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Originally Posted by RIROCKHOUND
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...
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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.