Do you feel that a College Education/Degree should be Free?

[jujube]

The high school I graduated from now has a "University High School" division on a separate campus. The students who are admitted to this program spend their junior and senior years earning an Associate of Arts degree from a highly-regarded small college. There is no extra cost for this. Tuition, books, etc. are paid for by the school district. Upon graduation with a required grade level, students are automatically accepted at that college as a junior. Of course, the college junior and senior years are at the student's expense, but wow! two years of college for free. The A.A. also transfers to other schools.

So, you have:

#1 - A big leg-up on a college education for a bunch of students.
#2 - More room in the "regular" high school for students who are going into trades or other disciplines.

 

[Ameriscot]

I think community college should be free.

Scotland and other countries in the EU have free university education up to Bachelors. My stepdaughter got her first degree free, then paid for a post grad degree.

When I got an inheritance from my dad in 2008 I set aside a large amount for college for my granddaughter. I expected her to be my only grandchild (so my son said) but now that she has a sister the money will be split in two. I also have 529's for both of them.

 

[Butterfly]

One thing that definitely needs work is a stronger high school education/diploma. High school students are coming out too specialized in major & mindset. They've been sold a bill of goods like one can do what ever they want in life, even worse they are entitled to do it. A high school diploma should represent a more diversified and fundamentally sound individual. Students need to be taught the value of a diversified resume vocationally & academically. That means bringing back things like shop, home economics along with math, reading & science for everyone regardless of how good they are at it. A high school graduate should have enough fundamentals that all they have to do is decide what to do and go to school for it. Now it's not uncommon for students to waste a year & money in remedial course work in something they should've left high school with.

Agree. When I was still working, we used to try to hire high school seniors to help out in the office after school or during summers. We found that almost NONE of them had anything that remotely approached a decent work ethic -- i.e., when you are at work, you are supposed to actually work, not be texting or messing with your i-pod, and that almost none of them had decent basic communication skills -- spelling, sentence construction, grammar. I don't mean complicated stuff -- just the ability to write a phone message that made sense or compose a simple literate business letter, like "Dear Mr. Jones: Here are the documents you requested," even when working from examples. Appalling!

 

[The Inspector]

One problem with high school is it free and they have to go.( so it is a Zoo)

In College you need to pass a test to get in and unless the US has an unlimited budget the testing can be used to limit enrollment.

All so free College and no limiting would likely become a Zoo like high school.

More debt for forgiveness would be good and more grants toward needed jobs.

 

[chic]

Makes more sense to me to first figure out how to bring the cost of a college education down before deciding to create more taxpayer burden.

I don't think that will ever happen. The best colleges make you pay through the nose because they know a degree from their institution will be more valuable when it comes to job searching. It's the reward ratio.
But I do think the US needs to educate its young people or be prepared to support them throughout their lives. It would be interesting to see how this could work or not. Would a community college education be respected enough to provide gainful emmployment when competing with graduates from better colleges and universities. My guess is not.

 

[FazeFour]

I don't think that will ever happen. The best colleges make you pay through the nose because they know a degree from their institution will be more valuable when it comes to job searching. It's the reward ratio.
But I do think the US needs to educate its young people or be prepared to support them throughout their lives. It would be interesting to see how this could work or not. Would a community college education be respected enough to provide gainful emmployment when competing with graduates from better colleges and universities. My guess is not.

To the contrary, I believe that, as with healthcare, taxpayers will insist on finding a way to reduce the cost of education when they get tired of paying for it while tenured professors become fat-cats and certain departments bloat even while lacking development that benefits the students. Community colleges are an employed person's first choice when they want to increase their earning potential in a filed relative to the one they are in, and to unemployed people who want to enter a filed that doesn't require four years or more of college/university. In addition, apprenticeship is the way into well paying jobs that will exist for as long as Americans rely on affordable electricity, working plumbing, good roads, well-constructed homes, stuff made of metal, and etc. We need to get off the degree addiction.