7 ms·

Education should be cheap for everyone, otherwise this will only get worse. Additionally everyone that has finished High School should be accepted into any sta

• jMyles 10y ago
  Some state universities are under such incredible demand; your plan will require building many new ones. Which, in relative terms, is not that hard: simply re-purpose state prisons.
  • nashashmi 10y ago
    It will be less labor intensive and more fruitful to build new schools. Maybe prisons can serve as dorms.
    • emehrkay 10y ago
      Could you imagine spending any time in a building that was originally designed to be a prison? Aren't those things made to break spirits and punish people simply by being in it? Have you ever entered a space and felt uncomfortable simply because it doesn't have windows or the walls are barren or it is just "cold"? We'd probably see a lot more drop outs if prisons were repurposed as dorms. Shit, some new schools are designed with the same brush as these prisons and we can probably easily predict the success/failure rates of students coming from them.
      • nordify 10y ago
        Both Sweden and Finland have hotels in the capital city center which are former prisons. According to reviews they are well regarded.
      • lovich 10y ago
        Many of the colleges I had visited and the one I went to had prison like dorms. It seems to be the default type of building to construct whenever there is an unexpected increase in students and they have to put as many people into a small place as possible. I know the room I shared with another student in college was smaller than some prison cells.
  • xorfish 10y ago
    Make the courses harder to pass. If you filter out a lot of students early on, you don't need to build new ones.
    • CaptSpify 10y ago
      I'd argue that the goal should be to get more people into colleges, rather than filtering more people out
      • maxerickson 10y ago
        Why? People going to college should consider it a valuable use of their time, not a necessary credential for entering the workforce. Guess which of those I believe drives college admissions right now. Of course many careers will benefit from a college education, but here in the US we have long since surpassed that number of people attending college.
        • CaptSpify 10y ago
          > Why? Because education is important, and our society is helped by everyone having access to improve their lives. I don't want to get into an automation discussion, but I personally believe that it will be even more important in the next few decades. > People going to college should consider it a valuable use of their time, not a necessary credential for entering the workforce I completely agree! But I think that is a separate problem. I'd love to go to school for things completely unrelated to my career. I don't think college should necessarily be easy, but getting into it should be. I personally believe that encouraging people to further educate themselves, especially "non-intellectuals"* , is a great way for everyone to benefit. IME, most people who skip college aren't skipping it because they are dumb, but because they don't have the resources to attend easily. In my own experience: High-school wasn't reflective of my current educational desires. I want to attend more college classes, but don't have the resources to do so. I live a pretty simple lifestyle, and if college isn't easily accessible to me, I can't see how it's accessible to people with kids, two jobs, etc * : I don't know how else to phrase that without sounding condescending. If someone has a better wording, let me know.
• ivl 10y ago
  I'm not sure high school completion would reflect well on that. We already have a significant number of people not finishing college and university. Wasting resources on more profs doing remedial teaching wouldn't do any good. High schools need higher standards, and colleges should probably accept fewer students.
  • maxerickson 10y ago
    Yeah, the first 2 semesters mentioned by the grandparent should be readily available to high school juniors + seniors.
  • xorfish 10y ago
    The ETH Zurich works that way. After you finished high school you can go there. (I'm not sure, but there might be some exception where you need to pass an exam) Depending on the course, 2/3 of the students will be gone after two semesters.
    • ivl 10y ago
      I just don't see how that's a good model. Make high school a little harder and let the degree have some worth, and have it so it's only 1/3rd or less that don't continue after the first couple semesters. In the context of the US post-secondary education is just too expensive to have such low standards. It probably works better in countries with low individual costs on education, but even then I'd want standards in place that are high enough not to need so many resources used to remove people who definitely don't belong there.
      • phlo 10y ago
        It seems more meritocratic, to me. The bar to enter is low, and the criteria for continuing their studies is proficiency in the subject at hand, not standardized test scores, extracurricular activities in high school or the best-written application essay. On a side note, ETHZ (and other Universities in Switzerland) charge some $500-1000 per semester, and taking on student debt is rare. This way, by dropping out, students mostly only lose the invested time and don't face potential bankrupcy.
• Retric 10y ago
  Education is a prestige game which you can't win. Banning school names from resumes would be far cheaper and more useful if you want to level the playing field. Companies already avoid asking about marital status or children etc, this could easily be added to that list.
  • acomar 10y ago
    There's a difference. You aren't forbidden from listing your marital or child-care status on your resume, companies are forbidden from asking you about it. Banning applicants from disclosing their school would be a rather different step.
  • sulam 10y ago
    Amusingly people from 'elite' schools often will not say where they went to school by name in casual conversation. This seems to be especially true for east coast schools that are particularly elitist (a subset of the Ivies). This gets especially absurd when they say something like "oh, I went to school in New Haven" (Yale people do this semi-reliably). In other words, there is a signaling and counter-signaling mechanism here. An investment banker saying they went to school in Philly is expecting you to understand they went to Wharton, and the only acceptable clarifying question is something like "oh, undergrad or for your MBA?" Asking me not to say I went to an Ivy on my resume is fine -- I can disclose it in 50 other ways that will be obvious to the people who care and much harder to censor. Instead my practice is to literally not look at people's resumes. This isn't perfect -- some co-workers will choose to ask about a project listed on the resume they are interested in, and I don't think that's a horrible idea usually. I simply don't like the assumptions I start to generate when I read people's resumes.
    • foobarian 10y ago
      My experience is it's out of not wanting to appear elitist or boastful when talking with people who went to other schools. As soon as the name comes out there is an almost hostile change in attitude e.g. "ah look we got a 1-percenter here to take our jobs".
• pitt1980 10y ago
  is it actually the education that's not cheap these days, or merely the credentialing? seems like cheapening the credentialing might be a better way to attack this problem
  • rbcgerard 10y ago
    the classroom costs are not that bad, but all of the school administration, facilities (gyms, concert halls, etc), etc. that are out of control. This is a great study if you want to learn more: http://www.bain.com/Images/BAIN_BRIEF_The_financially_sustainable_university.pdf http://www.bain.com/Images/BAIN_BRIEF_The_financially_sustai...
• cmurf 10y ago
  This includes trade schools. The U.S. doesn't have a very good formality for matching high school students with particular trades, there are few public trade schools, and essentially no public funding.
  • protomyth 10y ago
    If you want to go to a trade school, a lot of tribal community colleges are certified by the state[1] they are in as vocational schools and are always looking for students. Tribal community colleges tend to be dual role institutions. 1) I am not going to discuss "sovereignty" as applied to the tribe and just say schools like getting state certification because it makes everything (including grants) easier
• 234dd57d2c8db 10y ago
  Oh so 12 years in the public education system wasn't enough to figure out of someone is prepared and is a good fit for college? Let's spend more money throwing another year (at a much higher cost) to see? Where is this money going to come from? I don't want to pay for this. Look, if you turn college into another highschool, it will become just as worthless. College is already worthless for a large number of people who graduate with worthless degrees. Letting everyone to go to college? Why not just stay in highschool for another year. It will be cheaper and accomplish the exact same thing.
• wang_li 10y ago
  It would be silly to put a bunch of resources into expanding college and university accessibility. In the US, highschool is free and mandatory, but still 20% of students are not graduating. Then there's the portion of those who graduate who have GPAs lower than 3.0. A disappointingly large portion of students do not take education seriously and there is no real societal value in providing those students with four more years of tax-payer supported casual living.
  • gambiting 10y ago
    Just to provide an example how other countries do it - in Poland, all higher education is 100% free for the student. It doesn't matter what and where they want to study - there is nothing to pay. Of course, the problem you mentioned still exists - a lot, if not most of people are not cut out for higher education, and since there is no financial barrier to entry, why aren't people spending 3+ years on taxpayer's dime doing nothing? Well, I believe there are two mechanisms at work here - it's stupidly hard to get into any university, even a relatively poor one. You need fantastically good results on the high school diploma or you are not even considered. Second mechanism - first year is the sieve to rule out who is not cut out for higher education. It has a reputation for being harshly difficult, and it's not unheard of university courses failing or just losing 90% of all students that have enrolled in their first year. If you come to university with an attitude that you are going to party and play games, you will be out by the end of the first semester. Then, if you do reach the end, there's no "grades" on your diploma. You can't graduate with a low score so to speak - you need to have absolutely pristine record to actually graduate. People have finished their 3-4 years and have been re-taking final exams for years just because you need to get something stupid like 90%+ score to actually pass. In comparison, I was shocked by education in country like the UK - in here, first year of uni is almost treated like kindergarten. It's not meant to be difficult. You are not meant to be treating it seriously. It's the year when you are supposed to get the partying out of your system and enjoy yourself. The grades from 1st year don't even count towards your final degree. The only way to fail in 1st year would be to assault a lecturer or something. Then anything above 40% is a pass. "First" is just a paltry 70% of higher. So you can cruise through higher education and graduate, even if your scores were below 50% average.
• jaredklewis 10y ago
  Seems like a huge burden on students. They have invested one year of their life and possibly moved to attend, only to find out they don't cut it. One year of college is worth very little if you don't graduate, but supporting one's self (at a young age with no work experience) can be very hard even if tuition is free. Most states have a variety of institutions that cater to students of different fields and levels. What is the advantage of them all accepting everyone?
  • noobermin 10y ago
    And this is worse than artificially putting in a cost barrier and then cutting out a bulk of those who do get in anyway?
• cafard 10y ago
  Tell me that somebody has finished high school, and I don't know much about how ready he is for college. Tell me which high school, and if I know the area, I might be able to guess. It has been this way for many years. Reforming the primary and secondary education systems in this country would make a great difference. But that is easier said than done.
• p10_user 10y ago
  I don't think this is a good idea. There are many high school graduates that are woefully unprepared for college. It will be a huge waste of time and resources. No point of throwing students in the deep end and let them sink or swim. At a local community college I worked at previously, the most popular math course was college algebra. Many kids right out of high school were in this course with very weak math skills. Now this is only one subject, but I think education needs to be addressed earlier. And just to add, local community colleges are a fairly cheap avenue for just about anyone to take college course (and remedial high school courses like algebra). It shouldn't be the job of a four year college to devote extensive resources to re-teaching material that should have been learned in high school. Let's focus on making education better before college so more people are ready and qualified to enroll after high school.
• mi100hael 10y ago
  > Education should be cheap for everyone This and the "healthcare should be cheap for everyone" positions are so intellectually lazy. "Education" and "healthcare" aren't some intangible pie-in-the-sky assets that are being magically bestowed upon certain individuals. They are services provided by institutions that must pay for high tech facilities and competitive wages in order to retain the best staff, accreditations, and reputation. Those costs have to be paid by someone. A half-baked solution that is subsidized or mandated only reduces competition and drives prices higher.
  • noobermin 10y ago
    It's almost as if we didn't give historically large tax breaks to billionaires and funded two wars in the middle east, bail out banks playing the poorest and most vulnerable using subprime loans, all that stuff was "necessary" and "needed" and no one ever asks who had to pay for those. But, education for all is "expensive," even though it would cost fraction per year for what we spent in Iraq per year.
  • r00fus 10y ago
    Nice diatribe... yet you provide no solution to the problem other than hand waving. How else besides a strong commitment to public funding (possibly even free college like exists in some countries) do you propose to resolve this?
  • xorfish 10y ago
    How can it be that Switzerland has free education, a mandatory health care system and still have a much lower government spending/GDP than the USA?
    • mi100hael 10y ago
      A population less than 3% the size of the US, a GDP per capita 50% higher than the US, and a physical size of about 0.5% of the US. Switzerland has about the same physical area and population as the state of Virginia, only it's about 50% richer by raw GDP. Not exactly a good analog for the entire US.
• nerdponx 10y ago
  University education is a red herring. Vocational education is just as important, if not moreso. There are plenty of people who would benefit more from a major in carpentry or engine maintenance than in communications, psychology, or history
• JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  In my state, they take you if you're in the top 50% of your class. A compromise?