Why Free College is Bad Idea

[Elegiac]

Yes - there are decent social sciences like economics, finance, accounting, etc

Gender studies, media studies, art appreciation, seinfeld studies etc are not that - they have zero academic content

Again, according to your opinion. Which is worth about as much as a gender studies degree.

[Garnier Fructis]

Yes - there are decent social sciences like economics, finance, accounting, etc

Gender studies, media studies, art appreciation, seinfeld studies etc are not that - they have zero academic content

They don't have zero academic content, that's absurd. If anything, you should be arguing that they only have academic content and little to no application in the economy. That would at least be consistent with what you've been writing so far.

[Woadnson]

How harshly do they weed out people? I'm studying mechanical engineering at our royal institute of technology for one year and so far all our courses has had about a 25% fail rate. It is pretty consistent(so far back I can check) so I suppose that they're trying to weed out people, how does this compare to your university?

Sometimes it's simply the work that weeds people out. Doing a coding course in '99 we were told the first year drop out was expected to be 50% with a further 25% in the second year. They were bang on with their predictions.

[Theinquisition]

I went to a community college where they spent a bunch of money and a lot of years constructing a state of the art... administration building, complete with a tower that literally served no purpose except to look nice. And all we had to give up in return was the majority of summer classes, summer classes that a lot of people desperately needed because they also cut the number of slots in those classes during the normal academic year.

The community college I went to just did the same, while they have a shrinking customer base (students)...meh

[Felya]

Oh no! If everyone could get an education, I might actually have to stand out on my merits and not a piece of paper. What shall I do!? Save me Jebus!!

[Super Kami Dende]

I believe there should be some sort of Fail-safe.

You sign a contract going into your degree that says "If I obtain a Degree I get it for free, if I fail I pay back the government for the waste of tax dollars."

People that were serious about getting it would go, people that were just using College as a holiday for 4 years would still pay.

[Felya]

The community college I went to just did the same, while they have a shrinking customer base (students)...meh

My not community college did the same thing, but they used their NYC campus funds, to pay for a far less lucrative westchester campus. Kids protested, which was a bit bigger deal because we were directly across the street from city hall in Manhattan. But, the protest devolved into an excuse to chant 'bullshit' and obviously went nowhere.

[Super Kami Dende]

Again, according to your opinion. Which is worth about as much as a gender studies degree.

Unsure if you are saying his opinion is worth a lot, or agreeing with him that Gender Studies degrees are worthless.

Either way that sentence kind of defeats you.

[Zeek Daniels]

The top private colleges are effectively free for anyone that gets in (unless they're rich), and many state colleges are as well (at least for in-state students). So I don't really buy the idea that employers are going to ignore people who get degrees for free.

You just argued that a "top" private college will provide the same education from an employers point of view that a new "free" college will provide.

[Cthulhu 2020]

If everyone has a degree, the value of the degree is lower, leading to inflation in degrees.
Jobs that used to require a HS diploma now require a bachelor, for the same job.

That's already the case in the US. That's the entire reason state funded education is now being pushed, because otherwise people who don't go to college and incur a huge debt only have the option of very low glass ceiling jobs that start at or near minimum wage.

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Well, id be happy finding the reasons college is so expensive in the first place (i.E. gov't backed loans, bloated administration, demand out stripping supply), and work on fixing those instead of just raising everyone's taxes to throw money at a problem.

Someone posted an analysis of the reason college tuition has risen so much and it was a combination. I'd really have to go digging, and feel too lazy, but the summary is... about 3/4 of the rise in cost is due to the state pulling subsidies from education. When there's a hole in the budget, they pull education funding instead of raising taxes.

In other words the state used to pay a lot more for education out of the budget, and has been gradually pulling out.

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Yes - there are decent social sciences like economics, finance, accounting, etc

Gender studies, media studies, art appreciation etc are not that - they have zero academic content, and zero usefulness

They are pretty much just a way of sending untalented kids to uni if they can't get degrees in science / econ type subjects

There's limited numbers of jobs for these kinds of degrees compared to others, but they're far from useless.

[Garnier Fructis]

You just argued that a "top" private college will provide the same education from an employers point of view that a new "free" college will provide.

No, I'm arguing that discriminating based on whether or not the degree was free or not is an idiotic idea that doesn't even happen now. You skipped the part where a lot of state colleges also do that, and they aren't anywhere near the top. Their graduates still find jobs.

[nyc81991]

You literally said the equivalent to "If everyone was intelligent / educated it would be pointless". No, it would mean you would have a more intelligent, educated and productive society.

[Cannibalus]

It doesn't mean that if it's free, you can try it out like a candy bar or cheese roll. You need to have a backgroup in a specific area of education in order to pass in college.

[Elegiac]

Unsure if you are saying his opinion is worth a lot, or agreeing with him that Gender Studies degrees are worthless.

Either way that sentence kind of defeats you.

What even is irony.

[Mihalik]

Everyone wants college to be free, except no one thinks about the repercussions of everyone having a college degree. If everyone attained a college degree, then the value of a college degree would be worthless and we would be right back where we started. Better stated in the Disney movie

Ah. I see you moved on from -No obligatory elementary education (a previous post of yours) to; Let's make it unreasonably hard to access education.

That is not how free college education works, and welcome to the 21st century where nearly all fields of work are highly specialized and require extensive training and varied skills to perform, only accessible through education.

[May90]

Yes - there are decent social sciences like economics, finance, accounting, etc

Gender studies, media studies, art appreciation etc are not that - they have zero academic content, and zero usefulness

They are pretty much just a way of sending untalented kids to uni if they can't get degrees in science / econ type subjects

You said yourself that you haven't taken those courses. How can you judge their usefulness then?

[Super Kami Dende]

You said yourself that you haven't taken those courses. How can you judge their usefulness then?

By their Economic and social relevance to anyone that actually matters?

[May90]

By their Economic and social relevance to anyone that actually matters?

I don't know anything about art appreciation, but it is pretty easy to think of quite a few practical applications to gender and media studies. Gender studies are important in order to understand the inherent mechanisms genders interact by, and to use them for improving the society. Media studies do the same with regards to how media function.

Saying that these studies are useless is like saying that history is useless: sure, having studied history, you can't build a spaceship with your knowledge - but I don't think I have to explain to you why history is important, do I?

[Garnier Fructis]

By their Economic and social relevance to anyone that actually matters?

Which is funny because in that post, he was judging them on their academic content, and not their economic relevance.

[Super Kami Dende]

Which is funny because in that post, he was judging them on their academic content, and not their economic relevance.

And? I was judging them by what I said.