Free Community College???
 

Obama proposes free community college program no word on whether is will use money from "his stash" that hasn't been used to pay that one ladies mortgage and gas for her car..... Now maybe she can go to CCRI and join the 40 thousand other unemployed graduates of their massage, mental counselors and physical therapists.......

Sorry venting on CCRI Newport, looked to see if they had anything for my daughter to take to that could be used for URI engineering degree to cut costs, but it mainly seems they don't offer much in coursework besides massage, physical therapy, or mental counseling courses. For such a nice complex the have virtually nothing to offer.

CCRI Warwick however seems to offer decent classes.

I think he was getting guidance from the Castro brothers.

Funny how they call it "Free". Do all the professors donate their time? Free for who?

i went to a free community college
when living in San Diego @ first
to earn an extra credit i needed.

i took a class and the students were
being asked to spell the word Boat
and couldn't do it.

after that i went wild

Just another possible scam from the left to buy votes.

Actually, it follows models from Tennessee and one other state I can't recall...

I'm actually not for it; I'd like to see the ability to get a course or two paid for (provided you pass; I think the 'free' bill had 2.5 GPA min). I worry about degree devaluation. I'd actually like to see a move to fund some of the voc-tech programs...

The Tennessee plan is totally a state program. Following that model is the proper way. That would maintain the philosophy of the states being a laboratory of experiment. States can choose, according to what they think best for their demographic and individual needs. When the flexibility of choice is removed and all must follow federal guidelines, the sphere of experimentation is greatly reduced. What generally happens with federal programs is they remain in near perpetuity. And they become increasingly more expensive as new fixes must be provided, especially more money, in attempts to overcome the problem of obsolescence and lack of competition due to the static, rather than experimental, structure.

Federal programs are, usually, not allowed to fail. Federal pockets are never empty. Continuing entrenched and expanded federal power is the nature of the beast. States have a greater need to change, and innovate, as well as discard that which fails since budgets are necessarily more disciplined at the state level than the federal. That the federal government can look to states for models attests to the wisdom of maintaining state sovereignties over their internal business. And education should be, as originally intended, state business, not federal.

States other than Tennessee have community college programs. There is always a necessity for states to review their programs and revise or remove them according to the success or failure in terms of their stated goals. It is at the state level that education is a dynamic process rather than a static one. And they have always looked at other state models for ideas, sometimes improving them. The cooperative/competitive symbiotic relationship of federalism, a republic of sovereign states, is dynamic and is far more likely to avoid the stagnancy of centralized planning.

And . . . oh what the hell, I'll go ahead and say it . . . STATE CONTROL OF EDUCATION IS CONSTITUTIONAL. In my opinion, this Obama plan is just another little transfer of power from states to the federal government. As well as a ploy to get votes.

Well, nothing is really free, someone/somewhere is paying for it. IMO if you want free college you need to do something for your country like join the military and get it through the GI bill.

How bout instead of pushing for free community college programs that will probably suck and not have any kind of transfer value to other institutions, we try to reduce the overall cost of existing colleges...

No, you can't ask those professors (Brian excluded) to be under the gun like the rest of us ;)

Yup. All daisies and roses at a state school... now at a private school with endowment... :cheers2:

Sounds like a much better idea!

As long as the market for education remains distorted by third party government money, that is not possible. The only way to bring education cost down is either having it operate under a market system driven by market forces, or to have the government become the sole provider and totally socialize it. We are trending toward the latter.

We are in a transitional stage, heading toward elimination of market forces deciding prices and toward totally socializing "public" institutions. And those things of an economic nature which are still considered "private" will eventually become "public," including property. This has been happening slowly with intermittent spurts (in times of "crisis"), and when a "tipping point" is reached, it will happen quickly. Witness what has been happening to health care.

Banking, and industry are trending in that direction. As business in general becomes more consolidated into larger conglomerates, "economies of scale" as Spence likes to put it, it will become more difficult for smaller business enterprises to cope with the expanding regulatory requirements that government imposes on the economy, and which far more benefit big business. The symbiotic relationship between big business and big government will evolve to the point where government and business are one. Most likely, "small" businesses will, in order to capitalize and compete, become part of a franchise system under the umbrella of large corporations.

Education and health care will be totally "public" in nature and wages and costs will be rationalized and strictly controlled by government. Wages will not fluctuate significantly from one system to another in order to bring equity to the public marketplace. There will be no disputes over price gouging or "fairness" since all will be provided with similar benefits, wages, and opportunity to be given comfortable employment.

Yes, and what is taught in our new government institutions will be whatever the government dictates. Another Freedom lost.
Time to wake up before they control everything from cradle to grave.

Panem Today, Panem Tomorrow, Panem FOREVER...

CHIP installation @ Birth -----> CHIP removal @ the Morgue

I honestly believe once they make it "Free" the "value" of any degrees (associates or certificate programs) won't be worth a damn.

Soon one of these "free" certificate or 2 yr degree will qualify you to be the assistant manager of the French fry machine and McDonalds and not much else.

But this is one way for our leader to attempt to make good on promises to help the uninformed voters of lower income by offering them free goodies.

BTW--as I said before, we agree on more than you think. This is one of those under-the-radar instances in which you and I agree. Not necessarily in form, but in function.

Like you, sort of, I would prefer technical schools to be part of the states' programming. K-12 formats could be restructured so that an extended two year "voc-tech" program could be an option to going to "college." Or, the program could be incorporated as an option to choose in finishing the final two years (grades 11-12).

Too much time and money have been wasted on the "investment" in so-called higher education and its cranking out of graduates who can't find the jobs they think their costly schooling entitles them. And much of that distortion is due to the cozy relationship between institutes of higher learning and the easy money available to them from federal government funded programs. It is no matter to the schools, and apparently not to the government, that thousands of kids are yearly run through the mill of non-technical studies in order to fill economic needs which don't exist. This is a utopian anti-market process. And it leads to typical utopian failure and stressful distortion of the market. But a substantial "transfer of wealth" is provided to the education industry. Market trading, value for value, is not accomplished. The schools are enriched, and the excess students are impoverished.

I am not at all against liberal arts education. Enough of it should be introduced in K-12 to inspire those who want more to pursue it on their own or in universities. The pursuit of beauty and pure knowledge is, to me, the "highest" learning. That requires motivation to learn for its own sake. But such motivation is not nearly as common as those who are driven to matriculate into colleges and universities by government propaganda and pressure. And government's insistence that such waste be paid for by public money rather than private (FOR EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY) takes the pressure off of business to "invest" in the education it requires. Business should depend less on government and more on itself to train those which it would employ. The GM Tech Center is a very successful model.

You said that you worry about "degree devaluation." Yes, too many degrees makes them worth less. And when learning is valued firstly as an obligation to the state, its personal value is degraded. And when it is "free" its market value drops. And when it is pursued in order to get a job but the job is not available there is no equitable trade and the market is distorted.

I think it is best to get the federal government out of "investing" in education with wads of inflationary debt and leave it up to states and localities, and ultimately to individual and business responsibility. Education, both pure and practical, would be better for that.

I know everyone hates Anne Coulter, but this is an interesting take by her on cost of higher ed.

http://humanevents.com/2015/01/14/as...tm_campaign=nl

I copied the article for easier reading:

As long as Obama brought up the cost of college…


Ann Coulter | Wednesday Jan 14, 2015 7:29 PM


I gather from Obama’s “free” community college proposal that his plan for dealing with the Republican Congress over the next two years is to throw out ridiculously expensive ideas no one has ever heard of before, and then denounce Republicans for being naysayers.

Community college is already incredibly inexpensive. The only thing that will jack up the price is making it “free.” How about a big federal program to provide every American with free toilet paper? Coincidentally, that’s about all most college degrees are good for these days.




Obama’s moronic proposal has presented the GOP with a fantastic opportunity. Since he brought it up, how about Republicans get to the bottom of why college is so expensive?

The cost of a college education has increased by more than 1,000 percent only since 1978. Nothing else has gone up that much — not health care, consumer goods or home prices. The explosion in college tuition bears no relation to anything happening in the economy.

Would anyone argue that colleges are providing a better education today than in 1978? I promise you: People coming out of college in the ’50s knew more than any recent Yale graduate — unless we’re only counting knowledge of sexual practices once considered verboten.

They’re teaching gender studies, ethnic studies, moral equivalence and hatred of America. Did the Japanese Really Start World War II or Did We? It’s worse than not reading Shakespeare. They’re reading Shakespeare for homosexual imagery. As Yale professor Daniel Gelernter says, colleges are “threatening to become an elaborate, extremely expensive practical joke.”

The fact that 80 percent of Weathermen — the violent ’60s radicals — are full college professors tells you all you need to know about the state of higher education today.

The cost of college spirals continuously upward not because the product has gotten better — it’s gotten much, much worse — but because college loans are backed by the taxpayer.

The government is chasing its tail every time it increases student financial aid. If the government hiked college loans and subsidies by $1 million per student, colleges would promptly raise tuition to: (current tuition) plus $1 million.

Americans are being bamboozled into paying any price for a college degree because they are relentlessly told that if they don’t go to college, their lives will be hell. And they’re told this not only by the colleges, but by the government.

The sales pitch is manifestly false. According to an article by Adam Davidson in The New York Times magazine last June, “(m)ore than half of recent college graduates are unemployed or underemployed, meaning they make substandard wages in jobs that don’t require a college degree.” Evidently, most jobs don’t depend on a degree in women’s studies.

More than a third of college graduates, Davidson says, will never make enough money to repay their student loans.

If any other business made such false claims about a product, there would be massive congressional hearings, media denunciations and prison sentences for the CEOs. A college degree is the most expensive purchase most families will ever make, other than their home.

Right before our eyes, Democrats are colluding with colleges to create a market bubble for an increasingly worthless product, and they’re doing it by making the exact same promise that banks made about home mortgages before the housing market crash: Sure it’s a lot, but it’s an investment in your future!

Instead of hauling college administrators to court, Democrats are active participants in the fraud, acting as Big Education’s carnival barkers. It’s as if the government is telling people: “If you don’t smoke, you’ll never be cool.”

Why is the left not willing to admit that education is an industry, just like Lockheed Martin, Enron or Philip Morris? Democrats love to rail about the high costs of everything else — pharmaceuticals, health care, mortgages, missile systems, contraception and so on. College is a business, too — a cartel that fixes prices, preys on teenagers and lies to consumers.

But liberals won’t make a peep about the College Industrial Complex because college professors are brainwashing students into leftist politics. Every year, another 10 million graduates emerge, hating God, their parents, America and Republicans. For this, parents are spending $50,000 a year.

The education industry is how leftists make capitalists pay for socialism. It was a smart move for cultural Marxists to capture the country’s education establishment. GOOD THINKING, CULTURAL MARXISTS!

It’s not the fault of the students that they’re getting a crappy product at inflated prices. They’ve been lied to by shady education peddlers, including the Democratic Party.

Let’s see if the middle class is more interested in the cost of college tuition or the Democrats’ endless global warming initiatives.

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