Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion The price is too high!

aquinas, for clarity... not sure whether you are, or are not, in favor of free tuition at US public universities? From my understanding of your posts, you are.

Would you please share the state of college tuition in Canada?
In this post upthread, you mentioned tution was lower in Canada. What do you attribute this to?

For clarity, when you say "quantitatively evaluating", do you mean researching/discovering something which is not yet known?

https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2013/2013183.pdf (for the numbers)

My understanding is that if we redirected all state and federal spending on private and public universities solely to public universities that we could presumably fund them for free or at least make them significantly less expensive.

Here's an Atlantic article that attempts to explain how.
https://www.theatlantic.com/busines...ending-a-penny-more-on-education/273801/

There are many US taxpayer-funded programs which do this.

It is my understanding that you reside in Canada Do you pay taxes to fund the US government?

Do I understand correctly that you are in favor of free tuition at US public universities?
And other financial supports as well?

Yes, I'm aware of many that have.

There are many options available for becoming upwardly mobile in US society, most involving struggle and sacrifice, and developing internal locus of control.

As to the research links, aquinas, please remember that correlation does not imply causation. Do you have studies which go beyond correlation to prove causation? Perhaps we have come full circle, and not advanced understanding,as this seems to repeat earlier posts seeking clarification...

It is my understanding, and I could be wrong, that when only public schools/universities were taxpayer funded, some segments of the population raised the issue of affordability (lack of access) at private institutions... leading to taxpayer funding for various private institutions.

That would be new information to me (so if you have a link, I'd appreciate it) but it's also probably harkens back to a time when a high school education was sufficient to enter more industries at an entry level. And the cost of college, public or private, was much more in line with the ability of students to self-fund a decent portion thereof.

A strong argument for reducing the cost of public universities is precisely that the current public high school education curriculum does not prepare the average American high school student to actually enter most industries. So, a responsible society has 2 choices.

1) Overhaul pre-college public education such that the students are employable upon graduation; or

2) Subsidize the cost of public university education to accomplish the same goal.

Failing to do either means that we're wasting the money spent on public, pre-college, education since it's largely insufficient for the needs of those it's "educating".

Since public school education prior to college is largely funded by state and municipality level funding decisions, this means thousands of independent entities (13,506) being asked to suddenly align education goals. You have a better chance of accomplishing the goal at the college level and if you can do it simply by re-allocating existing spending instead of creating new spending, it's the better financial option as well.

Unfortunately, no link, therefore I offered that I could be wrong in my recollection.

By needs, do you mean for the students to be workforce ready?

Ironically, in past generations, many children were "workforce ready" as paper boys, store clerks, lifeguards, etc while in middle school and high school. Rather than specialized school programs, they had strong work ethic, a desire to earn on-the-job, and to succeed.

Some may see the needs of the students we are educating as being a need for liberal arts education.

No, I think that's too narrow a definition of the value of education.

But we've all read enough to know that for many students graduating from American high schools they are not workforce ready...nor are they college ready...nor are they adequately prepared for a variety of life skills, such as basic financial literacy.

So whether they're looking for job, headed to college or simply going to just "live", they're not adequately prepared across the board.

Workforce readiness takes on more significance at the college level since part of the assumptions that many college bound kids make is that their educations will prepare them to step into jobs that pay back the cost of that education.

Sure, but in the 21st century those jobs don't exist and the presence of their modern equivalents are declining.

Some may say that this not the purview of the government school system, but rather teaching which has historically taken place in families, and may best still take place in the family.

However discussion of high school subjects begins to drift away from the price of college tuition, possibly veering off topic.

While I agree there are many fewer paper boys, I do see many openings for part-time store clerks and lifeguards.

That said, a discussion of availability of jobs for middle school and high school students may begin to veer off topic from college affordability.