Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Free tuition at US public Universities?

Also, I have another question. If I'm neither rich nor poor, what does that signify? What majors are permissible THEN? Do I get to go to college at all?

I guess I'm not the target demographic.

I think that this is a very fair-- and true-- observation.

The bottom line is that what higher education means has been subverted significantly over the past 30 years. While I think that interesting, niche areas of study are a fine thing, I also tend to think that most of the time they are better left for graduate study, not undergraduate degree programs. I'm old school that way. STEM is about the only place where that sensibility has been staunchly retained-- and I think it may be no small coincidence that a degree in "physics" still has value as it always has, whereas one in "early-American Queer studies" lacks the punch (and employability) that "Sociology" once had. At the undergraduate level, one simply isn't (yet) prepared to do the kind of focal study, with a wider foundation UNDER that focal study.

There's a reason why my undergraduate degree was more general than my PhD, you know? The one thing supported the other, and while yes, my PhD is in a fairly arcane and not-terribly-generally-useful thing, it's purpose was far more about demonstrating my ability to APPLY what I'd learned as an undergraduate and take it to the limits of what current technology and my own cognitive abilities could bear. It says something about my potential as a person, not necessarily that the subject area IS what I do or can do.

Anyway. Tangent, that.

I think that without rolling back the clock on what we MEAN when we say "higher education" we are going nowhere with higher ed in this country. You simply cannot allow 17-19yo children, as a cohort group, to pick and choose what they are "interested" in knowing. The problem is that they don't KNOW what they don't know. Catering to them as though they are mostly autodidactic is foolish in the extreme, and yet the "student as consumer" model has done just that.

Well, caveat emptor-- we should have thought about it when faculty were sounding the warning in the early 90's about this nonsense. Who knew that narrow, "self-determined" courses of study devised by students wouldn't turn out to be very good, er-- "education" in larger terms?

Well, any PARENT should have known it. There's a reason why we don't allow second graders to "determine" what their curriculum needs to contain. Because the majority of them aren't capable of knowing, much less implementing it for themselves, that's why.

General education cores at universities have existed for a reason. We ignore that history at our peril-- and we HAVE been ignoring it.

Engineers need to learn communication skills (whether they wish to or not) and social workers need to understand enough physics to appreciate policy challenges and be educated voters. Neither group is especially good about recognizing that need at the time.

By this logic, higher education is a commonly-used service, and therefore should be fully funded by the federal government. Regardless of whether you have a degree or not, you benefit from the higher education of others every time you conduct any transaction for goods and services, either in the private sector or the public. People with higher educations designed that product or service, and ensured its delivery.

Likewise medical services, because we all receive several benefits from a healthier population. For starters, there's an economic output increase. We all benefit from herd immunity when everyone is innoculated. Etc.

There is one issue that hasn't been really addressed here though. While I love the idea of "free" college education for the "smart" ones ... the ones who really should be in college, not those who don't have the potential or go there just to have fun and waste couple more years of their life, the highly selective system that I like in Europe can have one huge drawback. It tends to eliminate a lot of highly intelligent kids who have learning disabilities and various special needs. The system looks for the high achieving, perfect in every aspect students. So as much as I'd love to get our boys into free public university, with their issues, I'm thinking our only chance will be the current system and them being able to get enough scholarships and assistance and jobs to be able to afford it.

BUT-- I'd argue (having been in higher ed) that the huge failing of our system of accommodations for special needs is that the world doesn't always continue to offer those accommodations, nor is it obliged to do so. The working world is task-oriented and highly cost- and time-sensitive, so it can't always offer needed accommodations. I'm torn about whether it is a good idea to offer them unilaterally in a collegiate setting for that reason-- it's not that I don't think them necessary. Far from it. It's that it seems to set some students up for later failure by not developing realistic expectations or individual coping methods. Academia is really bad at addressing that issue, preferring to tiptoe around it instead.


A surgeon or air-traffic controller who needs "extra time" for tasks probably shouldn't be in those fields, YK? On the other hand, a writer or researcher who is willing to work 25% more hours (on salary) in order to provide him/herself with that additional time should be allowed to do that, no questions asked. It's really hard to know what things can be worked around with individual mitigation, but that is often what it comes down to in the end, once a student ends up entering the working world. I may not LIKE the fact that my child is forever barred from military service-- and the lifelong benefits that those who serve are entitled to-- but I understand that she isn't suited for it from THEIR perspective.

I'd say that the disparity also points up a huge failing in BOTH systems (ours and the completely meritocratic, high-performance oriented one)-- that is that there really ought to be a pathway that doesn't seem to exist anywhere currently-- one in which the challenges faced by those with special needs, particular challenges with classroom/book learning, so to speak; well, maybe the answer is to provide a pathway that DOES match their strengths, rather than just "leveling" what doesn't by effectively lowering the performance bar or forcing them to go through 10X as much effort to accomplish an impossible task via bizarre work-arounds. This always just seemed downright PAINFUL to me as a faculty member and student adviser; it was effectively pounding square pegs into round holes, and it was just absurd, on some level to me-- I desperately wished that I had some better advice for those students. They worked unbelievably hard (even with accommodations) and their classmates still thought that they weren't doing the same work (and in some cases, they weren't). I have no idea what happened to them once they left college, but I can't think that employers were going to go to the same lengths to accommodate task completion... which means that college had failed them on some level by not preparing them for adult life.



It's not that I don't think that such people have a lot of high potential-- not at all-- just that maybe university education isn't a great way of tapping into that potential to start with. One of the most unique, bright students I ever encountered was one of them, in fact, and it broke my heart to watch that student struggle to be a "mediocre" major... while I could see full well that without the limitations imposed by the environment (and the field as it exists), he would have been much better off.

So that's my perspective. If I had one scholarship to offer, I'd give it to the high-achiever rather than the high-potential student mentioned... but the reason isn't because I don't value the high-potential student with challenges. It's about educational benefit and which of them is more suited to the environment. The high-achievers have demonstrated that they can get a lot out of the setting (well-- okay, this USED TO BE the case, not sure what an ability to take multiple choice tests indicates... ) and those who aren't high-achieving have demonstrated lower probability in that regard. Societally, that's just the way that it goes, pretty much.

Those who aren't well-suited to higher education, though, they need another path to full potential. A secondary education certainly doesn't get most people there-- much less those with truly high potential. As far as I can tell, NO culture has done very well in this regard; some consider them unworthy, some consider them slackers, and nobody really stops to consider what they CAN do-- only what they cannot.


I'm not even sure what the "something else" needs to look like. It probably needs to look like a lot of things, and mostly like life-experience-based credentialing-- but the REAL kind, not the diploma-mill kind. Maybe like the Guild system used to look; respect for experiential learning as much as for BOOK learning.


Mk13, I think that your point really needs highlighting. It's critical; when you look at the numbers, this is between 1-8% of adolescents we're talking about.

Making something free or inexpensive for some people often makes it more expensive for others:

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887324049504578545884011480020
More Students Subsidize Classmates' Tuition
By DOUGLAS BELKIN
Wall Street Journal
Jan. 9, 2014 10:32 p.m. ET

Well-off students at private schools have long subsidized poorer classmates. But as states grapple with the rising cost of higher education, middle-income students at public colleges in a dozen states now pay a growing share of their tuition to aid those lower on the economic ladder.

The student subsidies, which are distributed based on need, don't show up on most tuition bills. But in eight years they have climbed 174% in real dollars at a dozen flagship state universities surveyed by The Wall Street Journal.

During the 2012-13 academic year, students at these schools transferred $512,401,435 to less well-off classmates, up from $186,960,962, in inflation-adjusted figures, in the 2005-06 school year.

At private schools without large endowments, more than half of the tuition may be set aside for financial-aid scholarships. At public schools, set-asides range between 5% and 40% according to the Journal's survey.

...

Most public and private universities pool their financial aid from a variety of sources, including endowments, taxes and state scholarship funds. Additionally, public universities have a host of formal and informal subsidies: humanities students subsidize science students, for example, and out-of-state students subsidize in-state students.

The subsidies are taken by public schools nationwide, but there are no figures on the total and very few by campus. The lack of transparency inside university balance sheets makes it difficult to calculate how much one student is subsidizing another. But at least 13 state universities now list the full amount students pay in tuition set-asides.

...

Seeking to expand their student body, schools have increased the amount of funds they funnel to poorer students. In the 2011-12 academic year, public and private U.S. universities gave away $33 billion in scholarships, up from $23 billion in 2006-07, adjusted for inflation, according to the College Board.

Enrolling more students at schools charging higher tuition has led to an explosion in student debt, estimated at $1.2 trillion. Per-student borrowing climbed 55% in inflation-adjusted dollars between 2002 and 2012, according to the College Board. Students with debt now owe, on average, nearly $30,000.

"We used to believe that public higher education benefited all residents of a state, not only the people who were attending, because the more highly educated workforce meant more economic growth," said Ronald Ehrenberg, director of the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute. "But now our society has moved toward the notion that the people who are paying are the ones who will benefit, so they should pay."

Higher-income public university students in California are taking on debt faster than others. Among students from families earning between $125,000 and $150,000, 39% now graduate with loans, up from 28% in 2005. The average loan amount increased to $19,310 from $13,470.

By comparison, 66% of students from families earning from $25,000 to $50,000 graduated with loans in 2012, down from 68% in 2005. The loan amounts increased to $18,071 from $15,081.

Bostonian: As we've seen elsewhere, the percentage of scholarship money that's going to merit-based (generally associated with high SES) aid has been on a steep incline in order to game the US News rankings, at the expense of need-based aid.

The result being, rich kids who don't need help are capturing a growing percentage of that $33B in scholarship money, so this is somewhat bad journalism. Factor out sports scholarship money as well, and then let's see what portion is actually going to address the financial needs of academic students. My hunch says less than a third.

This cost factor does mean college is more expensive for the rich, who can afford it, and the middle class, who cannot. It doesn't address the overall inflationary insanity, though... just the distribution of suffering for it.

Overall, this is another solid argument for just making it free for all.

A simple and cheap part of the solution would be providing labour market reports free to students and having guidance counselors actually speak meaningfully to students about the probability of success, economic outcomes, and quality of life expected in different professions.

Many friends from my undergraduate years didn't realize they were entering professions with terrible employment prospects. Had they known, maybe they would have chosen to double major to buffer themselves while still studying what they loved. I see fine arts majors studying business as a beautiful example of idealism and pragmatism marrying.

Also, on a more general note, we think of education completely the wrong way, with payment occurring on a front-end basis. There needs to be a tighter link made for jobs outcomes in the financing equation. I predict we'll see student debt securitized by major and class, with differential rates of return by area of study, region. We may even see tuition linked to post-baccalaureate income.

Ultimately, there needs to be a balance between driving market needs and respecting the legacy and integrity of scholarship. Market-based pricing would better align students to current labour market needs, and merit scholarships enable the best students the luxury to pursue a less lucrative field at little cost. A blend of the two is needed. As to whether the blended rates should be paid out of the public purse or out of pocket is a matter of ideological preference-- economic theory could have it go either way.

I support this, but such lending is crowded out by the current system of government-guaranteed loans, which charges all students the same rates and effectively gives the largest subsidies (the difference between a market interest rate and the government interest rate) to the worst students who study the most impractical subjects.

I don't see how financing student debt at significantly higher interest rates is a practical solution to excessive education costs.