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There's at least one pretty fool proof way to defeat this specific kind of fraud. Give tuition waivers rather than grants. Or, of course, just charge less. I w

There's at least one pretty fool proof way to defeat this specific kind of fraud. Give tuition waivers rather than grants. Or, of course, just charge less. I went to LA City 20 years ago. Had a bad experience unrelated to school itself at the first four-year I tried to attend and had to drop out. My parents couldn't actually afford to send me back, but the reported income was still over the threshold to get me enough aid to afford a four-year. So I started at a community college. It was $9 per credit hour at that point. Financial aid was not necessary. I just worked an overnight shift detailing the restrooms at Knott's Berry Farm theme park.

AnotherGoodName 5y ago
I had a fun situation where my university lecturer told me "Myself and other lecturers also work at the local community college teaching the same subjects, it costs $100 per semester there and you can transfer the credit across." So for at least the first year of university i spent almost nothing on tuition. Which was nice for someone who was really struggling back then.
- thebean11 5y ago
  I discovered the strategy of testing out of subjects at the community college then transferring the credit to my university. This worked for many courses for which the university offered no credit by exam.
  - Enginerrrd 5y ago
    I've never understood why I encountered so much resistance to the concept of testing out of subjects during my academic career. I would have even paid for the units, I just didn't get why department heads were so opposed.
    - owly 5y ago
      Yeah. I was lucky enough to have one department head who agreed to testing out and was able to bypass two required courses. It doesn’t make much sense to require courses which the student has already mastered. Only reason is $$$.
      - mixmastamyk 5y ago
        How do you negotiate this? Go talk during some posted office hours? Beginning of semester?
    - macksd 5y ago
      It destroys the idea that you can only get an education that meets their standards from their teaching.
      - thebean11 5y ago
        To be fair, these were very much entry level classes unrelated to my major. I wasn't testing out of linear algebra or something.
    - xmprt 5y ago
      In my experience, I've always learned a lot more during the class than was tested on the exam (except for intro classes). I'd personally prefer easier exams but harder assignments and projects that allow for some collaboration. If you were allowed to test out of classes then the exams would need to be made a lot harder so it includes all the material you should have learned if you took the class.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - csa 5y ago
      The main reason, imho, is because the tests are generally bad, and the folks in charge aren’t quite sure what to do about it. There is quite a bit of stuff that one can learn in a class that might not show up on a test. A few examples: 1. Certain small subject matter specifics that may not be measured on a relatively short timed test. 2. Discovering peer groups to study with. 3. The test structure at the university/department — some smart people get bombed early in their academic careers just because they aren’t familiar with the test type. A well-structured series of courses can be built out assuming that each student in later courses has at least been exposed to certain ideas in earlier courses. If you test out, there is no guarantee that these learners have been exposed to those ideas. Yes, a better test could reveal all of this stuff, but making good tests or test banks is difficult and time consuming, and that assumes that there is some expertise in evaluation/testing in the department faculty (which is rare).
      - minsc__and__boo 5y ago
        This conversation highlights the dichotomy of higher education in the U.S. You're describing the quality of an education, while the previous commenters are describing how to game a title system to get the best brand. These are two different goals/outcomes.
      - vlovich123 5y ago
        I got by cramming for most exams & attended maybe a handful of classes a year. I did graded assignments but not homework. If my university is comfortable handing me an accredited degree in that situation, I would expect it to feel comfortable providing a path to test out.
    - wccrawford 5y ago
      I encountered this, too. In my case, the teacher "forgot" to give me the final for one of them, and only gave me the mid-term. Months later, they "discovered" that and made me take it then to keep my credit. I said, "Give me the test right now." I took it, passed with flying colors. They still didn't look happy. I'm still half-convinced they were trying to trip me up. Their classes were the easiest I have ever taken and I got a 4.0 GPA there. I knew I was just going for the paper, though, so it didn't bother me. Joke's on me. That paper has never actually helped me get a job. sigh
      - handrous 5y ago
        > Joke's on me. That paper has never actually helped me get a job. sigh Knowing that, in an interview, I won't be asked why I don't have a degree, has been at least 90% of the value of mine.
        neoromantique 5y ago
        It might vary by region, but here in Europe I haven't been asked that ever in my 7 years in IT. I don't even have "Education" paragraph in my resume, just skills and experience.
    - abruzzi 5y ago
      The university I went to had an option for the required math course that all students had to take--there was one "self paced" version of the class you could select. You did eveything yourself, and took all the tests for the class at your own pace. You still had to take about 6 or so tests, but you could use it to "test out." I'm not great at math, but this was basic algebra. I took all 6 tests in a row in a single day, and passed the class.
- clairity 5y ago
  yah, note that a $3-5K extension course at UCLA costs ~$300 (including registration and books!) at LACC and is often taught by the same part-time lecturer(s). it’s pretty clever geographic price discrimination though: expensive for rich westsiders who don’t wanna travel much past the 405 and cheap for the working class folk mid-city.
  - jhart99 5y ago
    You could just go down the 10 to Santa Monica community college though even if you didn't want to travel. I think the extension is more about someone putting 'UCLA' on a resume or job application.
    - clairity 5y ago
      yes, SMCC is a good alternative on the westside, and yes, UCLA still has a price discrimination advantage due to its brand prestige (but 10× seems crazy to me).
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  Isn't being a university lecturer a full-time job? How can they also be lecturing at another college?
  - kevinventullo 5y ago
    In general, no. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adjunct_professor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adjunct_professor
  - stonemetal12 5y ago
    It used to be, but has been trending away from that for a while.
  - AnotherGoodName 5y ago
    They almost all have a second job. >A 2015 survey found that 62 percent of adjuncts earned less than $20,000 a year. https://economichardship.org/2019/03/a-bigger-scandal-at-colleges-underpaid-professors/ https://economichardship.org/2019/03/a-bigger-scandal-at-col...
  - IggleSniggle 5y ago
    Sadly, in the US, even the “tenure track” full-time professors are seldom full-time lectures. Their most valued contributions are: - obtaining research grants - department administration - image management They also sometimes teach courses, but more often than not, that duty can be given to a combination of adjunct professors and “graduate teaching assistants,” ie doctoral students. Much of it I’m okay with organizationally except for the money/workload balance. It’s a race to the bottom to overwork and underpay for teaching duties.
- 2ion 5y ago
  ...they do that because they university pays a pittance. No choice but to have as many jobs as doable, as lecturers get paid by the course unit and not a wage.
- Salgat 5y ago
  Community College was the best decision I ever made. Not only did it cost next to nothing, relieving a massive amount of financial pressure, but it took me, a mediocre high school student, and gave me the time and training necessary to build study habits and grades that allowed me to transfer to one of the top engineering schools in the country. The only downside of Community College is that it is not the same "college experience" that you get with University, which I can understand is huge for many. I did to an extent make up for it my junior and senior year after I transferred, but it's not the same.
  - pbronez 5y ago
    True, but that’s probably an upside. The “freshman experience” is many things, but it’s NOT an easy environment to learn basic study skills if you missed that in high school.
  - IggleSniggle 5y ago
    FWIW, I had that college experience, and it was fun, but definitely not worth the cost of admission. On the other hand, junior/senior year at college was fantastic and really formative. So imho you got the best of both worlds.
    - secondaryacct 5y ago
      I think this college experience is really a PR thing. It's what you pay the most for and it is more entertainment than anything else. Most countries' universities seem to work like the community college: it's near your high school, you go there and just study, the dorms for people from other cities are just cheap flat in the surrounding area, and you try to make your campus as small and focused on study as possible. At least that's how it was in France, and my memories or universities are full of technical discoveries, amazing teachers and passionate friends. Not lifestyle changes, but intellectual ones. The drinking games and parties, they stated at 16 and felt not very different at uni, just normal part of youth.
      - IggleSniggle 5y ago
kiba 5y ago
Why all of this? If K-12 is paid for by the government, why not have the government pay for college education too?
- vkou 5y ago
  Firstly, I am supportive of heavily subsidized/free post-secondary education. However, there is a substantial difference between K-12 and post-secondary. K-12 is considered a baseline for society. Everyone is expected to have it. It absolutely makes sense for the government to pay for it. Post-secondary is a different beast. It is not a baseline for society (Even if it is a baseline for white collar-work). Not everyone is expected to have it. People who end up in, on average, better-paying jobs are the primary beneficiaries of cheap/free post-secondary education. There are two ways out of this situation. 1. You can make post-secondary the baseline. Everyone could be expected to have it. This... Is probably a good idea for building better citizens (and, by proxy, a better society), but it is not economically cost-optimal. 2. You can keep post-secondary as a special privilege for the a select few, citing that society, as a whole, benefits from educating its most capable members. In that case, you'd need hard admissions testing/filtering/etc, it should be easy to drop out if you can't perform once you've been admitted, and universities should primarily focus on education, rather than being a four-year, three-star resort for middle-class young people. Neither of these two options would look anything like "College, as it is currently practiced in the United States, but paid for by the government."
  - swiley 5y ago
    College as is practiced in the United states is a front to move money from the people paying for tuition into the pockets of administrators and little more. That needs to stop
  - mullingitover 5y ago
    > People who end up in, on average, better-paying jobs are the primary beneficiaries of cheap/free post-secondary education. Those people also end up paying far more taxes. There's a perfectly selfish reason for government to make college free - it more than pays for itself over the lifetime of the taxpayer. It doesn't make sense for government to pay for ridiculous university overhead (e.g. expensive new buildings, armies of worthless administrators, wildly overpaid athletic coaches, etc) but it's a no-brainer deal for government to pay fully for the real costs college degree. The key is to avoid paying for the non-education expenses.
markus_zhang 5y ago
I believe it's best to give coupons instead of money as aid. Give food/clothing coupons so it's more difficult to purchase alchohol/cigarettes with it. For sure it's still possible but we can add additional measures to increase the difficulties. It's like housing (at least in Canada), they don't give you money to rent apartments, instead they give you specific apartments that you can rent with discounted price.
- rbanffy 5y ago
  > Give food/clothing coupons so it's more difficult to purchase alchohol/cigarettes with it. For sure it's still possible but we can add additional measures to increase the difficulties. These feel like sadistic ways to punish people for being poor.
  - whythre 5y ago
    This is hardly sadism. If you can buy alcohol with food coupons you are not bettering disenfranchised people’s lives.
    - rbanffy 5y ago
      You mean poor people should have no right to have a glass of wine at the end of a stressful day, or to use wine for cooking a nice meal, or use a beer for a stew (it'll soften the meat)? There is a lot of judgement going on here and I wonder if it's not something that comes from a puritanical mindset where pleasure should be denied to those deemed unworthy.
      - newfriend 5y ago
        Beggars can't be choosers. If they want a glass of wine, then they can earn more money to pay for it. Otherwise they can enjoy the free food generously given. They are not "unworthy", but they are also not entitled to anything they want for free.
        5y ago
bastardoperator 5y ago
They already do that (formerly bogw) for qualifying applicants, my nephew enjoyed his free ride at community college before transferring to a UC. https://www.ccsf.edu/california-college-promise-grant-ccpg https://www.ccsf.edu/california-college-promise-grant-ccpg
bluedino 5y ago
>> Give tuition waivers rather than grants. Then you'll just get for-profit colleges to pop up (like Devry, etc)
- angmarsbane 5y ago
  True, I wonder if that narrows the scale of potential fraud and makes it easier to investigate though. Smaller # of fraudulent schools vs. # of fraudulent students
literallyaduck 5y ago
Tuition waivers, grants and student loans artificially inflate college prices. For the first two years of college most classes could be canned video and proctored exams with the exception of labs. Most colleges should be consolidated down and any receiving government money should have creative commons text books. We are overpaying for education. This isn't an attempt to lower teacher salaries, that is another topic. We need fewer general education class teachers and more field specific teachers.
5faulker 5y ago
Tuitions get higher because colleges and universities are giving out "payment options" which some students default on. It's the same model used by insurance companies to manage their risks.
chowells 5y ago
I'm shocked no one has answered the actual question yet: because this is financial aid, not tuition coverage. Financial aid is intended to make it possible to be a student. That means a lot more than tuition. Fees. Books. Food. Rent. Clothing. Car repairs. The general feeling of financial stability that allows you to relax enough to actually learn in your time at school. Financial aid offers so much more than tuition coverage. I don't see how any list of specific benefits could come close to doing as much for allowing a student to feel financially secure.
- pc86 5y ago
  I'm not aware of any financial aid package (outside of maybe some private loans?) that you can apply for with the intent of using that money for car repairs and have it not be fraud. Aside from being fraud it's also incredibly stupid from a long-term financial stability standpoint. Student loans cannot be discharged in bankruptcy and they are there until you pay them in full. You're better off putting your car repairs on a credit card and paying a higher interest rate if the alternative is "the only way out of this $2,000 bill is that you die."
  - yupper32 5y ago
    > You're better off putting your car repairs on a credit card and paying a higher interest rate What!? No! You're willing to pay often 25% interest on a credit card on the off chance you need to file for bankruptcy? (That is, assuming its not fraud, of course)
  - brotoss 5y ago
    > I'm not aware of any financial aid package (outside of maybe some private loans?) that you can apply for with the intent of using that money for car repairs and have it not be fraud. How do you think people pay rent, feed themselves, buy textbooks, etc, while in school? You just aren’t aware how financial aid works
    - prepend 5y ago
      Student loans explicitly can’t be used for car repairs [0]. You can use it for transportation like buses and trains, rent, gas, and meal plans (but oddly not groceries and restaurants). So students typically work jobs, use savings, get help from friends and family. [0] https://www.salliemae.com/blog/what-to-use-student-loans-for/ https://www.salliemae.com/blog/what-to-use-student-loans-for...
ManBlanket 5y ago
Funny how almost every top-down system intended to offset problems similar to tuition costing too much are deeply flawed. They're either rife for exploitation or encourage the wrong incentives. Personally I focused on growing weed until I was 26 and could receive financial aid on my own income, which was $0 of course.
- ZoomerCretin 5y ago
  Healthcare costs are a similar problem. It was solved in every highly developed nation (with one notable exception). The solution isn’t endless money, it’s to use negotiating power and reasonable price controls. The same policy (price controls/tuition hike caps) was very effective in the United States until the states decided to defund higher education and repeal the tuition hike caps.
heavyset_go 5y ago
While community colleges are significantly cheaper, costs are increasing rapidly each year when it comes to tuition.
xputer 5y ago
Somehow "detailing restrooms" has me picturing someone claybar-ing and waxing toilet seats.
DoreenMichele 5y ago
The California community college system is like a hidden Easter Egg in a state that gets a lot of bad press for high rates of homelessness, poverty, etc. Not only is tuition low, some colleges readily take underage students, they have well developed transfer agreements and you can sometimes take classes like Latin through a California community college.
- hardtke 5y ago
  It's even better -- each UC is REQUIRED to take a certain number of community college transfer students. It's not quite the case anymore, but you could apply as a freshman into the guaranteed transfer programs and be guaranteed a spot in the UC of your choice by maintaining a certain easily attainable GPA. I had a friend in high school who was a middling student get a UC Berkeley biomedical engineering degree this way. More recently the program seems way underutilized -- some recent graduates I have known did 2 years in community college and had their choice of UC Berkeley, UCLA, or anywhere else.
  - Salgat 5y ago
    Using community college as a second chance to get into top programs is massively underrated. I was a mediocre high school student and was able to get good grades in community college and had no problem getting accepted to a top engineering university.
  - ChainOfFools 5y ago
    that's called the transfer admission guarantee (TAG) program, and it's a fantastic opportunity to reboot a mediocre academic record. however TAG does not confer eligibility into a number of STEM (and STEM-adjacent, like medicine) programs within many highly competitive departments at the UC system. For example the neuroscience programs at UCSD do not automatically accept TAG applicants, you have to be qualified by the program's own rubric regardless of securing a TAG spot for the school itself.
    - hardtke 5y ago
      Yes, it seemed the G is not as guaranteed as is used to be. I had an interesting chat with a current UC Berkeley student trying to get into computer science department. They have a few classes that you need to do well in to get accepted internally. She was taking one of the classes for the third time, having dropped the course the first two times once she realized her grade was not high enough.
briffle 5y ago
A large Oregon Community College for this academic year: Oregon students: $130 per credit ($96 tuition + $34 universal fee) Online students: $130 per credit ($96 tuition + $34 universal fee) Out-of-state students: $295 per credit ($261 tuition + $34 universal fee) Some classes have additional fees…
curation 5y ago
Or, better yet, make it all free like Finland and Russian and many other parts of the world.
- lanevorockz 5y ago
  Let’s be honest, isn’t it free already ? The Tech / science side has millions of hours of free education online. Much better than anything Finland or Russia together could ever provide. Even certifications are free or as cheap as a few hundreds of dollars. The true problem comes from GATE KEEPED professions where the common people shouldn’t be involved. Think Pharma / Medicine / etc

AnotherGoodName 5y ago

I had a fun situation where my university lecturer told me "Myself and other lecturers also work at the local community college teaching the same subjects, it costs $100 per semester there and you can transfer the credit across." So for at least the first year of university i spent almost nothing on tuition. Which was nice for someone who was really struggling back then.

thebean11 5y ago
I discovered the strategy of testing out of subjects at the community college then transferring the credit to my university. This worked for many courses for which the university offered no credit by exam.
- Enginerrrd 5y ago
  I've never understood why I encountered so much resistance to the concept of testing out of subjects during my academic career. I would have even paid for the units, I just didn't get why department heads were so opposed.
  - owly 5y ago
    Yeah. I was lucky enough to have one department head who agreed to testing out and was able to bypass two required courses. It doesn’t make much sense to require courses which the student has already mastered. Only reason is $$$.
    - mixmastamyk 5y ago
      How do you negotiate this? Go talk during some posted office hours? Beginning of semester?
  - macksd 5y ago
    It destroys the idea that you can only get an education that meets their standards from their teaching.
    - thebean11 5y ago
      To be fair, these were very much entry level classes unrelated to my major. I wasn't testing out of linear algebra or something.
  - xmprt 5y ago
    In my experience, I've always learned a lot more during the class than was tested on the exam (except for intro classes). I'd personally prefer easier exams but harder assignments and projects that allow for some collaboration. If you were allowed to test out of classes then the exams would need to be made a lot harder so it includes all the material you should have learned if you took the class.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - csa 5y ago
    The main reason, imho, is because the tests are generally bad, and the folks in charge aren’t quite sure what to do about it. There is quite a bit of stuff that one can learn in a class that might not show up on a test. A few examples: 1. Certain small subject matter specifics that may not be measured on a relatively short timed test. 2. Discovering peer groups to study with. 3. The test structure at the university/department — some smart people get bombed early in their academic careers just because they aren’t familiar with the test type. A well-structured series of courses can be built out assuming that each student in later courses has at least been exposed to certain ideas in earlier courses. If you test out, there is no guarantee that these learners have been exposed to those ideas. Yes, a better test could reveal all of this stuff, but making good tests or test banks is difficult and time consuming, and that assumes that there is some expertise in evaluation/testing in the department faculty (which is rare).
    - minsc__and__boo 5y ago
      This conversation highlights the dichotomy of higher education in the U.S. You're describing the quality of an education, while the previous commenters are describing how to game a title system to get the best brand. These are two different goals/outcomes.
    - vlovich123 5y ago
      I got by cramming for most exams & attended maybe a handful of classes a year. I did graded assignments but not homework. If my university is comfortable handing me an accredited degree in that situation, I would expect it to feel comfortable providing a path to test out.
  - wccrawford 5y ago
    I encountered this, too. In my case, the teacher "forgot" to give me the final for one of them, and only gave me the mid-term. Months later, they "discovered" that and made me take it then to keep my credit. I said, "Give me the test right now." I took it, passed with flying colors. They still didn't look happy. I'm still half-convinced they were trying to trip me up. Their classes were the easiest I have ever taken and I got a 4.0 GPA there. I knew I was just going for the paper, though, so it didn't bother me. Joke's on me. That paper has never actually helped me get a job. sigh
    - handrous 5y ago
      > Joke's on me. That paper has never actually helped me get a job. sigh Knowing that, in an interview, I won't be asked why I don't have a degree, has been at least 90% of the value of mine.
      - neoromantique 5y ago
        It might vary by region, but here in Europe I haven't been asked that ever in my 7 years in IT. I don't even have "Education" paragraph in my resume, just skills and experience.
  - abruzzi 5y ago
    The university I went to had an option for the required math course that all students had to take--there was one "self paced" version of the class you could select. You did eveything yourself, and took all the tests for the class at your own pace. You still had to take about 6 or so tests, but you could use it to "test out." I'm not great at math, but this was basic algebra. I took all 6 tests in a row in a single day, and passed the class.
clairity 5y ago
yah, note that a $3-5K extension course at UCLA costs ~$300 (including registration and books!) at LACC and is often taught by the same part-time lecturer(s). it’s pretty clever geographic price discrimination though: expensive for rich westsiders who don’t wanna travel much past the 405 and cheap for the working class folk mid-city.
- jhart99 5y ago
  You could just go down the 10 to Santa Monica community college though even if you didn't want to travel. I think the extension is more about someone putting 'UCLA' on a resume or job application.
  - clairity 5y ago
    yes, SMCC is a good alternative on the westside, and yes, UCLA still has a price discrimination advantage due to its brand prestige (but 10× seems crazy to me).
chrisseaton 5y ago
Isn't being a university lecturer a full-time job? How can they also be lecturing at another college?
- kevinventullo 5y ago
  In general, no. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adjunct_professor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adjunct_professor
- stonemetal12 5y ago
  It used to be, but has been trending away from that for a while.
- AnotherGoodName 5y ago
  They almost all have a second job. >A 2015 survey found that 62 percent of adjuncts earned less than $20,000 a year. https://economichardship.org/2019/03/a-bigger-scandal-at-colleges-underpaid-professors/ https://economichardship.org/2019/03/a-bigger-scandal-at-col...
- IggleSniggle 5y ago
  Sadly, in the US, even the “tenure track” full-time professors are seldom full-time lectures. Their most valued contributions are: - obtaining research grants - department administration - image management They also sometimes teach courses, but more often than not, that duty can be given to a combination of adjunct professors and “graduate teaching assistants,” ie doctoral students. Much of it I’m okay with organizationally except for the money/workload balance. It’s a race to the bottom to overwork and underpay for teaching duties.
2ion 5y ago
...they do that because they university pays a pittance. No choice but to have as many jobs as doable, as lecturers get paid by the course unit and not a wage.
Salgat 5y ago
Community College was the best decision I ever made. Not only did it cost next to nothing, relieving a massive amount of financial pressure, but it took me, a mediocre high school student, and gave me the time and training necessary to build study habits and grades that allowed me to transfer to one of the top engineering schools in the country. The only downside of Community College is that it is not the same "college experience" that you get with University, which I can understand is huge for many. I did to an extent make up for it my junior and senior year after I transferred, but it's not the same.
- pbronez 5y ago
  True, but that’s probably an upside. The “freshman experience” is many things, but it’s NOT an easy environment to learn basic study skills if you missed that in high school.
- IggleSniggle 5y ago
  FWIW, I had that college experience, and it was fun, but definitely not worth the cost of admission. On the other hand, junior/senior year at college was fantastic and really formative. So imho you got the best of both worlds.
  - secondaryacct 5y ago
    I think this college experience is really a PR thing. It's what you pay the most for and it is more entertainment than anything else. Most countries' universities seem to work like the community college: it's near your high school, you go there and just study, the dorms for people from other cities are just cheap flat in the surrounding area, and you try to make your campus as small and focused on study as possible. At least that's how it was in France, and my memories or universities are full of technical discoveries, amazing teachers and passionate friends. Not lifestyle changes, but intellectual ones. The drinking games and parties, they stated at 16 and felt not very different at uni, just normal part of youth.
    - IggleSniggle 5y ago

kiba 5y ago

Why all of this? If K-12 is paid for by the government, why not have the government pay for college education too?

vkou 5y ago
Firstly, I am supportive of heavily subsidized/free post-secondary education. However, there is a substantial difference between K-12 and post-secondary. K-12 is considered a baseline for society. Everyone is expected to have it. It absolutely makes sense for the government to pay for it. Post-secondary is a different beast. It is not a baseline for society (Even if it is a baseline for white collar-work). Not everyone is expected to have it. People who end up in, on average, better-paying jobs are the primary beneficiaries of cheap/free post-secondary education. There are two ways out of this situation. 1. You can make post-secondary the baseline. Everyone could be expected to have it. This... Is probably a good idea for building better citizens (and, by proxy, a better society), but it is not economically cost-optimal. 2. You can keep post-secondary as a special privilege for the a select few, citing that society, as a whole, benefits from educating its most capable members. In that case, you'd need hard admissions testing/filtering/etc, it should be easy to drop out if you can't perform once you've been admitted, and universities should primarily focus on education, rather than being a four-year, three-star resort for middle-class young people. Neither of these two options would look anything like "College, as it is currently practiced in the United States, but paid for by the government."
- swiley 5y ago
  College as is practiced in the United states is a front to move money from the people paying for tuition into the pockets of administrators and little more. That needs to stop
- mullingitover 5y ago
  > People who end up in, on average, better-paying jobs are the primary beneficiaries of cheap/free post-secondary education. Those people also end up paying far more taxes. There's a perfectly selfish reason for government to make college free - it more than pays for itself over the lifetime of the taxpayer. It doesn't make sense for government to pay for ridiculous university overhead (e.g. expensive new buildings, armies of worthless administrators, wildly overpaid athletic coaches, etc) but it's a no-brainer deal for government to pay fully for the real costs college degree. The key is to avoid paying for the non-education expenses.

markus_zhang 5y ago

I believe it's best to give coupons instead of money as aid. Give food/clothing coupons so it's more difficult to purchase alchohol/cigarettes with it. For sure it's still possible but we can add additional measures to increase the difficulties. It's like housing (at least in Canada), they don't give you money to rent apartments, instead they give you specific apartments that you can rent with discounted price.

rbanffy 5y ago
> Give food/clothing coupons so it's more difficult to purchase alchohol/cigarettes with it. For sure it's still possible but we can add additional measures to increase the difficulties. These feel like sadistic ways to punish people for being poor.
- whythre 5y ago
  This is hardly sadism. If you can buy alcohol with food coupons you are not bettering disenfranchised people’s lives.
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    You mean poor people should have no right to have a glass of wine at the end of a stressful day, or to use wine for cooking a nice meal, or use a beer for a stew (it'll soften the meat)? There is a lot of judgement going on here and I wonder if it's not something that comes from a puritanical mindset where pleasure should be denied to those deemed unworthy.
    - newfriend 5y ago
      Beggars can't be choosers. If they want a glass of wine, then they can earn more money to pay for it. Otherwise they can enjoy the free food generously given. They are not "unworthy", but they are also not entitled to anything they want for free.
      - 5y ago

bastardoperator 5y ago

They already do that (formerly bogw) for qualifying applicants, my nephew enjoyed his free ride at community college before transferring to a UC. https://www.ccsf.edu/california-college-promise-grant-ccpg https://www.ccsf.edu/california-college-promise-grant-ccpg

bluedino 5y ago

>> Give tuition waivers rather than grants. Then you'll just get for-profit colleges to pop up (like Devry, etc)

angmarsbane 5y ago
True, I wonder if that narrows the scale of potential fraud and makes it easier to investigate though. Smaller # of fraudulent schools vs. # of fraudulent students

literallyaduck 5y ago

Tuition waivers, grants and student loans artificially inflate college prices. For the first two years of college most classes could be canned video and proctored exams with the exception of labs. Most colleges should be consolidated down and any receiving government money should have creative commons text books. We are overpaying for education. This isn't an attempt to lower teacher salaries, that is another topic. We need fewer general education class teachers and more field specific teachers.

5faulker 5y ago

Tuitions get higher because colleges and universities are giving out "payment options" which some students default on. It's the same model used by insurance companies to manage their risks.

chowells 5y ago

I'm shocked no one has answered the actual question yet: because this is financial aid, not tuition coverage. Financial aid is intended to make it possible to be a student. That means a lot more than tuition. Fees. Books. Food. Rent. Clothing. Car repairs. The general feeling of financial stability that allows you to relax enough to actually learn in your time at school. Financial aid offers so much more than tuition coverage. I don't see how any list of specific benefits could come close to doing as much for allowing a student to feel financially secure.

pc86 5y ago
I'm not aware of any financial aid package (outside of maybe some private loans?) that you can apply for with the intent of using that money for car repairs and have it not be fraud. Aside from being fraud it's also incredibly stupid from a long-term financial stability standpoint. Student loans cannot be discharged in bankruptcy and they are there until you pay them in full. You're better off putting your car repairs on a credit card and paying a higher interest rate if the alternative is "the only way out of this $2,000 bill is that you die."
- yupper32 5y ago
  > You're better off putting your car repairs on a credit card and paying a higher interest rate What!? No! You're willing to pay often 25% interest on a credit card on the off chance you need to file for bankruptcy? (That is, assuming its not fraud, of course)
- brotoss 5y ago
  > I'm not aware of any financial aid package (outside of maybe some private loans?) that you can apply for with the intent of using that money for car repairs and have it not be fraud. How do you think people pay rent, feed themselves, buy textbooks, etc, while in school? You just aren’t aware how financial aid works
  - prepend 5y ago
    Student loans explicitly can’t be used for car repairs [0]. You can use it for transportation like buses and trains, rent, gas, and meal plans (but oddly not groceries and restaurants). So students typically work jobs, use savings, get help from friends and family. [0] https://www.salliemae.com/blog/what-to-use-student-loans-for/ https://www.salliemae.com/blog/what-to-use-student-loans-for...

ManBlanket 5y ago

Funny how almost every top-down system intended to offset problems similar to tuition costing too much are deeply flawed. They're either rife for exploitation or encourage the wrong incentives. Personally I focused on growing weed until I was 26 and could receive financial aid on my own income, which was $0 of course.

ZoomerCretin 5y ago
Healthcare costs are a similar problem. It was solved in every highly developed nation (with one notable exception). The solution isn’t endless money, it’s to use negotiating power and reasonable price controls. The same policy (price controls/tuition hike caps) was very effective in the United States until the states decided to defund higher education and repeal the tuition hike caps.

heavyset_go 5y ago

While community colleges are significantly cheaper, costs are increasing rapidly each year when it comes to tuition.

xputer 5y ago

Somehow "detailing restrooms" has me picturing someone claybar-ing and waxing toilet seats.

DoreenMichele 5y ago

The California community college system is like a hidden Easter Egg in a state that gets a lot of bad press for high rates of homelessness, poverty, etc. Not only is tuition low, some colleges readily take underage students, they have well developed transfer agreements and you can sometimes take classes like Latin through a California community college.

hardtke 5y ago
It's even better -- each UC is REQUIRED to take a certain number of community college transfer students. It's not quite the case anymore, but you could apply as a freshman into the guaranteed transfer programs and be guaranteed a spot in the UC of your choice by maintaining a certain easily attainable GPA. I had a friend in high school who was a middling student get a UC Berkeley biomedical engineering degree this way. More recently the program seems way underutilized -- some recent graduates I have known did 2 years in community college and had their choice of UC Berkeley, UCLA, or anywhere else.
- Salgat 5y ago
  Using community college as a second chance to get into top programs is massively underrated. I was a mediocre high school student and was able to get good grades in community college and had no problem getting accepted to a top engineering university.
- ChainOfFools 5y ago
  that's called the transfer admission guarantee (TAG) program, and it's a fantastic opportunity to reboot a mediocre academic record. however TAG does not confer eligibility into a number of STEM (and STEM-adjacent, like medicine) programs within many highly competitive departments at the UC system. For example the neuroscience programs at UCSD do not automatically accept TAG applicants, you have to be qualified by the program's own rubric regardless of securing a TAG spot for the school itself.
  - hardtke 5y ago
    Yes, it seemed the G is not as guaranteed as is used to be. I had an interesting chat with a current UC Berkeley student trying to get into computer science department. They have a few classes that you need to do well in to get accepted internally. She was taking one of the classes for the third time, having dropped the course the first two times once she realized her grade was not high enough.

briffle 5y ago

A large Oregon Community College for this academic year: Oregon students: $130 per credit ($96 tuition + $34 universal fee) Online students: $130 per credit ($96 tuition + $34 universal fee) Out-of-state students: $295 per credit ($261 tuition + $34 universal fee) Some classes have additional fees…

curation 5y ago

Or, better yet, make it all free like Finland and Russian and many other parts of the world.

lanevorockz 5y ago
Let’s be honest, isn’t it free already ? The Tech / science side has millions of hours of free education online. Much better than anything Finland or Russia together could ever provide. Even certifications are free or as cheap as a few hundreds of dollars. The true problem comes from GATE KEEPED professions where the common people shouldn’t be involved. Think Pharma / Medicine / etc