be as predictive of future success as what day of the week someone was born on. It took Google a decade, but they finally came to the same conclusion.

3 hours ago, birdguy said:

I think student loans started out with a high minded purpose but it got out of hand like most government giveaway programs do.

The only giveaway in US student loans is to the lenders, not the students. Student loans are completely non-dischargeable until death or total disability, which means that the normal marketplace rules do not apply. That's a massive government subsidy. The people who feed off of such programs are the unscrupulous "schools" and lenders at the bottom ends who cash the cheques, provide education of little or no value and then move on for a new set of victims to milk.

Cheers

[Fielder 3,663]

23 minutes ago, sightseer said:

is that from Circle of Iron?  It looks like it.  That movie is only so so but its one of my favorites.

I think it's from the old TV show Kung FU (David Carardine). His father Michael Carradine played Hatfield in movie Stagecoach (1939)

[Afterburner 374]

I also don't think that free college "for everyone" is a good idea because someone else has to pay for it one way or another, and something that's seemingly free is not valued by students and their parents as much. You could also argue that this doesn't do any good to the quality of colleges, although in my observation, a lot of them tend to invest the money into aesthetics rather than in quality professors. However, college tuition in the United States has reached absurd levels in both nominal and real terms. Just find out how much of the cost of a semester a student working a summer job at a gas station could cover in the 60s and 70s, and how much now (almost nothing). This can't go on forever. Unfortunately, the price hikes are channeled to nourish the bloated administration and their undeserved salaries instead of rewarding good instructors who are the ones who motivate students.

I do think that the top high school students who demonstrate high academic potential should be given assistance in form of scholarship, but this is something that already exists in the States.

[birdguy 3,943]

5 hours ago, JRBarrett said:

, many California homeowners, (especially the elderly), were being priced out of their own homes because of the steadily increasing taxes.

That happened to my Mom and Dad,  They were retired and living in Mill Valley, California.  They were literally taxed out of their home.  They moved to a trailer park in Calistoga.

Noel

[Swe_Richard 1,172]

I am surely grateful for living in Sweden some times and this is one of them; five years of dental school that cost me zero in tuition. Although, there is a clear tendency for a subset of people to choose courses that lead absolutely no-where as some kind of short-sighted extension of their adolescence  (I seem to recall a course in 'Klingon' in the catalogues some 25 years ago). 

Then there is a tendency with some people to believe that in order to make money you have to go to a university first. People totally oblivious to the fact that (here in Sweden at least) an experienced carpenter or electrician or plumber make more than most of the university graduates.

[Camsdad13 64]

18 hours ago, birdguy said:

Quote

Thank you Noel. He did all the heavy lifting. I just gave him the roadmap to get there. Our children are the only legacy that’s going to matter in our lives. 

[birdguy 3,943]

6 hours ago, Swe_Richard said:

People totally oblivious to the fact that (here in Sweden at least) an experienced carpenter or electrician or plumber make more than most of the university graduates.

Here in the United States too.  When we moved to Roswell we bought an old house.  We have had the plumbing repaired and replaced as needed.  Currently our plumber charges $79.00 for the trip and the first hour.  $65.00 an hour for additional hours.  And an additional $60.00 if he has to dig.  And when you call you usually have to wait three or four days for an appointment.

Noel

[Bob Scott 7,720]

12 hours ago, Luke said:

University isn't vocational school, and we don't need a central planning bureaucracy determining what degrees are "valuable" or not.

The most valuable skill you can learn in university is the ability to think, reason and apply information to new situations in a consistent, logical and usable manner. Almost every degree program can teach that, and almost any degree program can fail to teach you this critical skill if you approach it as vocational school rather than an abstract grounding in learning and reasoning.

This history graduate has been able to code around a lot of people with CS masters in the past. Now when I hire I don't even pay attention to the degree, the school or the field of study. I've found it to be as predictive of future success as what day of the week someone was born on. It took Google a decade, but they finally came to the same conclusion.

The only giveaway in US student loans is to the lenders, not the students. Student loans are completely non-dischargeable until death or total disability, which means that the normal marketplace rules do not apply. That's a massive government subsidy. The people who feed off of such programs are the unscrupulous "schools" and lenders at the bottom ends who cash the cheques, provide education of little or no value and then move on for a new set of victims to milk.

I say let the market decide what's valuable.  If a banker has to weigh the risk of default on a $75,000 loan against the probabilty of repayment from a sociology major with a 2.2 GPA, he'll make the right call--and by right, I mean right by those of us that are paying the cost of those bad bets.  Student loans may be non-dischargeable, but they are widely defaulted-upon nonetheless, and the cost of paying the banks for those defaulted loans falls on the taxpayers.

I agree that learning how to think is one of the most valuable things one can take away from a college education.  But our colleges and universities are increasingly teaching kids what to think, not how to think.  I had the graduate of an expensive private college parrot some professor's talking point to me with a straight face that the US DOD budget could feed three square meals a day to the entire world population (if you do the math, those meals would have to cost something like a few hundredths of a cent each).  I see more and more young people that leave college thoroughly indoctrinated, but unable and/or unwilling to support an argument or engage in a discussion using anything resembling logic, reason, critical thought, or even back-of-the-envelope 6th-grade math skills.

Your observation about being a history graduate that can outcode people with CS degrees is an example of my point that having government pay for your history degree would have been a waste.  Now having government pay for vocational education related to coding...that would make much more sense, if government *must* play a role.  I would prefer to leave government completely out of it.

I disagree with your assertion that the only giveaway in US student loans is to lenders.  Colleges--including many public and elite universites--are crafting boutique degree programs that appeal to popular culture in order to bring students in the doors, e.g. the associates or bachelor's degree in "forensic science" that is pretty much useless in a field that requires masters or doctorate-level specialized education and training.  Where it's not entire degree programs, it's wasteful trendy courses, like Rutgers' "Politicizing Beyoncé" or Oberlin College's "How to Win a Beauty Pageant," or Skidmore College's "The Sociology of Miley Cyrus."  They are also building student housing facilities that are opulent palaces in comparison to the basic dorm rooms we had when I was in college--and those amenities attract students paying dearly for those gilded accomodations with student loan money, much of which will never be paid back (and especially so if we ever make the insane choice of forgiving student debt).  I agree that the unscrupulous are a big part of the problem; I disagree in that those bottom feeders are not a select small group, but rather include the majority of our universities and include some very big names we'd all recognize.

[Chocorua 112]

I attended two schools after high school, tuition free, from 1970-1973 in Connecticut. One was a community college (in my home town) and another a state technical school. It gave me all the education I needed to enter the work force, provide for family, and motivate me towards further education. I'm forever grateful for those FREE opportunities. No doubt MANY people would benefit if these types of options were still available everywhere.     

[sightseer 895]

46 minutes ago, w6kd said:

I had the graduate of an expensive private college parrot some professor's talking point to me with a straight face that the US DOD budget could feed three square meals a day to the entire world population

for what period of time? a day? a month? a year? ten years?

The base pentagon budget could easily feed 3 meals per day for almost a month for every person on the planet. 

Roughly: 700 billion dollars divided by 7 billion people equals $100 per person and according to foodstamps here in the US, thats almost enough to feed an adult for a month.

 

Edited November 7, 2021 by sightseer

[Bob Scott 7,720]

23 minutes ago, sightseer said:

for what period of time? a day? a month? a year? ten years?

The base pentagon budget could easily feed 3 meals per day for almost a month for every person on the planet. 

Roughly: 700 billion dollars divided by 7 billion people equals $100 per person and according to foodstamps here in the US, thats almost enough to feed an adult for a month.

A year.  The spectacularly incompetent argument was that eliminating the US DOD budget would immediately solve world hunger.

$705Bn is the annual DoD budget, which would distribute $90.38 per year to each of the world's 708 Bn people.  $90.38 over 365 days over 3 meals per day is 8.25 cents per meal.  Bon appetit, baby!

The pre-pandemic per-person US SNAP *supplemental* food benefit for those with no income is ~$203/month, not $100.  So the entire annual DOD budget could theoretically feed the planet for something less than two weeks using that baseline.

[birdguy 3,943]

Education is a life long venture.  And there are many ways to take advantage of it.

I went to a parochial grammar school and 2 3/4 years at a Jesuit high school.  I did my last year at a public high school and graduated in 1951.  I think my 12 years of education, most of it in Catholic schools, in the 1940s to early 1950s is equivelant of a general arts degree today.

But my education didn't stop there.  USAFI (US Air Force Institute) has a multitude of correspondence courses you can take.  I took courses in military justice, aircraft mechanics, several history courses.  Went I went to Japan  I took advantage of on base University of Maryland classes in Education and history.  My military schools included EOD school, aircraft armament school, special electronics school (which included seismology), weather observation school and weather forecaster school as well as short TDY schools in supply and instructor school.

And after I retired I became a Great Courses student paying for courses mostly in History but also in art and literature.  Right now I'm taking a course in Famous Romans...short biographies of the Romans who forged the Roman Empire (Markus Tulius Cicero being my favorite).  I've been educating myself all my life.

I have a high school diploma but no college degree.

Funny story...when I retired from the Air force (National Guard) I gathered up all my college course transcripts, my service schools, my correspondence courses and took them t the education office because I through I had enough for an associates degree.  I had more than enough.  But I was lacking a course in English Composition.  I told them I was a published writer, why do I need to take a course in English Composition?  I was told I could test for it.  But there's the rub.  I didn't think I could pass the test because I don't know a preposition from a hanging participle.  So I declined.  I never learned to write, I just always knew how.

But the point is if you apply yourself you don't need a degree.  A degree makes the door open easier for you.  But what happens on the the other side of the door is what's important...demonstrated ability.  I've seen new grad engineers come into the shop and just do the minimum and they skate by on their 'degree'.  But it's demonstrated ability than gets you ahead.

If you can learn you get where you want to go if you self educate yourself.  I once applied for job and was asked if I knew anything about digital electronics.  I told them I did.  They told me to come to work the following Monday.  I went to the library and got several books on digital circuity and after faking it in the ab for a week I knew all I had to know for an entry level job and after a few months I got promoted to development engineer (Non degreed).

When you graduate from high school and go to work or go on to college and get a degree it doesn't stop there.  Learning is a life long endeavor.  Take whatever courses are available (lots of them are) and never stop learning.

I know I've been rambling on here but I really feel it's so important to keep learning.

 

Edited November 7, 2021 by birdguy

[Luke 782]

35 minutes ago, w6kd said:

Student loans may be non-dischargeable, but they are widely defaulted-upon nonetheless, and the cost of paying the banks for those defaulted loans falls on the taxpayers.

You have made this assertion, can you please show me the figure? My understanding is that private student loans are just that, private. If that's not the case, how much does the government spend bailing out the lenders, and why? That's corporate welfare.

36 minutes ago, w6kd said:

I had the graduate of an expensive private college tell me with a straight face that the US DOD budget could feed three square meals a day to the entire world population (if you do the math, those meals would have to cost something like a few hundredths of a cent each).  I see more and more young people that leave college thoroughly indoctrinated, but unable and/or unwilling to support an argument with anything resembling logic, reason, critical thought, or even back-of-the-envelope 6th-grade math skills.

I did the math. The DoD budget for FY21 is around $733 billion, which given a world population of around 7 billion works out to 28 cents a day, or 9 cents a meal. Given the number of people who live on less than $1 a day, not just eat, this is on the edge of plausible. Even in my expensive First World living conditions, there are more than a few meals I can make for family that have vegetables, protein and carbs that go for around $1.50 for a family of four. In a lower cost of living area with additional economies of scale? It's got a Mythbusters rating of "plausible". (It gets even better when you throw in the VA budget. That's another $270 billion.)

So even this history graduate (with a 2.3 GPA!) can do the math properly, and most importantly I didn't reject the idea out of hand because I disagreed with the premise or the speaker. 

Cheers