Is free college even a good idea?

Worthless? Is what I know worthless because somebody else knows it too?

Perhaps to some people a college education is indistinguishable from job training, but to others it includes personal enrichment and expansion of horizons. I’ve always believed that education is not for your job but for your life.

In the UK, Australia and many other countries around the world, many people have received a free college education. Many of the same politicians who have and are voting for increased university fees didn’t pay for their own degrees. Why does the cost determine the worth? As long as universities receive adequate funding and their teaching standards are monitored to ensure they maintain their standards, there should be no diminishment of quality. You might argue that making universities charge for their degrees is more likely to lead to a diminishment in standards. Universities may drop standards to attract more paying students. They may increase teacher’s workloads and class numbers to maximise productivity.

Furthermore, despite a potential lack of fees for the student, not everyone will attain the required intellectual standard to enter a degree program. Overall, a better educated citizenry has far greater benefits than meeting employment needs.

I’m trying to imagine the ills that might befall a society in which a college education is available to all who qualify for it. It’s tough work. To me the the saddest transformation in my lifetime is the apparent loss of consensus around what constitutes the betterment of us all.

Free college is a great idea if proper funding can be worked out, one that does not rile up people. Also, I am interested in high-schools and colleges coming up with a dedicated curriculum intensely focused in teaching students to be entrepreneurs. Instead of finding jobs, most graduates should learn how to create jobs.

No by high school one should have learned to educate themselves free with the library card.

Keep in mind that free college doesn’t mean millions of more art history majors. It also would apply to Community Colleges so there could be more nurses, plumbers, mechanics, HVAC techs, electricians, carpenters, and bookkeepers. This would drive down the price when your toilet explodes and you have to call someone.

I dropped out of high school since I knew college wasn’t really a option and got a shit job. If I knew college was a option I would have stuck it out and kept going to school. There is a good chance someone like me will sell your kids drugs. Knowing you can go to college might help some people make the right decision when they have to decide between drug dealer or Taco Bell.

College or prison. I know what I would prefer my taxes going to.

Umm… no.

As time progresses, the educational requirements for employment go up. ALL employment. There was a time when you could get a good job without even being literate or having the math skills to count past 10.

Flash forward a bit and you get to where someone needed to be able to read things like work orders and know math well enough to figure that a $2.47 purchase paid for with a $5 bill requires $2.53 change back and that two quarters are 50¢.

Then we get past the Korean War and you pretty much needed a high school diploma to get most jobs, and college to get the really good ones.

As we get to modern times, some fields require even their entry-level employees to have a two-year degree. For a while many employers would be willing to accept things like having done the same job for a different employer, but even that started to go away. Now, any application for those jobs that doesn’t show a degree on the resume are automatically shit-canned by the few that even accept them.

Small problem there; just like medieval times, college education in America largely restricted to the offspring of the well-off. The irony there is that some employers will see a serious shortage of qualified candidates state-side and look overseas. So without free (or at least affordable) college, the US will give most of the well-paying jobs to pretty much everyone except those Americans who were not born rich.

@mazingerz88 That simply would not fly unless we also did some major reforms to break up monopolies and otherwise protect small businesses from those that could and do make a habit of either undercutting them or buying them out to reduce competition. If you think “The American Dream” still exists, then you’re still at least a couple of decades in the past.

@RedDeerGuy1 Yes and no. I went that route and still have many doors closed because I didn’t pay $80k+ to get a piece of paper saying that I know what I know.

Today a college degree in the U.S. is now equivalent to what a high school diploma was many years ago.

@dammitjanetfromvegas Exactly!

I do think there is a certain risk of devaluing degrees by making everyone get them. The problem @dammitjanetfromvegas mentioned was caused in part by college education becoming much more normalized. But like @Earthbound_Misfit said, making college free is not the same as making it easy. Admissions standards could be kept the same, as could methods of evaluation. In fact, evaluation could possibly be made more rigorous. And as @johnpowell pointed out, the policy would apply across the board to all forms of higher education.

Not everyone needs a bachelor’s degree, but a lot of people would be better off with an associate’s degree or advanced vocational training. If free college was combined with better resources for figuring out what sort of education was most appropriate for a given individual, we could do ourselves—and our economy—a lot of good. It would also make it easier for people to change careers later in life (something that is increasingly common these days, and will only become more common as technology progresses).

In the end, though, I am extremely sympathetic to @Jeruba‘s argument. Education is valuable for its own sake, and not just for whatever economic benefit it provides. I didn’t pursue my education for the money it could make me (if that had been my goal, I would have studied something else). And I don’t teach in the hopes that I or my students will someday be rich. Both activities were driven by the belief that what I studied and what I teach are worth knowing for their own sake as well as for what they can add to my life.

It might be a good idea to teach that the point of education is not competition, and that competitive thinking can often be counter-productive.

Education is useful and desirable for so many other reasons than as a job requirement!

I have a hard time wrapping my head around that this is really a question for people, and what else there might be to say about it that would explain to someone who thinks it might be useless if most people had as much education as they wanted.

I live in a country with free university education. We still have hairdressers and shelf stockers. It’s about choice and opportunity. Not everyone is going to be a Nobel but there is one huge obstacle removed for any potential Inventor or doctor or teacher or artist etc…

More quality education is going to make society a better place. Training and education are two separate things that often overlap at the university. The first two years of community college are already “free” in my state. It really has not changed enrollment all that much yet. Removing the cost does not remove the work and time involved.

I was reading a comment on Hacker News that kinda touched on this.

A guy wrote a post about in four years he forgot so much math that he couldn’t really understand his PhD dissertation anymore.

So a good comment on HN that touches on this. And this does a better job than I could.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11100524

“My response is that for every 100 of these types of papers, one of them may prove to be pivotal or inspirational in something truly groundbreaking and functionally useful. For this reason, I am all for 100 different people spending their time doing things like this, because eventually one of them will make an impact that is greater than 100x the efforts of 100 normal men.”

I can see one way in which it could be a bad idea.

When both printing and literacy reached the point where lay-people could read the Bible for themselves, the Church lost a bit of power. When governments started ruling by written law instead of by fiat, they likewise lost a little power. Basically, any time you have people capable of thinking for themselves, those in power will feel threatened.

Weak education gives power to the few that are educated; typically royalty, nobility (basically cronies of royalty who have been granted wealth and power) and clergy.
If I were part of one of those groups, then I too would prefer to have an uneducated populace so as to make my power more secure.

@SavoirFaire I’m a little confused about how that devalues a degree. Educated people make the world a bit better at the expense of making the world complex enough that the next generation requires more education to learn enough to keep the world from regressing. What devalues a degree is that the world has progressed.

An interesting aside in all this is that society has changed in other ways as educational standards have risen. Back when you all you really needed to work was to be strong enough to do a meaningful amount of physical labor, “adulthood” was barely even a concept; maybe age 10. Then the bar moved up a little to about the age when one finished learning what they needed to know to do whatever job they were born into and thus could do it without their mentor’s assistance; early teens. When it got to where you really needed to have at least some academic education but could get by just fine if you dropped out in the ninth grade, “adulthood” moved to about 16. Then 18 when a high school diploma became so important. And now, those under about 22 are considered children because they haven’t had time to finish a degree.

It’s a great idea for those academically inclined, who can do the work and want to do the work. My dad went to college for free along with many of his friends. They were poor, smart, and grew up in NYC.

The top percentage of kids who applied to Hunter College in NY back then, who got accepted, went to school there for free. The poor man’s Harvard. After Hunter, several of his peers went to graduate school on federal grants; the government had an interest in funding certain majors for the needs of the country. My dad went to Wharton for free, so did a close friend of his. My dad’s was for a PhD in Sociology, his friend a Masters in Urban Planning. There were many people similar to him.

Do I think college should be free for everyone in the US? Probably not. I don’t see how we pay for it all, although I do think something needs to be done about cracking down on tuitions. Just the fact that some state universities are more than double others per credit hour, and the way tuitions have escalated, makes me really wonder why some tuitions are so ridiculously high.

I also wonder if the countries that provide free tertiary education track the kids? Can everyone get into a university for free? Or, do you need to test at a certain level? Have the kids followed a specific program in high school? How does it work?

I have friends who teach at community colleges, basically anyone who wants to go can go, and they say many of the students where they teach are barely at a high school level. It’s very frustrating for them. I’m not saying this is true for community college across the country, I’m talking about specifically where I lived in TN. I went to community college myself at first before transferring. Paying for some of those kids to go to school is not the best use of tax payer money probably. Paying for them to have a skill to earn money as adults is. I’m not saying don’t help at all.

There are so many problems with this absurd idea that I don’t know where to start. Although I would say that several of the issues have been raised above.

1) The greatest flaw in the concept is that nothing is “free”. Sure, the student may not pay for it, but someone is playing the professor and the TA, and someone is playing the electric bill. Who will that be? Is this something that taxpayers should be underwriting?

2) I want to see the rules that would go along with this. How much education would be included? All the way to a Masters or a PhD? Would the government put quotas on education? (We will only pay for you if you study math, but not art history). Could a person decide to be come a perpetual student?

I’m pretty liberal in my thoughts, but this, to me, is a step too far. Students should have to make an investment in their futures. I have no problem with partially subsidized tuition and reasonable rules; I have an issue with a free ride.

From a personal point of view, I would like to see free college courses for those over 65.

I haven’t read the previous). Even if college were free, not everyone would go to college, not everyone would get a degree if they did. Many people are not interested in college, not able to attend college, don’t have the skills to acquire a degree.

@jerv That comment was specifically about the economic value of a degree (since that was what the OP asked about). I agree that a degree (and really, an education) have other types of value and that many of them are more important than economic value. But I wanted to address the OP’s argument before discussing such things.

The economic value of a degree is the extent to which it helps one compete in the market. The more people who have the same qualifications as you, the less you stand out in the market. Ceteris paribus, then, more people having the same degree as you decreases the economic value of your degree (at least in an economy like that of the US).

This isn’t mere theory. We’ve seen this play out historically. The economic value of each particular level of schooling has decreased as that level of schooling has become more common. That’s why a high school degree doesn’t command the same respect and income as it once did on the job market. So many people have college degrees now that it is easy in many industries to make it a requirement even for jobs that don’t really need it.

@elbanditoroso First of all, everybody knows that nothing is free. When people say “free college,” they are referring to the plan to eliminate tuition and fund higher education via state and federal subsidies. Indeed, the OP specifically referred to the Sanders plan. I suspect you knew all of this, however, and chose to complain about nothing anyways.

Second, a summary of the Sanders plan is available online. It covers undergraduate education only, and does not include any restrictions on what students can study. The issue of being a perpetual student is not explicitly addressed, though it is worth noting that there are already standards enforced by the accreditation boards in this area. Those standards give people a limited amount of time in which to complete a degree.

Perpetual students are those who finish one degree program and then immediately enroll for another or who participate in continuous education programs of the sort that are not covered under this plan. So while a clarification might be in order, it would seem that such students are not covered unless they are in an actual degree program, and only for the duration of their first degree program.

I do agree that we have to make sure students remain invested in their educations. Giving people something for free can often lead them to value it less and treat it less seriously unless you can give them another reason to care about it. That said, the German program on which the Sanders plan is based has not led to a massive shift in student attitudes. The fact that college can seriously impact one’s personal and economic future may be enough to keep students on track. And like I mentioned above, universities could try making evaluation more rigorous, which could in turn increase the stakes of not taking college seriously.

@RedDeerGuy1 “No by high school one should have learned to educate themselves free with the library card.”

That might have worked back in the mid-1800s, but it wouldn’t in today’s world.

I think any talk of free higher education should include trade schools as well. Not everyone is fit for college and the world is still going to need plumbers, electricians and mechanics.

All that a free college education will provide is more higher educated people fighting over $15.00 per hour minimum wage jobs that are increasingly being replace by robots who do not need expensive health care on top of it.

Anybody out of work today can attest as to how hard it is to find a decent wage paying job in their field. 4 years ago I put out an add for an entry level sales position at my company and I was flat out blown away by the volume of advanced degree and experience resumes I got. CEO’s, CFO’s begging wanting this job. What was telling was that a large portion of the applicants came from the medical and insurance side of their experience.

We clearly need more better jobs than free college or trade school education at this stage of the game.

So let’s make an important distinction as mentioned above: Training and education. I firmly believe that more education will yield high dividends in our society. Training will yield qualified job applicants but will not always guarantee socially aware, historically, mathematically and scientifically versed citizens who can understand and communicate with each other. There are all kinds of jobs up for grabs but they require skill. Skill is developed through training and experience including some education at times. Most of these jobs are actually hard to fill with qualified applicants. Developing pathways to get people the training and experience to fill those jobs should be an additional focus. People are under some delusion that a college degree is going to accomplish both of these things. While some do most are strongly weighted one way or the other. People are also notorious for taking the path of least resistance. Harder majors have the lowest number of students and easy majors have the most. That equates to large numbers of people with degrees in communications waiting tables making $10/hr on average. Skilled electricians with little to no education can make in excess of six figures. Supply and demand, it’s not rocket science why some people can’t find work. Work is not why we need education, we need it to be better humans as we move forward. It’s crucial that we demand a high level of education for anyone who wants it or are capable of understanding it. What good are things like the right to vote when the general population cannot decipher the bullshit politicians spew, can be convinced by baseless junk-science or do not understand basic civics?

@SavoirFaire If you want to make that argument, then ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING has already been devalued. It used to be that just working full-time was enough for a single bread-winner to be able to afford to keep a roof over their head and have enough left over to feed a family of four. A kid could work a summer/part-time job and not only pay their tuition, but have enough left over for a used car.

Now? Well, being born to the right parents can be worth a few million dollars, but aside from birthright, the only thing that is really worth anything any more is how efficiently you can keep your trust fund from draining.

Then again, progress means that certain skills really aren’t worth it. Tell me, how much meat can you put on your table in exchange for using your prodigious flint-knapping skills to make a really nice spearhead for your neighbor? How far could you get in todays society if you were totally and utterly illiterate?

@elbanditoroso Many students are investing in their futures. To think otherwise is to refute that things like starvation and homelessness can lead to that future being far shorter than it would be if dying of starvation and/or exposure were impossible.

As for it being an absurd idea, I find it funny that many of those who think it’s absurd think nothing of using taxpayer money to pay the operating expenses of major corporations. Hell, they’ll spend millions of dollars doing drug tests on those on public assistance and only recoup a fraction of a percent of that cost in getting Junkies off the dole. If you think I would take such a person’s idea on economic matters seriously, you’re as crazy as they are.

@Cruiser We are a service-based economy. Somebody has to shovel the shit, but shit-shovelling robots still currently cost more than human workers. One thing you fail to mention though; a lot of people see where the money is and gear themselves up to get one of those jobs, only to find out 2–5 years later that a few million other people had the same idea. Why do you think I resisted going into anything IT-related despite all the pressure on me to do so when I was younger? Best-case scenario there was that the field would accelerate while age would cause me to decelerate and lose the mental agility required to remain competitive by age 40. I knew that the world would be far different by 2010 than it was in the mid-1980s, and it turned out that I was right.

(Standing ovation)

I love the idea, I’m ALL for it, Chuffed to bits.

However, common sense clearly states that nothing is free.

While we’re on the subject of education, I’m not so sure that the the issue of college affordability is as critical to the future of the country as the abysmal lack of overall knowledge defining our country. And when it comes to civic matters, the country is undergoing an out and out ignorance epidemic.

@jerv You hit the nail on the head…

only to find out 2–5 years later that a few million other people had the same idea. Why do you think I resisted going into anything IT-related despite all the pressure on me to do so when I was younger? Best-case scenario there was that the field would accelerate ”

People’s expectations today are that if they get a degree they expect a job in return. 4 years of college and 2–5 years of plowing the fields of their respective degree is hardly what I call putting in an effort. You and I both have weathered the reality of our own unmet expectations and I and as far as I can tell you never once whined about it. We both pushed on and never gave up on pursuing our American dream.

I will also say that there is something to be said for the over 40 yr old worker and that is for the most part they have experience that cannot be taught, they are also largely loyal and dedicated and no amount of pay will ever remunerate those qualities equitably.

@Darth_Algar I agree that trade schools should be included in any theoretical plan. Since the OP brought up the Sanders plan, I will note that the status of vocational training in that plan is somewhat unclear. Sanders has expressed support for career and technical education and the Perkins CTE program that supports it. He has not explicitly stated whether trade schools and the like will be included in his tuition-free college plan, however.

@jerv I have no idea what you are on about. I spent two sentences acknowledging that an increase in degrees decreases their economic value, and three paragraphs on why it doesn’t matter. You are acting like I am trying to make a big deal out of it, when really you seem to be having this argument all on your lonesome. So did you even bother to read what I wrote, or were you simply unable to understand it?

I think there are situations where sentiments such as “nothing is free” and “people should have to work for it” are not actually on point, and this seems to me to be one of them.

So suppose we have a bright young 18-year-old without money to pay tuition. We could either:

A) have her work at an untrained wage which barely covers living expenses, on the theory that modern economy is fair enough that she can somehow earn enough to pay modern tuition. This probably leads to most such people not going to college.

B) have her go into interest-bearing debt, that even if she becomes a doctor, may take her into her retirement to pay off, and meanwhile requires her to pay much more for tuition that she would have to if she (or her parents) had the money to pay the tuition up front. She suffers, banks get richer.

C) have her work at studying skills and not charge her tuition, instead using money that would otherwise go to corporate subsidies, stock market profits, needless military expenses, tax breaks for mega-profitable industries that coincidentally damage the environment and corrupt our governments, etc.

@SavoirFaire “The economic value of each particular level of schooling has decreased as that level of schooling has become more common. That’s why a high school degree doesn’t command the same respect and income as it once did on the job market. ”

It appears that you see degrees as a commodity whose value is determined by supply and demand while I disagree (rather strongly). You claim that their value drops as they get more common. I contend that their value drops as the world advances to where what was good enough 20 years ago is no longer good enough. Illiteracy was good enough for many centuries, but it’s not good enough to even be an adolescent in 21st-century America, let alone an employable adult. In short, the value dropped for reasons far different that what you seem to believe.

Correlation is not causation. That little snippet right there is pure correlation, yet you mark it as causation. While I appreciate you clarifying something I was confused about initially, that statement right there does indeed confirm that I read your first post correctly. So did you even bother to read what I wrote, or were you simply unable to understand it? Or are we just looking at it from totally different angles?

Actually it doesn’t matter whether it’s a difference of opinion or just miscommunication. Either way, we’ve both stated our opinions, so lets just consider this irreconcilable and move on.

@Cruiser I think it rather silly that some employers don’t consider a few years of work history to be an acceptable substitute for a degree. Of course, 20-somethings haven’t had enough time to get that experience, so they must rely more on educational certifications to prove that they have relevant knowledge than older folks do. In that regard, education levels the playing field a bit by giving younger folks at least a shot at the more demanding jobs.

@jerv Seriously, learn to read. I have been very explicit about this: I do not see degrees as a commodity, but I recognize the fact that they have an economic value. I am looking at the issue from multiple angles, and you are trying to pretend that I’m only looking at it from one angle (while you are looking at it from a different angle). If this is irreconcilable, it’s only because you become completely irrational once you’ve decided to disagree with someone.

As for the bit about causation and correlation, it is the common consensus among education professionals (particularly those whose specialty is education itself) that the increase in college graduates led to a large part of the decrease in the economic value of a college degree. At no point have I said it is the only factor, however. Maybe the change in what counts as enough knowledge is also a contributing factor. Nothing I’ve said rests on denying this possibility. But your explanation (apparently based on skills gained in high school rather than college) does not explain why some jobs that have not changed in the skills required have changed in the education required by those hiring for them.

(As an example: the company where my wife works now requires anyone in management to have a bachelor’s degree. The skills required for the job haven’t changed, but the educational requirements have. In defense of this change, the corporate office explicitly cited the availability of college-educated candidates.)

@jerv All I know is I would not have gotten the job I did 20 years ago if I did not have a college degree despite having 16 years of experience in the trenches of my field. But on the same hand I got the job because of my degree AND my 16 years of field experience and oddly my college degree had nothing relative to the job I was hired to do and my 16 years experience in the field trumped anything any degree could have ever provided for the job I was hired to do. All that mattered was that I had a sheepskin.

Maybe we can have grades 13 -15 free. Or at a discount.

*Late edit: my previous response should say “apparently based on skills gained in primary school,” not ”high school.”

Do people think they’re making some ground-breaking insight with the “noting is free” line? Of course there’s a cost to everything that’s factored in somewhere. “Free” simply means at no cost to the individual at the point of sale. I wonder if these same folks would stand in a grocery store and argue that the “free” samples are not free, that the cost of those samples is part of the advertising budget and is ultimately factored in to the retail price for the consumer.

Some people @Darth_Algar are not as sharp as you to see the real cost of their freebies and are very susceptible to misinformation.

Or the opposite? Defund high school , and only pay for junior high? Or elementary school? That would make high school more rare and valuable. Most people have bad memories of high school and we should not force people to take it if they can get a job elsewhere.
Alberta changed the dropout age to 17 and grade 11 from 16 and grade 10.

25 years ago if they dumped a few billion into the education of more doctors and nurses our healthcare system wouldn’t be the long lines and crazy prices we see today.

It wasn’t some mystery that the boomers were going to be getting sick.

@Darth_Algar Propaganda doesn’t have to be true to sway voters. However, it seems odd that many opponents of the idea ignore the detailed plans laid out to pay for it.

@Cruiser Yep. Many are not aware of the high cost of low prices, though it’s not restricted to just one side of the aisle or the other. That sort of ignorance is precisely why we need more education in this country, though I suspect that many people currently in power would lose that power if the majority of voters were as sharp as you or I and thus will do everything in their power to keep America dumb.

@RedDeerGuy1 Actually, some policy makers would if they felt they could get away with it. Seeings how we have some states that have education systems on par with impoverished Third World nations, so it wouldn’t surprise me if those states kept it up and gutted their educational system entirely.

No. Not open to all. Many states have free tuition for those who graduate high school with a x.x GPA. I think that’s great. But no, it shouldn’t be free for those who did not prove themselves serious students by the end of high school. A way for them to prove they have matured and now serious is a good idea, say 24 months after high school.

@MollyMcGuire I think the real intent of “free” college is to prevent people from being turned away from college for purely financial reasons. I doubt they’d accept those with too low a GPA regardless, but I know a ton of people are disqualified simply for being unable to get five-figure financing.

@Not_what_you_want_to_hear I think free college is a great idea. Remember, it’s limited to public colleges and universities. The whole point of public universities was to provide an alternative to expensive private schools. But as governments have slashed education funding, public schools have had to increase their tuition. So really, Bernie’s plan is almost a reset back to how things used to be. The only difference is that instead of tuition being very low, it will be zero.

Sorry, @jerv, but @dammitjanetfromvegas and @SavoirFaire are right. The problem is called “credential inflation,” and there’s a pretty good article on it here. Some jobs may have “skilled up” so that the old knowledge base just isn’t enough anymore, but that can’t explain everything we’re seeing. In fact, credential inflation is why I decided to get my master’s degree (at the behest of both my faculty and career advisors, all of whom specifically cited credential inflation as a reason to keep studying).

@MollyMcGuire Didn’t @Earthbound_Misfit already address that, though? If you have a shitty GPA in high school, you aren’t going to get into Harvard in the first place. Paying for tuition isn’t even on the table. And community colleges, which are often used to prove that people have matured and changed their attitudes, are already required to let people in regardless of their high school GPA. So what’s the problem?

Free doesn’t mean open access for all. There are still limited space I classes so, ulike the USA it becomes a true meritocracy., not who can afford it or whose parents went there and gave bucket loads of money to build a new basketball arena.

[Mod says] Remember to disagree without being disagreeable, please.

@Uberwench Is it that the government is cutting funds to schools? Or, is it that the government has been giving loans to students (from what I understand now every child must fill out some sort of form about getting a loan or aid or something, and the government is practically making it normal to get a loan for college) and so schools saw fit to raise tuition. It seems just like the housing bubble to me. Anyone can get a loan, everyone thinking in monthly payments instead of total dollars, and prices go up.

How to help finance education relevant

I have a bit of insight into how state universities work in the USA. They are run as businesses. Professors end up teaching remedial science courses because the kids with the money don’t always have the smarts. It is false economy because it drains resources. Bums on seats is what gets the public funding too so it is a self propelled downward cycle some universities think hiring more middle management with MBAs will solve, draining resources yet further.

@Uberwench Community colleges do not have to accept people who do not meet criteria. They do, however, (in my two states) provide remedial classes to help people meet criteria academically. Those classes are not free either. There may be tuition help that I’m not aware of. I would think the different states all have their differences.

@JLeslie Oh, I’d say it’s both. And there are other factors, too, like administrative bloat. Sorry if I implied that it was just the government cutting funds. I didn’t mean to.

@MollyMcGuire I didn’t say that they have no criteria. I said that high school GPA isn’t one of them. In pretty much every US state, community colleges are required to admit students from the community they serve so long as they have the equivalent of a high school diploma (like a GED or TASC certificate). And I didn’t say that they were free. If they were, Bernie wouldn’t need to cover them in his plan.

The same argument in support for free college can be made to many other sectors. Food is pretty important. As the argument goes, if someone wants to eat, they shouldn’t be constrained by money. Therefore, food should be along with healthcare, housing, furniture, clothing, child care, personal care, cars, car expenses, gas, transportation expenses, insurances, heat, electricity, water, and phones.

Since all this should be free, there really isn’t a need to attend college anymore unless you want to buy luxury items or learn for knowledge sake.

All this free talk is making me wet. Sounds like a good idea. I think I’ll vote for Sanders. I’ll relax with my freebies, and he or you guys can work to feed me grapes.

Not everyone needs free college like everyone needs food. @rmnj My guess is that you may not have benefited from an abundance of learning yourself. Government tax dollars are spent on your food, or are you forgetting? Farm subsidies, public health and safety by the FDA. Your broad extrapolation to include every consumer item on a freebie list is the biggest strawman argument I’ve seen on fluther in a very long time, and that’s saying something.

The food is still expensive. You would know that if you lived here and how am I supposed to get to the food store located miles away if I don’t have a car or public transportation? We don’t all live in cities. I need a free car, with gas, or free public transportation to get there or I will die. Same argument for medical care. If I can’t afford it, I will die. Has to be free. I need a free house with water to cleanse myself or I will get sick and I need electricity to power the heat which I also need or I will freeze to death in this cold climate. Should I keep going?

@rmnj where do you live? I bet I can beat you on cost of food. I also live in the country with no car, in a very cold climate. Shall I continue?

Free car? Free house? Get a job.

You created a lose, lose situation for yourself. If you make arguments against freebies by telling me how your conditions are worse than mine and you still manage to pull it off, then it means we don’t need freebies because if you can manage, then we can manage. On the other hand, if you make arguments in favor of freebies like college, then it means if people can’t manage to pay for college, it must be free.

Which is it? Freebies or no freebies? You can’t pick and choose. It won’t be logically consistent. You can’t have free healthcare and not free food.

Biggest strawman argument, ever.

It isn’t a strawman if the crux of the argument is the same.

@jca

Free Health care? Get a job.

I have a job.

Good, then we don’t need any freebies. Glad you agree. Don’t vote for Bernie Sanders.

I have a job. I also have free university and healthcare where I live.

I believe we’re going in circles here. Why does your country provide free health care? What was the argument in support of such a free system?

They have done since 1917. They consider it a human right. Holding someone’s life ransom for money is frowned upon here.

If you understand that ransoming someone for money is frowned upon, then why are you against all the freebies I listed? How can you be against free clothing, child care, personal care, cars, car expenses, gas, transportation expenses, insurances, heat, electricity, water, and phones? These are all life necessities of which not everyone has the means to achieve.

Countries have what are called, social welfare programs. If a person really is unable to provide the necessities of life for themselves, they are helped. If you are a normal person who has skills and can contribute to the community in some way, you find yourself a job, even if it is mopping a floor and cleaning toilets (which I did at more than one point in my life). If you need to obtain some skills, you go to school. If you are disabled, mentally or physically, you are helped. It is how a civilised society works. I’m sorry you don’t seem to live in one. Perhaps voting for the next guy who promotes bringing civilisation to your neck of the woods would be a good idea.

For the record, @rmnj is a returning troll. He’s gone again. But since there are plenty of non-trolls who find his argument compelling, let’s break it down.

@rmnj You’re gone now, but there is a straightforward answer to your question: societies creates solutions to the problems that actually exist, not the problems that might exist. In the Western world, health care is disproportionately expensive and beyond the means of many people (often those who need it the most). The same is not true for food, water, clothing, and shelter (the rest of the items on your list not actually being necessities for life, though heat and electricity may be important elements of suitable shelter in certain areas).

Furthermore, there are programs in place to help the few who have trouble getting those things for themselves. Universal health care is an answer to a problem that actually exists (not the only possible solution, but the one that certain societies have democratically opted to take). Similarly, universal tuition subsidization is a (proposed) solution to a problem that actually exists (though again, not the only possible solution, but one that some are willing to vote for). Universal food distribution would be an answer to a problem that doesn’t exist (though the food distribution programs we have could possibly stand to be expanded).

It should be noted that there is another way to address these problems—one that has been endorsed by socialists, liberals, libertarians, and conservatives alike: the basic income (or its close cousin, the negative income tax). Under such a system, everyone would be guaranteed the minimum amount of money required to obtain for oneself a minimally decent life. It would be up to the recipient to spend it wisely, however, and it would also be up to the recipient to decide whether or not they want to earn more than a minimally decent lifestyle through their own efforts.

Thank you for deleting the troll, @SavoirFaire.

I was wondering about that, @SavoirFaire . His argument really did seem too lame to be real.

@SavoirFaire

Personally I think the universal basic income is a great idea. It cannot be any worse than the means-tested welfare clusterfuck we have now.

The deleted member was talking about free cars. Not sure what that logic is.

and free food. Everything had to be free if something else was free. Troll.