(02-13-2016 01:33 PM)slycat Wrote: (02-12-2016 10:40 AM)tx.state Wrote: (02-12-2016 09:49 AM)slycat Wrote: (02-12-2016 08:32 AM)Louisiana99 Wrote: (02-12-2016 08:23 AM)rokamortis Wrote: From what I've read they governor said they would make the schools eat the shortfall and not charge students / families.
I think a program like that is great, but they will have to institute some changes if they want to keep it. I read where the minimum GPA for one of the programs is a 2.5. In Georgia the state had to raise the GPA from a 3.0 to I believe a 3.2 a couple of years back. Free college for most is a great ideal but not practical.
Free college for everyone is not a good idea, it will devalue a college education more than it already is. First off, nothing is free....somebody is always paying for it and things that are free have no value.
Triple the cost of college so only a few can attend and really make those degrees worth something.
I'm not saying free college is the right answer, but much more affordable college is. Everyone has a right to college not just those that can afford it.
No, not everyone has the right to free or subsidized higher education. It is neither a legal right, nor a natural right. It is an entitlement.
Entitlements must be paid for, and there is no such thing as free, it is only a question of who is paying for it.
In the case of higher education, it is largely subsidized by poor people (through taxes) who are not and have not gone to college. They are not only subsidizing the middle class, but they helping the middle class increase their advantages over the poor.
The cost of college is way too high. It needs to go back down. No more fancy resort dorms. Holding kids back from college is only hurting the country
Part of the problem (and I'm very liberal) is that the only solution to rising tuition appears to be 'add more loans'. I suggest a radical solution to tuition affordability.
Don't raise the subsidized loan limit - The bankruptcy protection portion of the loan guarantees are the problem. It provides no incentive to colleges and universities to hold costs down and to ensure that its graduates actually leave trained to earn enough to pay back the debt. Here's what I'd do.
1) Set a cap on taxpayer subsidized grants and loans. Ensure that that the cap can only be raised in coordination with the rate of inflation.
2) Combine that with an end to the protection from bankruptcy protection for educational debt in certain scenarios. Those scenarios would include: if a school's degree/major combination results in a overly large percentage of deferments due to graduate student's inability to pay after a certain number of years.
3) Ensure that the bankruptcy exemption for student loan defaults only applies to private schools that hold a low deferment rate and that those loans can only be for 2x the regulated limit on state supported schools (and are also subject to the limit on cap raises)
In that way, the ultimate recipient of the student loan funding/taxpayer grants will have a strong motivation in ensuring that it produces a graduate that can pay back those loans. And that if they want to continue raising tuition/fees at 20 percent a year, then they're going to have to find some private sector way to ensure that people can pay for it (and without bankruptcy protection for the issuer, that debt will be very expensive).
Problem solved. Bye-bye GWU (my alma mater) charging 75k a year. Bye-bye Liberty Online/Online Test Drive University. Bye-bye 20 percent a year increases.
There would be costs. First, there would need to be some (thinking small) offsets for the fact that schools that serve underserved communities with historically high default rates. Secondly, Universities would probably dump a lot of liberal arts degrees/reduce admissions for unrenumerative degree programs. Caution would need to take place to ensure that the result of this is not racial discrimination in university admissions. Perhaps the evaluation of the program default rates could take into account the socio-economic status of the borrower.
I've become convinced that adding easy money with little accountability to the ultimate recipient of those funds (the schools) to our university system is the problem.