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Can you really expect high school students to perform well in online classes? Does it matter? At what point do we put the failure of the student on the student

Can you really expect high school students to perform well in online classes? Does it matter? At what point do we put the failure of the student on the student? Education being unaffordable is a broadly sympathetic position. Not getting an education because you couldn't be troubled to take advantage of a free education is an unsympathetic position. You're giving too much credit to students, they don't know what is best for them. This $100k will be exploited in some way by profit-seeking companies before you have a second to glance back at the money. This plays right into the author's point. It's exploitation to culturally coerce young people into large amounts of debt to purchase a degree in communications or international studies, only to end up tending bar or hauling trash. Instead, under the author's plan, they could have tested the waters of secondary education at 14 or 15, decided it wasn't for them, got a job hauling trash and be a mortgage-free home owner before they're 25.

intopieces 10y ago
>Does it matter? At what point do we put the failure of the student on the student? Education being unaffordable is a broadly sympathetic position. Not getting an education because you couldn't be troubled to take advantage of a free education is an unsympathetic position. Sympathy is besides the point. Look at the bigger picture: if US citizens are unprepared for the jobs the world economy demands, the country fails economically, putting it in the position to be exploited by others. Education is important. This weird attitude that college is worthless somehow is not illustrated in the numbers: earning potential, mate selection, general career advancement.
- toast0 10y ago
  College clearly has value for those who graduate, although sometimes not much compared to what they paid (in dollars, and opportunity). A bigger issue with '100% college' is the dollar and opportunity cost for those people who attend college and don't graduate. I've known many people that just didn't get much benefit out of their year or two of failing out of college, which also cost them thousands of dollars.
landryraccoon 10y ago
The point of education (or public policy in general) is usually not to assign moral blame. You can personally assign blame to anyone you want, but society has a harder problem : maximizing good outcomes. That means policy has to account for people that are lazy, people who have bad intentions, people who are stupid, and so forth. Society can't pretend those people don't exist even if you can, because if they end up uneducated, jobless and ignored they will just cause huge problems later. While you might feel good about blaming them for those problems, wouldn't it be better to prevent them in the first place? It is better to provide the best possible educational track that we can and try to make sure they have a viable career or work path open to them.

intopieces 10y ago

>Does it matter? At what point do we put the failure of the student on the student? Education being unaffordable is a broadly sympathetic position. Not getting an education because you couldn't be troubled to take advantage of a free education is an unsympathetic position. Sympathy is besides the point. Look at the bigger picture: if US citizens are unprepared for the jobs the world economy demands, the country fails economically, putting it in the position to be exploited by others. Education is important. This weird attitude that college is worthless somehow is not illustrated in the numbers: earning potential, mate selection, general career advancement.

toast0 10y ago
College clearly has value for those who graduate, although sometimes not much compared to what they paid (in dollars, and opportunity). A bigger issue with '100% college' is the dollar and opportunity cost for those people who attend college and don't graduate. I've known many people that just didn't get much benefit out of their year or two of failing out of college, which also cost them thousands of dollars.

landryraccoon 10y ago

The point of education (or public policy in general) is usually not to assign moral blame. You can personally assign blame to anyone you want, but society has a harder problem : maximizing good outcomes. That means policy has to account for people that are lazy, people who have bad intentions, people who are stupid, and so forth. Society can't pretend those people don't exist even if you can, because if they end up uneducated, jobless and ignored they will just cause huge problems later. While you might feel good about blaming them for those problems, wouldn't it be better to prevent them in the first place? It is better to provide the best possible educational track that we can and try to make sure they have a viable career or work path open to them.