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Obama to Propose Paying Community College Tuition for Some

90 points by krambs 12y ago

_red 12y ago
Nice idea, but the final effect will be higher prices across the higher-ed system.
- mtimjones 12y ago
  Absolutely right. The $800 billion owed in tuition reimbursement, which will eventually be forgiven given the current climate, is the reason govt needs to stay out of education.
  - mjevans 12y ago
    Or just outright make this the equivalent of high school, but for students that actually /want/ to be there, instead of whom are /required/ to be there. That, and sports distractions instead of academic pursuits, are the most grievous reasons 'High School' isn't fulfilling the role that '2 years of community college' is supposed to provide.
    - brenschluss 12y ago
      > The proposal would cover half-time and full-time students who maintain a 2.5 grade point average and “make steady progress toward completing a program,” White House officials said. So it will be performance based, rewarding only those students who have a good grade, incentivizing studying.
  - therealdrag0 12y ago
    What if it was done like healthcare, something like where the government caps the tuition they're willing to spend per student and negotiates lower tuitions by having numbers? I that possible? Maybe that would force universities to cut costs. But would that be so bad? I feel like a lot of university spending is trying to be fancy to attract more students not because it's valuable to student learning or well-being.
    - sukilot 12y ago
      What you are describing is the phenomenally successful 20th Century state and city college system, which was destroyed by the baby boomers
    - sukilot 12y ago
      What you are describing is the phenomenally successful 20th Century state and city college system, which was destroyed by the baby boomers
- MCRed 12y ago
  Since government started subsidizing higher eduction by underwriting student loans, college tuition has risen much faster than inflation, both for private and public schools. At the same time, more and more people have gone to college and the value of a college degree has declined, as more people enter the marketplace with them. Anecdotally, it appears (from the college graduates I've interviewed) that the quality of a college education has also declined noticeably in the past 30 years. All of these are unintended consequences, but not surprising results when you look at the situation from the perspective of economics.
  - cantankerous 12y ago
    True, but when you talk about the perspective of economics, it behooves you to talk about demand, I think. The broad based demand for a college education is based on the irrational thinking that so many should have a college education in order to work, which is pretty much untrue. It's hard to argue that the quality of a college education has declined when its purpose has changed. So many folks just need a college degree to remain competitive, at least on paper, and not much else. I think this is a much more modern trend. Perhaps one could make the case that the low cost of a college education somehow spurred this irrational demand for it. So many people have set off to set themselves apart with a degree that now only substandard prospective workers don't have them.
    - dikaiosune 12y ago
      Perhaps the demand is irrational, but the effects are very real: http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm It would be nice if we could change the fundamental problems underlying that irrational demand (pre-college schooling which doesn't prepare students for work, a national obsession with white collar jobs, etc.). However, if I was staring down a big wealth gap and decided to propose a concrete policy shift to resolve some of it, I think that it's not a bad idea to get people moved from the 7-11% unemployment category to the 5.4% unemployment category.
      - thaumasiotes 12y ago
- utnick 12y ago
  If its free to go to a community college, won't 4 year universities have to keep their prices lower or people will just decide to go to community college for free.
  - nkangoh 12y ago
    That would only be true if community college were an equivalent alternative. Unfortunately it is not. Unless you care about education for education's sake and nothing of jobs or career prospects, then a well motivated individual could learn a ton at a community college.
    - clavalle 12y ago
      In the community colleges in my state (Texas) they make sure credits can transfer to UT, A&M and other Universities. So they are equivalent in terms of those classes (typically at freshman or sophomore level).
      - deleted 12y ago
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      - bane 12y ago
        This is true in most states. The various CC systems in CA should transfer cleanly into the University of California system, same for SUNY, University of Virginia system and other public college systems. The classes are absolutely equivalent to the Fresh and Sophomore classes and an A.S. degree from a CC should start you as a Junior at the big-kid school.
      - johnpowell 12y ago
        Same in Oregon. I did what is called a AAOT which basically guarantees that you will be admitted as a junior at any four year school in the state. And to be honest I didn't care all that much about the quality of the education since the first two years I was taking a bunch of General Education requirements that didn't really apply to my degree. And a lot of trades come up through community colleges. The one here has two year degrees for auto mechanics, aircraft mechanics, HVAC, welders, CAD, CNC, plumbing, electricians, and so on. My bet is Obama is more concerned about that aspect of the program than people transferring to four year schools.
- deleted 12y ago
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HamSession 12y ago
I do wonder what type of effect this will cause with job requirements, will master's now be the new bachelors? The more worrying issue is the government taking on more student loan debt. There is a student loan bubble but it has not hurt the economy partially due to federal requirements that the loan not be discharged. What happens if current graduation rates hold steady and the US is stuck with a large bill but nothing to show for the effort?
- themartorana 12y ago
  "...but it has not hurt the economy..." Really? When people are burdened with mortgage-sized unsecured debt, they spend much less. It places enormous downward pressure on the economy. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business-jan-june12-studentloans_05-30/ http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business-jan-june12-studentlo...
  - adventured 12y ago
    Little question it's removing growth from the economy. The US Government is printing immense profits from the student loan racket presently. $600 billion in new debt has been added to the government's pool of that in just the last six years. That $600 billion just for those six years alone, will probably end up costing over a trillion dollars with interest. That's capital no longer available for production or consumption.
- techsupporter 12y ago
  "...but it has not hurt the economy partially due to federal requirements that the loan not be discharged." I'm curious to know what you mean by the requirement that it not be able to be discharged being beneficial. So far there seem to be three types of student loan borrowers: 1) Those who can and are paying their loans; 2) Those who got way over their heads--either through poor borrowing practices or income shortage--and who are struggling yet still paying their loans instead of creating other economic activity; 3) Those who can't pay--again, through poor borrowing practices, income shortage, or some type of major life event--and are now screwed. The idea behind bankruptcy is to let even the most buried of us be able to at least partially fill in the hole. That certain classes of loans create a permanent millstone seems, to me, a bit skewed.
blazespin 12y ago
As AI/automation takes over jobs, this is exactly what people should be paid to do - go to school.
nkangoh 12y ago
I went to community college and transferred into an excellent, top 5 (according to some rankings anyway) school. I would say that most people in community college don't really want to be there. Many of the students that I started with are still there (3 years later), and will likely not graduate nor transfer. From my experience I still think the education problem needs to be solved in K-6th grade. I believe my successful transition from community college to a university was the result of excellent classmates who I joined in middle and high school (many of them went to schools like Yale or MIT so perhaps there was some sort of exposure effect) and/or very encouraging community college teachers/professors. Personally I found community college professors to be way more invested (on the upper end, anyway) then my high school teachers, and I went to a pretty good high school. The reason it should start at K-6th grade is because so many people lack solid foundations. There are people in community college who are not good at algebra. These fundamentals need to be well taught. In addition, kids need to learn how to teach themselves and also need to be properly motivated, but not coddled. Increasing the pay of teachers and making teaching as a profession more prestigious and rigorous will solve the K-6th grade education problem, which will help with education as a whole. Oh, and we should do something about poverty (because let's face it, if you're poor and in a terrible neighborhood, the odds are against you. I know, because I was that person).
- forrestthewoods 12y ago
  Growing up we had a family friend who taught at both the local high school and community college. He always said that at the CC he saw both extremes. On one hand yes the vast majority of students there didn't give a shit and it was just high school 2.0 to delay the real world. But he also had the students who cared the most. The single working mothers. The students who desperately wanted a good education but couldn't afford it so they were taking the responsible Community College -> State University path.
  - cafard 12y ago
    An acquaintance taught at a NY state CC for a while after retiring from a state school in the Midwest. He said that he found a bimodal distribution in his classes: the highly motivated and well prepared on the one end, the unprepared or unmotivated on the other, and not that many between.
ForHackernews 12y ago
Sounds like a good plan to me. Community colleges are one of the most overlooked--yet most important--parts of the educational system. Almost everyone who attends a for-profit school with flashy ads would have been better off at their local community college. America has been forsaking our commitment to public higher education for decades now. If we're going to finally start investing again, community colleges are a great place to begin.
- kevbin 12y ago
  > America has been forsaking our commitment to public higher education for decades now. Direct aid to students was flat when adjusted for inflation in the 80s and 90s, but doubled under the second President Bush. The recession & financial crisis curbed our enthusiasm for Pell grants & whatnot, but funding has climbed in the last couple years & will again. In addition the federal government funds university faculty, administrators, and researchers through the DOD, DOE, NSF, NIH, etc. This funding has fallen over time as a percentage of GDP, but has increased relative to inflation. I don't think the US has forsaken its commitment to public education from a spending standpoint. We have lost track of the purpose and value of education. Schools today spend a lot of their money on administration and facilities that do not directly advance research or teaching.
  - ForHackernews 12y ago
    You're writing about funding at the federal level (Pell grants, DOE, NSF, etc.) but traditionally the most important component of public higher education was state university systems. Until the 1980s, California had world-class universities (UCLA, UC Berkeley) that were free for any students from the state.
    - kevbin 12y ago
      That's a good point. CA spends less out of its general fund per student in real dollars than in the 80s. I think "other" accounts for more UC $s than either general funds or tuition/fees. The UC's spending tracks the CA economy pretty closely. CA's "world-class prisons", on the other hand, just keep getting more money in good times & in bad.
transfire 12y ago
I'd rather see a more general program that would pay anyone's tuition for one class per semester.
phil248 12y ago
My girlfriend and mother both started at community college, both transferred to Berkeley and both did very well there. They saved a lot of money in the process. And while those success stories are great (and not that rare) the more important role of CC may be preparing people with sub-par high school educations for a more rigorous college experience. Having said that, I'd rather see a push for universal pre-school education.
- learc83 12y ago
  >Having said that, I'd rather see a push for universal pre-school education. Why? Several studies have shown that the initial advantages of pre-school are gone by 3rd grade. Here's a quick summary with a link to one of the largest studies commissioned by the federal government. http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/01/09/15headstart.h32.html http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/01/09/15headstart.h32...
  - phil248 12y ago
    Because of this: "Parents of Head Start participants in the 4-year-old cohort reported less aggressive behavior in their children at the end of 3rd grade than did the parents of the other children. For the 3-year-old group, Head Start parents saw better social skills in their children." Learning is great. Being sufficiently socialized is more important. I'd like to see data from when these kids are in their teens or twenties.
mysteriouswasp 12y ago
Since republicans control congress at the moment, they know it will be veto'd, but it will only help to push the agenda that republicans are bad. I see this being used to push the next presidential race.
- joezydeco 12y ago
  It's probably not a coincidence that Obama is going to announce this plan in Tennessee. The Republican governor of Tennessee, Bill Haslam, has made affordable college a key part of his platform. One comment I've read today sums it up: "Watching [Obama] co-opt the crown jewel of Haslam's 2020 or 2024 presidential run is so, so beautiful"
aaron-lebo 12y ago
The student loan crisis is a much bigger problem. 18 year old kids are being given the ability to take on massive, crushing debt that is too easily used for vacations, boob jobs, or whatever else, and even when it is only used for classes, people feel like they need to take on this debt to spend 4 years learning (and forgetting) material that they will never use, for degrees that probably won't be relevant to their career. Just to get a slip of paper that says "bachelor's degree". It is trapping people. Making community college easily accessible is a nice step, but community college is already incredibly cheap in most places, people don't go there because of costs but because they don't have the name recognition of a state school or a big private school. Sometimes small policy steps like this (it won't get passed in this climate anyway) are more destructive than not doing anything at all. They give the illusion of progress, or treat the symptoms when the real illness remains unresolved
- eastbayjake 12y ago
  > people feel like they need to take on this debt to spend 4 years learning (and forgetting) material that they will never use, for degrees that probably won't be relevant to their career. Just to get a slip of paper that says "bachelor's degree". It is trapping people. My wife and I have this argument frequently and I usually take your position. She likes to point out that college graduates are not just earning more than their less-educated peers, but the income gap has never been wider between young college graduates and those who only finished high school: http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/02/11/the-rising-cost-of-not-going-to-college/ http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/02/11/the-rising-cost-of... I think we can all be angry that most colleges don't measure or seem to care whether students are better thinkers by the time they graduate. Too many are interested in funding third-rate research by second-rate academics, too few are interested in pedagogy and making sure their faculty are good teachers. Why is the lecture still the core of university teaching when everything we're discovering about human learning says it's a terrible way to teach anyone anything?
  - EpicEng 12y ago
    Looking at the broad stroke (i.e., median income) can be useful, but if I were helping my child make this decision, I wouldn't focus on that. Depending on the career path, income can be highly variable. I also think that these numbers are skewed by the fact that more and more jobs are requiring degrees which didn't before. I would also argue that degrees should not be required for many of these positions. I mean, a Bachelor's of Hospitality? Restaurant management? Come on, learn that on the job.
gyardley 12y ago
When the other party controls Congress, presidential proposals without the active involvement of that other party aren't real and aren't intended to or expected to pass. This is just politics.
zaroth 12y ago
TFA says Fed currently pays 16%, students pay 30%, and presumably state pays the balance. Under the new program the Fed would pay 75% and states would pay 25%? Then they have quotes from Tennessee Rep calling it “a top-down federal program that will ask already cash-strapped states to help pick up the tab.” Maybe I'm missing something... In contrast to the Tennessee program, which is a “last dollar” scholarship, paying only for tuition costs not covered by other programs. A low-income student who is eligible for a maximum Pell Grant of $5,730 would not receive assistance under the Tennessee program, because that amount would already cover tuition." So in short, need more details but this just doesn't add up. If students already only pay 30% to the Feds 16%, why not just boost the Fed contribution to 25% and call it a day?
hodwik 12y ago
Dear Republican Friends, Don't worry about Obama's community college announcement, it's a great idea. I mean, clearly the education market is far too competitive as is. With average annual tuition rates of $2,700, who can afford to go to community college I ask you. Clearly, if we remove all competition in the market, that price can only go down, right? And I shouldn't need to remind you that the teachers unions have clearly shown themselves amenable to keeping education affordable. Putting all power in their hands is a sure-fire play for better education. Look at the public school teachers in my home-state of Pennsylvania! They're absolute saints, taking in a pathetic $62,000 dollars average per anum, after being short-changed with only a 23% raise in income in the last 10 years. Granted, that was with a Republican governor, so they may have gotten a fair 38% with a Democratic governor, but I think the point stands. They never use their union clout in a way that hurts our students. And just look at what they did with public middle and high schools! The taxpayers of Washington, DC, for example, are paying a measly $29,000 per pupil, and we all know the high quality of the DC public schools! This is clearly a place where government regulation is needed. No, don't get upset my friends. Obama is just looking out for the little guys on this one. This has, I assure you, nothing to do with Obama trying to claim back support from the teachers unions after they started attacking him, quite rightly I must add, for instantiating our evil (Republican) decade-long request that poor schools be given the tools to fire incompetent teachers. Don't fret, big government loves you.
- learc83 12y ago
  >And I shouldn't need to remind you that the teachers unions have clearly shown themselves amenable to keeping education affordable. Putting all power in their hands is a sure-fire play for better education. Community college professors aren't generally unionized. They're definable not part of public school teachers unions your talking about.
- monocasa 12y ago
  > after being short-changed with only a 23% raise in income in the last 10 years Inflation has been ~40% in the same period you know...
jqm 12y ago
I'm all for education, but so much of what passes for it is pure nonsense (IMHOP). And I'm not sure taxpayers ought to pay for, nor encourage, nonsense. That's what parents are for. They have an incentive to say "no" after a bit. Maybe cleaning up the "educational" system a little might be a better first step. This program could simply be an expensive way (for taxpayers) to have a bunch of semi-bored kids half studying the sociology of Amish Lesbians while claiming they are getting a useful eduction. (this comment is not intended to offend Lesbians, Sociologists, The Amish, nor Semi-Bored kids... it's just that there is so much nonsense in schools.....I'd be all for the program if it was free math classes only.) This just seems like a pork barrel type thing for some groups, without achieving the stated objective of eduction.
- learc83 12y ago
  Most community colleges don't offer anything as specialized as Survey of Late 20th Century Post-Grunge Tribal Tattoos. Community colleges usually just take care of general education classes--like English Composition, College Algebra, Calculus, and History. I'm sure there are some nonsense classes, but there isn't much room for specialization in a 2 year degree.
  - jqm 12y ago
    http://nypost.com/2014/01/30/rutgers-university-offers-class-on-beyonce/ http://nypost.com/2014/01/30/rutgers-university-offers-class... I'm sure you are mostly correct. My concern is that given free subsistence, I believe the plague of nonsense will grow. I also believe that paying for something is a way to give it value to those who pay. I don't see high school being very highly valued by most kids. And their valuation is probably not far from fair either. This article does very well at summing up some of my observations... http://www.popecenter.org/commentaries/article.html?id=2734 http://www.popecenter.org/commentaries/article.html?id=2734
bane 12y ago
Community College absolutely transformed me and many of my (at the time) classmate's lives. In my case I grew up poor, without much opportunity, and the (again, at the time) dirt cheap rates, open admission and guaranteed transfer to a local 4-year gave me opportunity I absolutely didn't have in the few years before I got sick and tired of the dead-end shitty hourly part-time jobs I could get. Many of my classmates were immigrants and refugees, there to learn English, or get started in their new lives. Now, many years later, they're happy productive citizens, married, with families, working six figure jobs...easily paying off each year what they're entire community college education cost any sort of taxpayer subsidies. Most of them have gone on to get M.S. and even a couple of PhDs. The doors to get into higher education don't admit everybody equally, but sometimes you can get into other doors if you're willing to go in the side entrance. On the other side, I've worked pretty consistently with people who went to much more highly ranked schools than I did, or came from better pedigrees, and we've all ended up in the same place. Bonus: my entire college education, from Freshman through my M.S. cost about what a reasonable family sedan cost, and raised my marketability so much that I paid it all off by the time I finished school. I hear of peers, decades later, still paying hundreds of dollars a month on insane student loans, and I feel really lucky to have stumbled into the path I ended up on...despite a little pride swallowing.
- nkangoh 12y ago
  It's really nice to see there are others from a C.C. background. For some reason I thought I was the only one (coming into this community I thought everyone went to Stanford, CMU, MIT, etc).
  - saraid216 12y ago
    Most of my friends in high school went to top-tier schools while I shipped over to the local community college. A lack of college-mindedness, arguably. I ended up transferring, but I'm extremely pleased with the education I got there.
  - eli_gottlieb 12y ago
    I finished high school with chemistry, physics, and precalculus courses at Hudson Valley Community College in Troy, NY. That helped get me into my honors undergrad at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. I'm currently a grad-student near to finishing my MSc at Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology. I can now hope to apply to certain PhD programs at MIT that I'm excited about, if my adviser here likes me enough to recommend me and I study a bunch more math on my own. Community colleges are awesome.
KevinEldon 12y ago
I hate that the federal government is getting involved. The states are figuring it out. Leave this alone... Vote for local politicians to follow the Tennessee model or don't. There is no need for federal involvement.
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  Going state-by-state is going to take decades. The 'laboratories of democracy' thing is extremely overrated, oftentimes you just end up with 51 hills to climb. 'That may work for them over in _____, but it's not how we do things in ______!' It's not like US politicians (or voters) are famed for their analytical rigor and intolerance for logical/rhetorical fallacies.
  - tartuffe78 12y ago
    And federal programs take effect quicker, but trying to balance the realities and concerns of all 50 states, and getting enough politicians and special interests on board results in bloated systems that are easier to abuse.
diggum 12y ago
I went to Bellevue Community College in 1992, right after high school, and was fortunate enough to take part in their nascent "Multimedia Design" program. Considering the neighborhood, we had software and support from a lot of the local tech companies. I got to use early versions of Director, Photoshop, even Linux, which definitely set me on a more productive path with computers. I ended up going to a University the following year, but that was due to other circumstances and not that I didn't find the school and the education I received there valuable. Indeed, it very much set me on my path.
gojomo 12y ago
Macroeconomically, a program like this would have made more sense at a time of low-growth/high-unemployment, like a few years ago. (It might work best as a countercyclical program: when many people are idle, subsidize skills-building education, but as unemployment drops, expect people to pay their own tuition or learn-on-the-job instead.)
lchengify 12y ago
I would actually go farther and say we should merge the current K-12 into 11 years instead of 13, and make every student complete an associate degree by the age of 18. The current system of K-12, especially in the US, has always been way too padded. The advent of the internet and readily available educational materials has accelerated this exponentially. A child born today would be shocked to hear that I learned C++ by driving to a far away building and checking out a dead tree with ink on it. That same child should be equally shocked that we can't expect him to learn actively at home and in the classroom faster than his grandparents did, who had a sliver of the access to information of modern generations. I saw first hand what this could look like. My parents were not affluent enough to send me to a private school, but they were affluent enough to move to a area in New Jersey with a very well-funded public school system. We had a sister community college that had a great reputation, and as a option for upperclassmen who skipped grades or took courses early, they could drive the community college and take classes instead. We actually had one student my senior year who got an Associate Degree before his High School degree. Personally I took 2 summer math classes and 2 programming classes at this college, and the difference between the CC and High School was stark. - Professors didn't have to babysit: If you acted out, you got kicked out. No discussion. - You self-selected to other like-minded individuals who were both interested and aggressive about learning the material in the class. - Teachers could actually teach without dealing with school board restrictions or materials. - Funding policies actually made sense since the entity managing them wasn't completely government run. - You could treat the students like adults, and not have to worry about discussing controversial material, or that a parent would helicopter in and threaten to sue the school. This whole process made me a lot more excited for college. It also showed me there was so much more material out there than what I thought about in High School. I think this process should be funded, and eventually mandatory, otherwise the US will find itself behind. I remember a Star Trek TNG episode (I can't recall the number) where a parent was chasing a 10-yo child for skipping class. The child complained casually that he didn't want to learn Calculus. We may never get that far for every child, but I dream of a world where a brilliant 10-yo could get that far if he wanted to. Part II. To continue my rant, I actually think the Obama Administration is smart in how it is executing on this issue. In the US, the execution of compulsory education happens at the state and local level. Local governments get to decide how "important" education is to them, specifically with their budgets. On the plus side, this helps us avoid the (potentially republic-damaging) process of convincing 316 million people that the federal government is the best entity to handle child education (and create a massive bureaucracy to boot). On the downside, as a country we are dropping the ball in preparing the next generation to be solid competitors in the global marketplace. When this problem last came up it was during the cold war, specifically after Sputnik launched. There was a massive, national push to make more students in tune with modern education, which resulted in the passing of the National Defense Education Act [1]. Basically, it required a existential crisis in order to motivate the US to seriously fund education nationally. Now, 50 years later, I'm continually blown away when I discuss education with my colleagues who grew up abroad. In European (especially ex-soviet bloc) countries, India, and Asia, education is significantly more rigorous and highly valued, which results in a significantly more prepared workforce. I like, or hope, to think that in case the Obama Administration sees the same thing. Specifically: - We are now 17th in global education ranking [2], and even lower in Math and Science [3] - In the rapidly globalizing economy, this gap in education is now a national security issue - Other up-and-coming economies all have much deeper cultural values for educations, with a national government that reflects it. - Federalizing the system (ala West Wing Season 7) is too drastic, and will never pass congress anyway - Our one massive advantage, our higher education system (which is the envy of the world), specifically the relatively affordable community colleges, is being underutilized. By taking federal funding and pumping it into a solution that is reasonably affordable, partially shared with the states, and bypass the State and local governments, we are essentially doing what educational reformers have always dreamed we could do: Fund education like we do the military. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Education_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Education_Act [2] http://www.ibtimes.com/us-17th-global-education-ranking-finland-south-korea-claim-top-spots-901538 http://www.ibtimes.com/us-17th-global-education-ranking-finl... [3] http://www.businessinsider.com/pisa-rankings-2013-12 http://www.businessinsider.com/pisa-rankings-2013-12
JustKingGarden 12y ago
This requires a huge funding from the government. But I salute the White House for this initiative. This part of the educational system really needs uplifting.

90 points by krambs 12y ago

_red 12y ago

Nice idea, but the final effect will be higher prices across the higher-ed system.

mtimjones 12y ago
Absolutely right. The $800 billion owed in tuition reimbursement, which will eventually be forgiven given the current climate, is the reason govt needs to stay out of education.
- mjevans 12y ago
  Or just outright make this the equivalent of high school, but for students that actually /want/ to be there, instead of whom are /required/ to be there. That, and sports distractions instead of academic pursuits, are the most grievous reasons 'High School' isn't fulfilling the role that '2 years of community college' is supposed to provide.
  - brenschluss 12y ago
    > The proposal would cover half-time and full-time students who maintain a 2.5 grade point average and “make steady progress toward completing a program,” White House officials said. So it will be performance based, rewarding only those students who have a good grade, incentivizing studying.
- therealdrag0 12y ago
  What if it was done like healthcare, something like where the government caps the tuition they're willing to spend per student and negotiates lower tuitions by having numbers? I that possible? Maybe that would force universities to cut costs. But would that be so bad? I feel like a lot of university spending is trying to be fancy to attract more students not because it's valuable to student learning or well-being.
  - sukilot 12y ago
    What you are describing is the phenomenally successful 20th Century state and city college system, which was destroyed by the baby boomers
  - sukilot 12y ago
    What you are describing is the phenomenally successful 20th Century state and city college system, which was destroyed by the baby boomers
MCRed 12y ago
Since government started subsidizing higher eduction by underwriting student loans, college tuition has risen much faster than inflation, both for private and public schools. At the same time, more and more people have gone to college and the value of a college degree has declined, as more people enter the marketplace with them. Anecdotally, it appears (from the college graduates I've interviewed) that the quality of a college education has also declined noticeably in the past 30 years. All of these are unintended consequences, but not surprising results when you look at the situation from the perspective of economics.
- cantankerous 12y ago
  True, but when you talk about the perspective of economics, it behooves you to talk about demand, I think. The broad based demand for a college education is based on the irrational thinking that so many should have a college education in order to work, which is pretty much untrue. It's hard to argue that the quality of a college education has declined when its purpose has changed. So many folks just need a college degree to remain competitive, at least on paper, and not much else. I think this is a much more modern trend. Perhaps one could make the case that the low cost of a college education somehow spurred this irrational demand for it. So many people have set off to set themselves apart with a degree that now only substandard prospective workers don't have them.
  - dikaiosune 12y ago
    Perhaps the demand is irrational, but the effects are very real: http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm It would be nice if we could change the fundamental problems underlying that irrational demand (pre-college schooling which doesn't prepare students for work, a national obsession with white collar jobs, etc.). However, if I was staring down a big wealth gap and decided to propose a concrete policy shift to resolve some of it, I think that it's not a bad idea to get people moved from the 7-11% unemployment category to the 5.4% unemployment category.
    - thaumasiotes 12y ago
utnick 12y ago
If its free to go to a community college, won't 4 year universities have to keep their prices lower or people will just decide to go to community college for free.
- nkangoh 12y ago
  That would only be true if community college were an equivalent alternative. Unfortunately it is not. Unless you care about education for education's sake and nothing of jobs or career prospects, then a well motivated individual could learn a ton at a community college.
  - clavalle 12y ago
    In the community colleges in my state (Texas) they make sure credits can transfer to UT, A&M and other Universities. So they are equivalent in terms of those classes (typically at freshman or sophomore level).
    - deleted 12y ago
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    - bane 12y ago
      This is true in most states. The various CC systems in CA should transfer cleanly into the University of California system, same for SUNY, University of Virginia system and other public college systems. The classes are absolutely equivalent to the Fresh and Sophomore classes and an A.S. degree from a CC should start you as a Junior at the big-kid school.
    - johnpowell 12y ago
      Same in Oregon. I did what is called a AAOT which basically guarantees that you will be admitted as a junior at any four year school in the state. And to be honest I didn't care all that much about the quality of the education since the first two years I was taking a bunch of General Education requirements that didn't really apply to my degree. And a lot of trades come up through community colleges. The one here has two year degrees for auto mechanics, aircraft mechanics, HVAC, welders, CAD, CNC, plumbing, electricians, and so on. My bet is Obama is more concerned about that aspect of the program than people transferring to four year schools.
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HamSession 12y ago

I do wonder what type of effect this will cause with job requirements, will master's now be the new bachelors? The more worrying issue is the government taking on more student loan debt. There is a student loan bubble but it has not hurt the economy partially due to federal requirements that the loan not be discharged. What happens if current graduation rates hold steady and the US is stuck with a large bill but nothing to show for the effort?

themartorana 12y ago
"...but it has not hurt the economy..." Really? When people are burdened with mortgage-sized unsecured debt, they spend much less. It places enormous downward pressure on the economy. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business-jan-june12-studentloans_05-30/ http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business-jan-june12-studentlo...
- adventured 12y ago
  Little question it's removing growth from the economy. The US Government is printing immense profits from the student loan racket presently. $600 billion in new debt has been added to the government's pool of that in just the last six years. That $600 billion just for those six years alone, will probably end up costing over a trillion dollars with interest. That's capital no longer available for production or consumption.
techsupporter 12y ago
"...but it has not hurt the economy partially due to federal requirements that the loan not be discharged." I'm curious to know what you mean by the requirement that it not be able to be discharged being beneficial. So far there seem to be three types of student loan borrowers: 1) Those who can and are paying their loans; 2) Those who got way over their heads--either through poor borrowing practices or income shortage--and who are struggling yet still paying their loans instead of creating other economic activity; 3) Those who can't pay--again, through poor borrowing practices, income shortage, or some type of major life event--and are now screwed. The idea behind bankruptcy is to let even the most buried of us be able to at least partially fill in the hole. That certain classes of loans create a permanent millstone seems, to me, a bit skewed.

blazespin 12y ago

As AI/automation takes over jobs, this is exactly what people should be paid to do - go to school.

nkangoh 12y ago

I went to community college and transferred into an excellent, top 5 (according to some rankings anyway) school. I would say that most people in community college don't really want to be there. Many of the students that I started with are still there (3 years later), and will likely not graduate nor transfer. From my experience I still think the education problem needs to be solved in K-6th grade. I believe my successful transition from community college to a university was the result of excellent classmates who I joined in middle and high school (many of them went to schools like Yale or MIT so perhaps there was some sort of exposure effect) and/or very encouraging community college teachers/professors. Personally I found community college professors to be way more invested (on the upper end, anyway) then my high school teachers, and I went to a pretty good high school. The reason it should start at K-6th grade is because so many people lack solid foundations. There are people in community college who are not good at algebra. These fundamentals need to be well taught. In addition, kids need to learn how to teach themselves and also need to be properly motivated, but not coddled. Increasing the pay of teachers and making teaching as a profession more prestigious and rigorous will solve the K-6th grade education problem, which will help with education as a whole. Oh, and we should do something about poverty (because let's face it, if you're poor and in a terrible neighborhood, the odds are against you. I know, because I was that person).

forrestthewoods 12y ago
Growing up we had a family friend who taught at both the local high school and community college. He always said that at the CC he saw both extremes. On one hand yes the vast majority of students there didn't give a shit and it was just high school 2.0 to delay the real world. But he also had the students who cared the most. The single working mothers. The students who desperately wanted a good education but couldn't afford it so they were taking the responsible Community College -> State University path.
- cafard 12y ago
  An acquaintance taught at a NY state CC for a while after retiring from a state school in the Midwest. He said that he found a bimodal distribution in his classes: the highly motivated and well prepared on the one end, the unprepared or unmotivated on the other, and not that many between.

ForHackernews 12y ago

Sounds like a good plan to me. Community colleges are one of the most overlooked--yet most important--parts of the educational system. Almost everyone who attends a for-profit school with flashy ads would have been better off at their local community college. America has been forsaking our commitment to public higher education for decades now. If we're going to finally start investing again, community colleges are a great place to begin.

kevbin 12y ago
> America has been forsaking our commitment to public higher education for decades now. Direct aid to students was flat when adjusted for inflation in the 80s and 90s, but doubled under the second President Bush. The recession & financial crisis curbed our enthusiasm for Pell grants & whatnot, but funding has climbed in the last couple years & will again. In addition the federal government funds university faculty, administrators, and researchers through the DOD, DOE, NSF, NIH, etc. This funding has fallen over time as a percentage of GDP, but has increased relative to inflation. I don't think the US has forsaken its commitment to public education from a spending standpoint. We have lost track of the purpose and value of education. Schools today spend a lot of their money on administration and facilities that do not directly advance research or teaching.
- ForHackernews 12y ago
  You're writing about funding at the federal level (Pell grants, DOE, NSF, etc.) but traditionally the most important component of public higher education was state university systems. Until the 1980s, California had world-class universities (UCLA, UC Berkeley) that were free for any students from the state.
  - kevbin 12y ago
    That's a good point. CA spends less out of its general fund per student in real dollars than in the 80s. I think "other" accounts for more UC $s than either general funds or tuition/fees. The UC's spending tracks the CA economy pretty closely. CA's "world-class prisons", on the other hand, just keep getting more money in good times & in bad.

transfire 12y ago

I'd rather see a more general program that would pay anyone's tuition for one class per semester.

phil248 12y ago

My girlfriend and mother both started at community college, both transferred to Berkeley and both did very well there. They saved a lot of money in the process. And while those success stories are great (and not that rare) the more important role of CC may be preparing people with sub-par high school educations for a more rigorous college experience. Having said that, I'd rather see a push for universal pre-school education.

learc83 12y ago
>Having said that, I'd rather see a push for universal pre-school education. Why? Several studies have shown that the initial advantages of pre-school are gone by 3rd grade. Here's a quick summary with a link to one of the largest studies commissioned by the federal government. http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/01/09/15headstart.h32.html http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/01/09/15headstart.h32...
- phil248 12y ago
  Because of this: "Parents of Head Start participants in the 4-year-old cohort reported less aggressive behavior in their children at the end of 3rd grade than did the parents of the other children. For the 3-year-old group, Head Start parents saw better social skills in their children." Learning is great. Being sufficiently socialized is more important. I'd like to see data from when these kids are in their teens or twenties.

mysteriouswasp 12y ago

Since republicans control congress at the moment, they know it will be veto'd, but it will only help to push the agenda that republicans are bad. I see this being used to push the next presidential race.

joezydeco 12y ago
It's probably not a coincidence that Obama is going to announce this plan in Tennessee. The Republican governor of Tennessee, Bill Haslam, has made affordable college a key part of his platform. One comment I've read today sums it up: "Watching [Obama] co-opt the crown jewel of Haslam's 2020 or 2024 presidential run is so, so beautiful"

aaron-lebo 12y ago

The student loan crisis is a much bigger problem. 18 year old kids are being given the ability to take on massive, crushing debt that is too easily used for vacations, boob jobs, or whatever else, and even when it is only used for classes, people feel like they need to take on this debt to spend 4 years learning (and forgetting) material that they will never use, for degrees that probably won't be relevant to their career. Just to get a slip of paper that says "bachelor's degree". It is trapping people. Making community college easily accessible is a nice step, but community college is already incredibly cheap in most places, people don't go there because of costs but because they don't have the name recognition of a state school or a big private school. Sometimes small policy steps like this (it won't get passed in this climate anyway) are more destructive than not doing anything at all. They give the illusion of progress, or treat the symptoms when the real illness remains unresolved

eastbayjake 12y ago
> people feel like they need to take on this debt to spend 4 years learning (and forgetting) material that they will never use, for degrees that probably won't be relevant to their career. Just to get a slip of paper that says "bachelor's degree". It is trapping people. My wife and I have this argument frequently and I usually take your position. She likes to point out that college graduates are not just earning more than their less-educated peers, but the income gap has never been wider between young college graduates and those who only finished high school: http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/02/11/the-rising-cost-of-not-going-to-college/ http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/02/11/the-rising-cost-of... I think we can all be angry that most colleges don't measure or seem to care whether students are better thinkers by the time they graduate. Too many are interested in funding third-rate research by second-rate academics, too few are interested in pedagogy and making sure their faculty are good teachers. Why is the lecture still the core of university teaching when everything we're discovering about human learning says it's a terrible way to teach anyone anything?
- EpicEng 12y ago
  Looking at the broad stroke (i.e., median income) can be useful, but if I were helping my child make this decision, I wouldn't focus on that. Depending on the career path, income can be highly variable. I also think that these numbers are skewed by the fact that more and more jobs are requiring degrees which didn't before. I would also argue that degrees should not be required for many of these positions. I mean, a Bachelor's of Hospitality? Restaurant management? Come on, learn that on the job.

gyardley 12y ago

When the other party controls Congress, presidential proposals without the active involvement of that other party aren't real and aren't intended to or expected to pass. This is just politics.

zaroth 12y ago

TFA says Fed currently pays 16%, students pay 30%, and presumably state pays the balance. Under the new program the Fed would pay 75% and states would pay 25%? Then they have quotes from Tennessee Rep calling it “a top-down federal program that will ask already cash-strapped states to help pick up the tab.” Maybe I'm missing something... In contrast to the Tennessee program, which is a “last dollar” scholarship, paying only for tuition costs not covered by other programs. A low-income student who is eligible for a maximum Pell Grant of $5,730 would not receive assistance under the Tennessee program, because that amount would already cover tuition." So in short, need more details but this just doesn't add up. If students already only pay 30% to the Feds 16%, why not just boost the Fed contribution to 25% and call it a day?

hodwik 12y ago

Dear Republican Friends, Don't worry about Obama's community college announcement, it's a great idea. I mean, clearly the education market is far too competitive as is. With average annual tuition rates of $2,700, who can afford to go to community college I ask you. Clearly, if we remove all competition in the market, that price can only go down, right? And I shouldn't need to remind you that the teachers unions have clearly shown themselves amenable to keeping education affordable. Putting all power in their hands is a sure-fire play for better education. Look at the public school teachers in my home-state of Pennsylvania! They're absolute saints, taking in a pathetic $62,000 dollars average per anum, after being short-changed with only a 23% raise in income in the last 10 years. Granted, that was with a Republican governor, so they may have gotten a fair 38% with a Democratic governor, but I think the point stands. They never use their union clout in a way that hurts our students. And just look at what they did with public middle and high schools! The taxpayers of Washington, DC, for example, are paying a measly $29,000 per pupil, and we all know the high quality of the DC public schools! This is clearly a place where government regulation is needed. No, don't get upset my friends. Obama is just looking out for the little guys on this one. This has, I assure you, nothing to do with Obama trying to claim back support from the teachers unions after they started attacking him, quite rightly I must add, for instantiating our evil (Republican) decade-long request that poor schools be given the tools to fire incompetent teachers. Don't fret, big government loves you.

learc83 12y ago
>And I shouldn't need to remind you that the teachers unions have clearly shown themselves amenable to keeping education affordable. Putting all power in their hands is a sure-fire play for better education. Community college professors aren't generally unionized. They're definable not part of public school teachers unions your talking about.
monocasa 12y ago
> after being short-changed with only a 23% raise in income in the last 10 years Inflation has been ~40% in the same period you know...

jqm 12y ago

I'm all for education, but so much of what passes for it is pure nonsense (IMHOP). And I'm not sure taxpayers ought to pay for, nor encourage, nonsense. That's what parents are for. They have an incentive to say "no" after a bit. Maybe cleaning up the "educational" system a little might be a better first step. This program could simply be an expensive way (for taxpayers) to have a bunch of semi-bored kids half studying the sociology of Amish Lesbians while claiming they are getting a useful eduction. (this comment is not intended to offend Lesbians, Sociologists, The Amish, nor Semi-Bored kids... it's just that there is so much nonsense in schools.....I'd be all for the program if it was free math classes only.) This just seems like a pork barrel type thing for some groups, without achieving the stated objective of eduction.

learc83 12y ago
Most community colleges don't offer anything as specialized as Survey of Late 20th Century Post-Grunge Tribal Tattoos. Community colleges usually just take care of general education classes--like English Composition, College Algebra, Calculus, and History. I'm sure there are some nonsense classes, but there isn't much room for specialization in a 2 year degree.
- jqm 12y ago
  http://nypost.com/2014/01/30/rutgers-university-offers-class-on-beyonce/ http://nypost.com/2014/01/30/rutgers-university-offers-class... I'm sure you are mostly correct. My concern is that given free subsistence, I believe the plague of nonsense will grow. I also believe that paying for something is a way to give it value to those who pay. I don't see high school being very highly valued by most kids. And their valuation is probably not far from fair either. This article does very well at summing up some of my observations... http://www.popecenter.org/commentaries/article.html?id=2734 http://www.popecenter.org/commentaries/article.html?id=2734

bane 12y ago

Community College absolutely transformed me and many of my (at the time) classmate's lives. In my case I grew up poor, without much opportunity, and the (again, at the time) dirt cheap rates, open admission and guaranteed transfer to a local 4-year gave me opportunity I absolutely didn't have in the few years before I got sick and tired of the dead-end shitty hourly part-time jobs I could get. Many of my classmates were immigrants and refugees, there to learn English, or get started in their new lives. Now, many years later, they're happy productive citizens, married, with families, working six figure jobs...easily paying off each year what they're entire community college education cost any sort of taxpayer subsidies. Most of them have gone on to get M.S. and even a couple of PhDs. The doors to get into higher education don't admit everybody equally, but sometimes you can get into other doors if you're willing to go in the side entrance. On the other side, I've worked pretty consistently with people who went to much more highly ranked schools than I did, or came from better pedigrees, and we've all ended up in the same place. Bonus: my entire college education, from Freshman through my M.S. cost about what a reasonable family sedan cost, and raised my marketability so much that I paid it all off by the time I finished school. I hear of peers, decades later, still paying hundreds of dollars a month on insane student loans, and I feel really lucky to have stumbled into the path I ended up on...despite a little pride swallowing.

nkangoh 12y ago
It's really nice to see there are others from a C.C. background. For some reason I thought I was the only one (coming into this community I thought everyone went to Stanford, CMU, MIT, etc).
- saraid216 12y ago
  Most of my friends in high school went to top-tier schools while I shipped over to the local community college. A lack of college-mindedness, arguably. I ended up transferring, but I'm extremely pleased with the education I got there.
- eli_gottlieb 12y ago
  I finished high school with chemistry, physics, and precalculus courses at Hudson Valley Community College in Troy, NY. That helped get me into my honors undergrad at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. I'm currently a grad-student near to finishing my MSc at Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology. I can now hope to apply to certain PhD programs at MIT that I'm excited about, if my adviser here likes me enough to recommend me and I study a bunch more math on my own. Community colleges are awesome.

KevinEldon 12y ago

I hate that the federal government is getting involved. The states are figuring it out. Leave this alone... Vote for local politicians to follow the Tennessee model or don't. There is no need for federal involvement.

anigbrowl 12y ago
Going state-by-state is going to take decades. The 'laboratories of democracy' thing is extremely overrated, oftentimes you just end up with 51 hills to climb. 'That may work for them over in _____, but it's not how we do things in ______!' It's not like US politicians (or voters) are famed for their analytical rigor and intolerance for logical/rhetorical fallacies.
- tartuffe78 12y ago
  And federal programs take effect quicker, but trying to balance the realities and concerns of all 50 states, and getting enough politicians and special interests on board results in bloated systems that are easier to abuse.

diggum 12y ago

I went to Bellevue Community College in 1992, right after high school, and was fortunate enough to take part in their nascent "Multimedia Design" program. Considering the neighborhood, we had software and support from a lot of the local tech companies. I got to use early versions of Director, Photoshop, even Linux, which definitely set me on a more productive path with computers. I ended up going to a University the following year, but that was due to other circumstances and not that I didn't find the school and the education I received there valuable. Indeed, it very much set me on my path.

gojomo 12y ago

Macroeconomically, a program like this would have made more sense at a time of low-growth/high-unemployment, like a few years ago. (It might work best as a countercyclical program: when many people are idle, subsidize skills-building education, but as unemployment drops, expect people to pay their own tuition or learn-on-the-job instead.)

lchengify 12y ago

I would actually go farther and say we should merge the current K-12 into 11 years instead of 13, and make every student complete an associate degree by the age of 18. The current system of K-12, especially in the US, has always been way too padded. The advent of the internet and readily available educational materials has accelerated this exponentially. A child born today would be shocked to hear that I learned C++ by driving to a far away building and checking out a dead tree with ink on it. That same child should be equally shocked that we can't expect him to learn actively at home and in the classroom faster than his grandparents did, who had a sliver of the access to information of modern generations. I saw first hand what this could look like. My parents were not affluent enough to send me to a private school, but they were affluent enough to move to a area in New Jersey with a very well-funded public school system. We had a sister community college that had a great reputation, and as a option for upperclassmen who skipped grades or took courses early, they could drive the community college and take classes instead. We actually had one student my senior year who got an Associate Degree before his High School degree. Personally I took 2 summer math classes and 2 programming classes at this college, and the difference between the CC and High School was stark. - Professors didn't have to babysit: If you acted out, you got kicked out. No discussion. - You self-selected to other like-minded individuals who were both interested and aggressive about learning the material in the class. - Teachers could actually teach without dealing with school board restrictions or materials. - Funding policies actually made sense since the entity managing them wasn't completely government run. - You could treat the students like adults, and not have to worry about discussing controversial material, or that a parent would helicopter in and threaten to sue the school. This whole process made me a lot more excited for college. It also showed me there was so much more material out there than what I thought about in High School. I think this process should be funded, and eventually mandatory, otherwise the US will find itself behind. I remember a Star Trek TNG episode (I can't recall the number) where a parent was chasing a 10-yo child for skipping class. The child complained casually that he didn't want to learn Calculus. We may never get that far for every child, but I dream of a world where a brilliant 10-yo could get that far if he wanted to. Part II. To continue my rant, I actually think the Obama Administration is smart in how it is executing on this issue. In the US, the execution of compulsory education happens at the state and local level. Local governments get to decide how "important" education is to them, specifically with their budgets. On the plus side, this helps us avoid the (potentially republic-damaging) process of convincing 316 million people that the federal government is the best entity to handle child education (and create a massive bureaucracy to boot). On the downside, as a country we are dropping the ball in preparing the next generation to be solid competitors in the global marketplace. When this problem last came up it was during the cold war, specifically after Sputnik launched. There was a massive, national push to make more students in tune with modern education, which resulted in the passing of the National Defense Education Act [1]. Basically, it required a existential crisis in order to motivate the US to seriously fund education nationally. Now, 50 years later, I'm continually blown away when I discuss education with my colleagues who grew up abroad. In European (especially ex-soviet bloc) countries, India, and Asia, education is significantly more rigorous and highly valued, which results in a significantly more prepared workforce. I like, or hope, to think that in case the Obama Administration sees the same thing. Specifically: - We are now 17th in global education ranking [2], and even lower in Math and Science [3] - In the rapidly globalizing economy, this gap in education is now a national security issue - Other up-and-coming economies all have much deeper cultural values for educations, with a national government that reflects it. - Federalizing the system (ala West Wing Season 7) is too drastic, and will never pass congress anyway - Our one massive advantage, our higher education system (which is the envy of the world), specifically the relatively affordable community colleges, is being underutilized. By taking federal funding and pumping it into a solution that is reasonably affordable, partially shared with the states, and bypass the State and local governments, we are essentially doing what educational reformers have always dreamed we could do: Fund education like we do the military. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Education_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Education_Act [2] http://www.ibtimes.com/us-17th-global-education-ranking-finland-south-korea-claim-top-spots-901538 http://www.ibtimes.com/us-17th-global-education-ranking-finl... [3] http://www.businessinsider.com/pisa-rankings-2013-12 http://www.businessinsider.com/pisa-rankings-2013-12

JustKingGarden 12y ago

This requires a huge funding from the government. But I salute the White House for this initiative. This part of the educational system really needs uplifting.