FIVE Reasons why FREE Community College is a Terrible Idea

[actaeon277]

Or how about the part where the defense budget is only 10 percent of federal spending.
Eliminate the entire military, and we're still deficit spending.

 

[Alpo]

You don't need any of that do you? Live on your own property. Drill for water. Put in your own septic tank. Plow and plant. Maybe raise a chicken or two.

Beat the **** out of the bullfrogs to keep the pond full and shoot all tresspassers.

And get off the dang internet. Too many contrary opinions.

 

[actaeon277]

You don't need any of that do you? Live on your own property. Drill for water. Put in your own septic tank. Plow and plant. Maybe raise a chicken or two.

Beat the **** out of the bullfrogs to keep the pond full and shoot all tresspassers.

And get off the dang internet. Too many contrary opinions.

Oh look. Someone failed government/econ class. Can't tell the difference between limited government and anarchy.
And drill for water? How quaint. I did drill. Not everyone has city water and septic.

 

[actaeon277]

Oh. I should note, I HAD septic and a well.
The government decided to "save" me and my neighors. Whether we wanted to be saved or not.

 

[Alpo]

Oh look. Someone failed government/econ class. Can't tell the difference between limited government and anarchy.
And drill for water? How quaint. I did drill. Not everyone has city water and septic.

Oh I certainly can tell the difference between a polemicist and a reasonable man......

 

[Alpo]

Oh. I should note, I HAD septic and a well.
The government decided to "save" me and my neighors. Whether we wanted to be saved or not.

Fight it! Cut off your water and go back to your old system! The hell with the neighbors and gubmint! Be a rugged individualist like you always intended to be.

Let us know when you are signing off the net permanently....

 

[BugI02]

I think our nation has a compelling interest in subsidizing education for certain fields, namely STEM and vocational/trades. A generation of know-nothings with art and gender studies degrees does not bode well for our future. We need to be able to compete in the global marketplace, and to have home-grown talent working in high tech fields. If nothing else, as a matter of national security. It is not good to have to import STEM talent.

Overall, I would agree - with a couple of caveats.

First I think brilliance - overall exceptional intelligence - should be the only standard for awarding scholarships. I think the scholar should then be at liberty to apply his brilliance to any field he wishes. Trying to funnel people into the popular careers of the day smacks too much of the communist system of the state determining ones educational path and is likely to always be behind the curve of what we need.

Second I think something needs to be done about reigning in finance, currently 9% of GDP but merely moving wealth around rather than helping to grow the pie. As long as finance presents a relatively easy path to extraordinary riches I think we will lose talented individuals to its siren song. Enlightened self-interest.

https://tcf.org/content/commentary/graph-how-the-financial-sector-consumed-americas-economic-growth/

"Historically, the unit cost of intermediation has been somewhere between 1.3% and 2.3% of assets. However, this unit cost has been trending upward since 1970 and is now significantly higher than in the past. In other words, the finance industry of 1900 was just as able as the finance industry of 2010 to produce loans, bonds and stocks, and it was certainly doing it more cheaply. This is counter-intuitive, to say the least. How is it possible for today’s finance industry not to be significantly more efficient than the finance industry of John Pierpont Morgan?
The short answer is that Wall Street, for the last thirty years or so, has been skimming prodigiously from the top. The graph above shows how the total economic cost of financial intermediation grew from under 2 percent in 1870 to nearly 6 percent before the stock market collapsed in 1929. It grew slowly throughout the postwar expansion, reaching 5 percent in 1980. Then, beginning during the deregulatory years of the Reagan administration, the money flowing to financial intermediaries skyrocketed, rising to almost 9 percent of GDP in 2010."


Third, you are correct about the undesirability of importing STEM talent but you may have made an somewhat uncritical examination of the reasons for this trend. Although business will tell you the reason for the constant clamor for more and more H1Bs is their inability to hire the talent they need there is a strong undercurrent of business's desire for cheap (as much as 15% lower salaries) and docile (if your employer no longer sponsors your visa you go home. you cannot easily shop your talents to other employers to improve your position) workers.

H1-B Visas: Clever Trick for Cheap Tech Talent? | Inc.com

"There's no doubt that recruiting exceptional talent from the around the globe is a boon for U.S. tech companies. The problem, as Norman Matloff describes it, is that it's unclear if the H1-B is actually successful at a) attracting legitimately highly-skilled foreign workers and b) putting them to use in any positions of research and development where their skills could actually be leveraged."

Though the United States should indeed welcome the immigration of "the world's best brains," are the foreign students typically of that caliber? The tech industry has put forth little to support such assertions. It has pointed to some famous immigrant success stories in the field but, in most cases, the people cited, such as Google cofounder Sergey Brin, never held foreign-student (F-1) or work (H-1B) visas (Brin immigrated with his parents to the United States at age 6). And more importantly, neither the industry nor any other participant in this national debate has offered any empirical analysis documenting that the visa holders are of exceptionally high talent.

"Why do we offer so few H-1B visas for talented specialists that the supply runs out within days of becoming available each year, even though we know each of these jobs will create two or three more American jobs in return?" Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in April.


The way Zuckerberg puts it, you would expect that there would be incredibly low unemployment rates for high-skilled, workers in the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields. The only problem is that the data reveals just the opposite.


Just last month, a report published by Georgetown University showed that recent graduates in information systems are dealing with an unemployment rate of 14.7 percent. Computer science majors face an unemployment rate of 8.7 percent. In other words, the claims about the "supply running out within days" just seems a bit false.



"Legal loopholes involving the definition of what constitutes a "qualified" worker for purposes of permanent labor certification must be closed. The laws should not force an employer to hire an American who cannot perform the job well, but it is commonplace for employers to narrowly tailor job requirements so that only the desired foreign applicant qualifies."

 

[BugI02]

And yet, before this we were able to maintain the highest tech in the world, even got to the moon.

But I guess we didn't know we needed all those Majors in women's studies, puppetry, professional nanny, pop culture, gunsmithing, fermentation sciences, Canadian studies, decision making, the Beatles, Sex, Auctioneering, bagpiping, bakery science and management, costume technology, Egyptology, Entertainment Engineering & Design, Floral Management, and Turfgrass science.

How did we ever get by without those majors?

And maybe, if you want the government (meaning us) to pick up the tab, it should be by the State, and not the Federal government.
You know, since paying for college isn't in the Constitution, which is supposed to be the rules the Feds are limited to.
Instead, the States could vote on if they will pay or not, with more control by their citizens. And citizens not liking bigger government can move to another State.

+1 Act. In my day control was 'exercized' by the fragmentary nature of scholarships at the university level. Other than a basic scolarship for tuition, by sophomore year we were applying for additional scolarships given by corporations targeting our chosen field of endeavor. One needed to have already demonstrated real scholarship in that/those degree tracks to even be eligible, and maintain that level of scolarship for the award to renew year over year.

It also served the additional purpose of being an in for internships and employment. If P&G awarded you a scholarship you automatically stood out in competition for an internship or a job with them or a similar firm. IIRC there didn't seem to be too many scolarships on offer for puppetry (Jim Henson?) or Turf Grass 'engineering' (Scott's?) or women's studies (????). Seems like the invisible hand would seperate the wheat from the chaff given a chance

 

[BugI02]

Anti-education.

It shows.

Careful about leaping to conclusions. You might turn an ankle

 

[BugI02]

Federal government? No. Meddling in education is not a power given it in the Constitution.

For the state's? Well, that's a little different. Our state constitution requires that we supply kids with free to them education. Is it their job? Well, that peice of paper says yes.

+1 Quite so. I think the original intent was for the states to function as laboratries for change, free to try anything not overtly forbidden by the Constitution and BoR. It was thought (naively, I guess) that clearly superior results would likely be adopted by the other states. Look at MIT and CalTech, they were superior institutions first and then became the magnets to scholars they are today. Those institution's rise to the top took a sustained committment from the states they resided in (and proud alumni, of course)

 

[BugI02]

We seem to be able to fund wars without much of a problem....and then leave behind billions in equipment (and in the case of southeast Asia, billions in hard cash). How many kids could go from pre-school to doctorates on that waste?

I'd rather see the Johnson County schools get the dollars associated with surplus MRAPs than give the sheriff a new toy. Maybe that's just me.....

We fund drug intediction and prison systems.

I'm sure you could get by with home schooling. After all, rugged individualists acting by themselves in their own self interest built the morass we live in today.

https://www.homeschool-life.com/la/rustonch/articles/homeschooloutcomes.pdf


You might wish to review this or something similar. The home schooled have equal or greater ACT scores and collegiate success rates than other student types including those attending private and parochial schools.

How's the ankle?

 

[Spear Dane]

Anyone actually read the proposal? What it requires? That occupational/skilled trades are included in the proposal?

You can still be against it, but maybe read what it actually is before you decide.

I don't care if it teaches people to crap gold and pee fountain of youth water. The fact that it is 'free' is an automatic disqualifier.

 

[Alpo]

https://www.homeschool-life.com/la/rustonch/articles/homeschooloutcomes.pdf


You might wish to review this or something similar. The home schooled have equal or greater ACT scores and collegiate success rates than other student types including those attending private and parochial schools.

How's the ankle?

Off your meds?

You of course recognize the error of extrapolating the results of that study to the broader population.

I'm all for those who elect to drop out to homeschool and become burdenless on society. It would be particularly useful if they stop whining about the state of the world and just move along. Set yourself up in a valley next to Howard Roark.

 

[BugI02]

Off your meds?

You of course recognize the error of extrapolating the results of that study to the broader population.

I'm all for those who elect to drop out to homeschool and become burdenless on society. It would be particularly useful if they stop whining about the state of the world and just move along. Set yourself up in a valley next to Howard Roark.

Oh I don't know. Decent sample size (7780 IIRC) relatively random distribution - with more personal info on the participants it might be possible to determine true nature of the distribution and confidence level. Might not turn out to be all that bad

 

[Alpo]

So, rather than one teacher for every 20 to 30 students, you wish to return all females to the home to provide 1 on 1 or 1 on a few personal instruction? And you assume that all females are capable of providing said instruction? Yes, lets return to a patriarchal society with barefoot and pregnant women in the home....but highly educated barefoot and pregnant women.

And the economy will get along just fine without the contribution of the distaff outside the home.

Mysogynist much?

 

[Fargo]

So, rather than one teacher for every 20 to 30 students, you wish to return all females to the home to provide 1 on 1 or 1 on a few personal instruction? And you assume that all females are capable of providing said instruction? Yes, lets return to a patriarchal society with barefoot and pregnant women in the home....but highly educated barefoot and pregnant women.

And the economy will get along just fine without the contribution of the distaff outside the home.

Mysogynist much?

Sooooo very much non sequitur....

I can't believe you are discriminating against homeschooling fathers. Nevermind those that work and homeschool. What of the gays, where there is no one around to be pregnant? Will no one think of the homeschooling gays?

 

[Bennettjh]

 

[actaeon277]

Besides, education was left to local or the State. Once again, not within the purview of the Federal Government.
Just because it's not the Federal Governments job, does not mean that it can't get done.

 

[BugI02]

So, rather than one teacher for every 20 to 30 students, you wish to return all females to the home to provide 1 on 1 or 1 on a few personal instruction? And you assume that all females are capable of providing said instruction? Yes, lets return to a patriarchal society with barefoot and pregnant women in the home....but highly educated barefoot and pregnant women.

And the economy will get along just fine without the contribution of the distaff outside the home.

Mysogynist much?

Based on your #19 I thought I was just bolstering your assertion that we could get by with home schooling

 

[BugI02]

So, rather than one teacher for every 20 to 30 students, you wish to return all females to the home to provide 1 on 1 or 1 on a few personal instruction? And you assume that all females are capable of providing said instruction? Yes, lets return to a patriarchal society with barefoot and pregnant women in the home....but highly educated barefoot and pregnant women.

And the economy will get along just fine without the contribution of the distaff outside the home.

Mysogynist much?

Well, I am a Trump supporter.