Million Student March

MemberLG

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I couldn't resist

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/USA-Up...-country-plan-to-walk-out-of-classrooms-today

Am I missing something from my upbringing, education, and life experience to disagree with tuition free public universities, cancellation of student debt, and $15 hourly wage for campus workers.

It's a bit ironic as these student demands show how little they know how life works.

I would say professors are campus workers also.
If education should be free, perhaps they should work for free if they ever find a job.
If public universities are free, can students take 10 years to graduate?
Can I borrow money from some of these students and ask for cancellation of my debt?
 
1+ MemberLG

Well, lets see...I did not take on any debt regarding my college tuition. No one in my family ever went to college and I did not expect my parents to pay for it either. I enlisted in the Navy at 20, used tuition assistance and my GI bill to attend school at night. It took me 10 years to complete pre-reqs for nursing school; applied for the MECP program three years in a row because I didn't make it the first two, and finally graduated from nursing school with a BSN when I was 31. While I was paying my time back for MECP, I again, went to college at night to work on a masters. I then applied for DUINS, was selected, finished a masters in science at 38 without one lick of debt, except time owed to the military. It can be done.

I am a firm believer that if you don't have any skin in the game, what you receive is basically devalued. No one is owed a college education, but if you want one, work for it. If you don't want to go into debt for college, work first at an entry level job, save your money and don't spend it on things you don't NEED, and go to school one or two classes at a time. Pay as you go. If you keep plugging along, you will be able to finish and will feel good about what you worked so hard to achieve. Heck, if you go work for Starbucks, they not only pay well and have good benefits, but they will pay your tuition to complete your degree through Arizona State University. There are many ways to get a college education without going into debt. No one deserves a handout, so put your hand back in your pocket and go get it yourself!
Rant over.:blowup:
 
I completely understand. I work 12 to 14 hr days some times Im so exhausted I sleep on the boat to make sure I fulfill contracts I signed and fulfill. Because if I don't, I will be undercut in service price, contracts broken and someone else gets the next contract, then surprise, I have no business and I go bankrupt and nobody there to give me a hand out. My employees and their families will suffer from unemployment. Bottom line, its my responsibility to find my own success, it will not be given to me. Its a series of "no" until I find a "yes".

However, I feel something more sinister at our door steps slowly eroding America. An under tow from the outside trying to bring us down. If education is free, then it will have no value. NO VALUE! It will be diluted. An education of no value is worthless other than the debt, the debt you owe for that "art" degree. Majority of degrees with the exception of the hard sciences are worthless. We have kids who could understand the maths and sciences, but we don't have the teachers! Now think about this, there are students who borrow for their education and later claim they will not pay it back! Because their religious belief will not allow them to pay an interest!!

Now lets not forget history. Remember the 70s, the age of the flower child and youth demanding "No War"? The US was hell bent in defeating the spread of communism throughout the globe. And this may have the beginnings of the "Age of Aquarius". I would be upset shelling out $60 grand a year of my hard earned money for my kid to be protesting with a flower in their hair. And I have sons!!

Peace!!

Push Hard, Press Forward
 
They won't get a million students, at best they get thousands of drop out losers (and I'm not saying all drop outs are losers).
 
I could have held the same sign as the girl in the photo. I also graduated with about 27K of debt. Of course I graduated with an optometry degree and attended a state school for undergrad to keep down costs. I also received lots of scholarship money for grad school. The girl in the photo has probably been snookered into getting a degree in women's studies and now has poor job prospects. No way should we make college free! Students and parents need to start showing fiscal restraint when spending for college. Only go to a school you can afford. Students should make sure that their monthly school loan payments will be affordable with the likely job salary their degree will provide. Unless a family is wealthy enough to just foot almost the entire school bill a student should be advised away from racking up big debts for black studies, peace studies, and LBGT studies. I know of 2 recent peace studies graduates from Cal-Berkeley waiting tables. This potential march is a "march of shame" for these kids.
 
Just for the sake of argument what is your stance on free high schools?
 
Just for the sake of argument what is your stance on free high schools?
I don't have a problem with free high schools as long as the tax payers are getting a good deal. There are many public schools that are fantastic, but the ones that continually under perform should be re-vamped to follow a model of a school that does do well. Charter schools are a very good example. My DD goes to a public charter school where she gets a comparable 10K education to a local private school. It is a small school with only 44 seniors in her class, but the teachers are dedicated and the school has the stats to back it up. I would rather have public dollars go to more of these schools than to keep on forking the dough out for schools that continually fall behind the national average. Parents should have a choice where they spend their tax dollars for education.
 
Just for the sake of argument what is your stance on free high schools?

They historically underperform private schools.
Overall that's probably true. I don't have data at hand but I suspect that the higher performance of private schools is due to a "cherry picking" effect of integral families, higher income and parental involvement.
 
Overall that's probably true. I don't have data at hand but I suspect that the higher performance of private schools is due to a "cherry picking" effect of integral families, higher income and parental involvement.

I don't disagree, in part. Probably different caliber teachers, students and families.
 
Just for the sake of argument what is your stance on free high schools?
I don't have a problem with free high schools as long as the tax payers are getting a good deal. There are many public schools that are fantastic, but the ones that continually under perform should be re-vamped to follow a model of a school that does do well. Charter schools are a very good example. My DD goes to a public charter school where she gets a comparable 10K education to a local private school. It is a small school with only 44 seniors in her class, but the teachers are dedicated and the school has the stats to back it up. I would rather have public dollars go to more of these schools than to keep on forking the dough out for schools that continually fall behind the national average. Parents should have a choice where they spend their tax dollars for education.
Are you suggesting vouchers? Just to be pick on your "fall behind the national average" argument; given a normal distribution about 50% will fall below average. We can't hope for the Lake Woebegone effect where all the children are above average. However we can and should strive for a much better academic performance for the money spent.
 
Just for the sake of argument what is your stance on free high schools?

They historically underperform private schools.

If you lump all public schools together including the lowest socioeconomic areas, then yes. But if you look at the Midwest for example, the test scores and data are impressive.

When parents can afford to send kids to a private school, the kids have probably already received numerous luxuries that most public school kids don't get. In private schools, misbehave and you are out. Public schools cannot easily remove problem kids. They have to educate everyone. The top kids in public schools can rival those in private schools any day.

We have a treasure in our public school systems and need to support them.
 
Maplerock has it right -- the public school system is so much larger and more diverse than the private school system that a comparison like that doesn't have any real meaning. And I don't mean diverse racially, I mean socio-economically, geographically, etc. Our best public school students can certainly compete with our best private school students, and public schools in aggregate are also answering a myriad of other challenges that (most) private schools don't even begin to touch.

The greater point though is that it's good for society to have an educated populace. Vast quantities of research indicate that it's the single best tool we have to use in combating, well, everything: poverty, violence, economic downturns, you name it. I don't think everyone should necessarily go to college, but it also does no one any good to have prohibitive pricing on something that has the capacity to benefit any and everyone. I'm better off if my neighbor and the kid down the street and the kid ten blocks over all have the ability to access the educational opportunities they desire -- be that vocational training, a skill-based associates degree, or a bachelor's in philosophy. End stop. There's zero downside to any of those options. The only question is financing, and that's where the conversation gets complicated -- that's a long and worthwhile conversation to have about what we as a society and community do and don't want to fund.

But this idea that 'if we make it free, it loses value' has no historical or comparative precedent. University education is free in a number of countries, and it isn't devalued. It was free to many after WW2 due to the GI Bill -- which was not initially progressive largesse, but an answer to how we could provide a constructive outlet for the vast quantities of unemployed young men -- and that certainly didn't devalue it. Public education in Georgia didn't become less valuable when they instituted the Hope Scholarship allowing any instate student with a B-average to get free tuition. And so forth. Education isn't valuable exclusively because of the price-tag attached to it, or a specific industry-driven skill-set it provides; it's valuable because the process of becoming educated has inherent value.

There was a point in history when we didn't have free public schools. Then we realized: Oh, it's a good thing for a country and community to have an educated citizenry. Eventually we made it mandatory because we realized it's a REALLY good idea to insist that everyone have a certain level of education. If we now live in a world in which specialized knowledge is how people gain access to a stable economic life, then it's of collective benefit to give as many people as possible access to some piece of that specialized knowledge, which represents opportunity. Again, this doesn't mean everyone's suddenly an artiste. For some people this will be welding, for other people nursing, for other people, yes, philosophy. That's up to the individual. (And philosophy will never be more than 0.01% of that group, let's be honest.)

Also, this idea that any degree other than a hard science degree being worthless has no grounding. Yes, hard science degrees have value. So too do many other degrees including rigorous degrees in the humanities, and even the arts. The issue in higher education today certainly isn't that too many people are majoring in philosophy or women's studies or ceramics and lollygagging around for eight years -- these are straw (wo)men that are often cited in conversations like this. (Degree-seekers in philosophy have been plummeting for years even though it was the foundational discipline for education for millennia. And 'studies' and 'arts' programs are a tiny sliver of a tiny sliver of degrees awarded each year.) The current issue is the rise and explosion of 'professionalized' degree programs run by non-profit and for-profit colleges alike that are low on substance and very expensive. They have few proven returns, saddle students with excessive debt, and provide them with neither a differentiated professional skill nor new analytical skills. They are credentialing mills and they are what's devaluing education in this country.

Those programs are taking what was once the path to economic opportunity in this country, and turning it into an avenue toward grinding, punishing debt. Debt that will eventually balloon and be a (partial) catalyst for another financial crisis. That's what's going on in higher education today. It's not about drunk, lazy frat boys having their college paid for -- no one's rallying for that. It's about the fact that there are fewer and fewer opportunities like those described above to work hard and get college degrees without debt. Are there exceptions? Sure. What Falconsrock describes above is a prime example. The military is a major -- maybe THE major -- avenue toward those opportunities. But we need more of those, not less. The idea that you can just get a job after high school and save up enough money to send yourself to college is a totally antiquated idea in most places. Take a look at this chart of base tuition for college in all states: http://trends.collegeboard.org/coll...tuition-and-fees-sector-and-state-over-time-1

These are the absolute cheapest options, and, as is quickly clear, your luck is largely dictated by geography. And none of this takes into account rent, food, transportation, books, etc. You quite simply will spend between $30,000 and $45,000 on college tuition even if you go to CC for 2 years. Plus lost wages, plus living expenses. If you don't come from a family that can afford to pay your way, you will be saddled with debt. That debt will limit all kinds of other choices, and our economy. There are only rare exceptions to that rule. That's why there are rallies.
 
Just for the sake of argument what is your stance on free high schools?
There is no such thing as a free high school. There are public and private high schools. Public are funded by Joe taxpayer. So when Joe's kids are in public high school, then Joe is paying for his kids to go to school, and when Joe's kids aren't in school, he is paying for someone else's kid to go to school.

There is no such thing as a free lunch. Someone pays for it either directly or indirectly.
 
Free college? Sure...she has the right answer....just listen to her.


Push Hard, Press Forward
Oh my word! This girl doesn't have a clue. More proof of the entitlement mentality. She believes she should get what she wants and someone else should pay for it. We are in a heap of trouble as a nation if this mindset continues. What happened to being responsible for yourself?
 
Miss Keely Mullen has the answers to make everything free. Just watch the above video. And since we are on the subject, how about feeling are more important than the First Amendment.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/201...uri-student-vp-answers-with-stunning-honesty/

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/vi...re.html#ooid=Fhd2RyeDreyNVhJGeb2Z33o9Z6a8naOf

This generation will inherit the concepts and ideology taught to them by a college system that was not held accountable for their action and neither should they. Their gift to the world, socialism.

Push Hard, Press Forward!!
 
University education is free in a number of countries

...for those who pass very rigorous exams, which most of the Marchers would never countenance. For everyone else it is trade school or private colleges and universities.

Why do you think they have cram schools in countries with "Free" university education? My DS spent his Junior year of HS in Brazil attending a private college prep high school. The curriculum was nothing but a 4 year standardized test prep course. Those who can afford cram schools are receiving a free college education while those of more modest means end up in the trades or paying their way to college.

At the other end of the spectrum, he did a gap year in Taiwan attending a high school for those who were not deemed to be college bound at about age 12. His school was preparing high school aged kids for careers in the hospitality and tourist industries. Among his classes were bartending and cooking. He was resource for the English classes.

Reading this make me think that kids today have a right to be angry.
http://www.theatlantic.com/educatio...h-of-working-your-way-through-college/359735/

Nowhere in this MSU grad students research does he mention the amount of aid available to college students today. The HOPE scholarship is but one example. It pays the full tuition for ANY Georgian that can get accepted at GA Tech. Nebraska has a similarly low threshold for full tuition coverage. For those who don't meet merit threshold, there is the Buffett scholarship which covers the tuition on a need's only basis of any Nebraskan at any state school. All you have to do is get into a state school, which any in-stater can do with an expired fishing license.

The one constant theme is entitlement. Students and parents have been hoodwinked into believing that a college education is an end in and of itself and that everyone deserves it.
 
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