- President Obama’s call for community college to be free for those who are “really working for it” could be a good idea and it could also be a bad one. The public policy really spins on the economic point of what, actually, is a college education for? If college is simply a way of educating people so as to make them more productive then it’s a great idea. If, however, possession of a degree (even an associates degree) is really just a piece of signalling then this could prove to be only an expensive mistake. What complicates matters is that education is obviously, in part, both of these things, both an improvement in the productive capacity of labour and also a signalling method. So which side of the answer you come down on will really depend upon how you think the proportions work rather than there being one and only one true and logical answer.
He misses a third, noneconomic point of college: to create an educated electorate. I don't want to live with stupid people, and I certainly don't want to live with the people they elect. (Which isn't to say you can't be intelligent and educated without college. But on the whole, college brings up the national level of rational thought, I think.)The public policy really spins on the economic point of what, actually, is a college education for?
If college is simply a way of educating people so as to make them more productive
If, however, possession of a degree (even an associates degree) is really just a piece of signalling
The author is an idiot. "Might be a good idea, might be a bad one, no idea nor discussion as to why he's doing this." A real problem dragging on 20-somethings right now is crippling student loan debt. This does nothing about it... however, moving forward, it keeps the teen-somethings from suffering the same fate. As those kids have parents that are pretty much the biggest political donors and voters right now, it's a great sop to the 40-somethings who are currently going "holy shit how can I possibly pay for my kid's college?" A real problem facing colleges is they're forced to compete against day spas for students. The biggest investment in college for the past fifteen years has been fancy-schmancy dorms, fitness centers, concierge services and other shit that isn't even tertiary to education. It's a tragedy of the commons: you can't ignore that shit and bolster your academics because at the end of the day, you're competing for where kids are going to live, not just go to school. Know how you nip that shit in the bud? You come in as the federal government and say "we're going to pay 75% towards tuition and exactly fuckall towards room'n'board. Suck it, bitchez." Considering every major institution has branch campuses that offer most or all of the same core curricula without any of the bullshit student life, it solves the tragedy of the commons by imposing external regulation. Finally, the for-profit market segment in college education is off the fucking hook. You should watch this if you haven't. Put it this way: damn near anybody can qualify for tens of thousands of dollars of student loans that they can only discharge through full repayment or death in order to face a 90% dropout rate in degree programs that offer few jobs from institutions with essentially no accreditation. Know who doesn't get any state money? For-profit colleges. Know who is royally FUCKED by this initiative? The Street knows. This initiative, should it pass as originally intended by the Obama administration, will not "fix" higher education. It will, however, go a fair distance towards remedying the most egregious problems. Community colleges have really gained a lot in utility over the past 20 years. What this program basically says is "if you're a real college we'll give you real money for training real students towards a real degree." If it works, it's going to vaporize the likes of Corinthian and University of Phoenix and DeVry like dross in a foundry.
Hmmm. I like The Street's take on this. To me, for profit colleges (and not just "the bad ones") are a scourge on the US. As a grad student, I took on a side job teaching at one in these parts called Davenport University. I never felt good about it, but I was poor. I was living with no roommates on a grad student stipend. (As Brecht said, "Erst kommt das fressen, dann kommt die Moral.) So I went to the Darkside for extra cash. They paid me $2800 per class, which is decent pay for the amount of hours I put in. Anyway, I taught physics or math, depending on the term. The math was algebra. Basic algebra. And I had to dumb it way down to get pretty much anyone to pass. The physics was ostensibly algebra based physics, a reasonable course for college if you're a non-science major. However, the book they made me use was a book that is used by many 9th grade high school students around the country (Conceptual Physics by Hewitt). I taught what was given me until the first test I administered, at which point I realized that zero (being literal right now) of my students would pass if I taught them 9th grade physics. It was a sad realization, as I didn't really know anything about for profit ed until that time. They take these people's creditworthiness and self worth along with our money and laugh their way to the bank. And the punchline of the joke is that student debt can't be discharged in bankruptcy. If Ford sells me a defective car that I paid $40,000 for, I can sue them. If they sell a hundred thousand defective cars, the federal government can sue them. Somehow, a defective education affects only the mark, and not the grifter.
http://abovethelaw.com/2012/02/twelve-more-law-schools-slapped-with-class-action-lawsuits-over-employment-data/ I think it's funny that the first diploma mills to get the shaft were law schools. 
How bad is this? Plus, aren't you only granted the stipend because you're a research or teaching assistant? I'm probably just going to take out some loans just to be able to live a decent life while I'm in grad school.I was living with no roommates on a grad student stipend.
Few things make me as angry as this. Oh, you went a non-profit for a degree that means it's hard as hell to get a job because many markets are hard to break into and can't afford to live above the poverty line? Fuck you, no way out of this one. Same deal with for-profit, those might be even worse considering just how much exploitation is going on. I wasn't aware that Davenport was for-profit and and according to a quick google search/wikipedia it says it's a private non-profit? The step Obama is taking is likely a good one, but it doesn't change the fact that my generation is still completely screwed immediately out of college unless you lived at home with a job for two years or by some miracle got a full-ride.And the punchline of the joke is that student debt can't be discharged in bankruptcy. If Ford sells me a defective car that I paid $40,000 for, I can sue them. If they sell a hundred thousand defective cars, the federal government can sue them. Somehow, a defective education affects only the mark, and not the grifter.
That doesn't change the fact that many of those people will be leaving with a lot of debt. Will they be able to pay it off? Sure. But it will still be much higher than previous generations have had to deal with for many of those students. Also, I'm having trouble finding how many people study IT in particular, but the total number of Computer and information sciences bachelor's degrees awarded in 2011-2012 was 47,384, or 2.65%. A small fraction, no doubt. I'm aware that not everybody can "get lucky" or base their profession off the pay grade, but I do think college should be much cheaper than it is now or that loan forgiveness shouldn't be completely out of the realm of possibility.
There are other good careers rather than IT. I agree that college should be cheaper. I also think that, rather than loan forgiveness, people should be able to decide to pay a "college tax" on their earnings (5%?) while the debt they have remains static, with zero interest, and can be paid off to lose the tax. Forgiveness could cause issues depending on how it is done, as can ending the ability to get loans. There needs to be some sort of system that stops ballooning prices at least.
That's silly. Facts are real regardless of whether the person speaking them has experienced them firsthand or merely learned them. And anecdotes should not be taken wholesale as shining examples of how things really are for the general population or sub-population being discussed. If you heard that certain job fields were not hiring would you refuse to believe it until you heard it from someone who applied for those sorts of jobs? Would you take the time to peruse his/her resume or hear his job history to try and determine if he/she was actually qualified for the positions they applied for after listening to their despair narrative or would you simply trust them, because they had experienced it firsthand? Would articles about how those fields are not hiring be dismissed as "not coming from sufferers"? Sure, first-hand experience can provide a perspective, and even a valuable one in the right circumstances. But it's not the only way to acquire information and facts, or to justify them. Sometimes anecdotes are completely off-base. I got hired two months after stopping college, with no degree, making over 30k a year, in a field in which I had no experience and which was not related to my degree, at the age of 20, in the freaking summer of 2010, in the United States. For reference, the unemployment rate across the nation was 9.5% that summer. Does my experience (while certainly not a 'despair narrative') corroborate with any facts of the job market at the time for the standard American? No, not at all. Likewise, one person's "despair narrative" may be completely skewed from the norm, or skewed by their perspective. Moreover, I don't feel the need to shore up my belief that some things are awful/worthy of despair by waving around my personal experience of them, nor should I.