Discussion for article #231842
Another two years of great ideas that will die in Congress. Thanks, once again, to every Democrat who didn’t vote in 2010.
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Which I find ironic since proposals like this are pretty much exactly what so much of the Dem base wanted.
Now, it’s guaranteed to die on the vine.
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It’s a wedge issue in yet another way. If the kids and young adults who are currently going to for-profit institutions and defaulting on their loans go to community colleges instead, the net result will be less federal spending. Which you would think conservatives would applaud. Until they realize it means less federal money in the coffers of educational profiteers.
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Me, I don’t blame the base. I blame the dilettantes. I blame the people who attribute their failure to vote in midterms to their hatred of politics, blind to the reality that their failure to vote in midterms is a major contributor to the things that make them hate politics.
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That muffled noise you hear is TeaPubs’ heads imploding…
"Destroy our VOTING base??? Hell, No–We won’t go!
or spend money on making folks smart enough to NOT vote for TeaPols!
Or decrease profits to the Student Loan folks!"
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“States won’t have to pay for students who go less than half-time or have grade point averages under 2.5. They only have to cover one-fourth of tuition cost, not big expenses like books, transportation, and housing.”
Big caveat, because even if tuition is relatively low textbooks aren’t cheap. The other thing is that with the gpa limitation, grading to protect students will become common.
I would think that if we’re talking about community colleges which are populated by many in-state students, housing won’t be as much of a factor.
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There are a few states, Georgia being one, where tuition is paid in full for students who maintain good grades. Inflating grades to protect students hasn’t been a problem.
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The folks who didn’t vote in 2010 never got engaged in the first place. No one managed to motivate them to think about a non-presidential election, so they don’t even know what they didn’t do.
And the bad stuff out of Congress will serve to alienate them and make them even less likely to vote in the future.
It’s win-win for Republicans.
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And skipped 2014.
And if somehow this became law, the fact it’s associated with Obama and optional for states will mean, tell me if this sounds familiar, your access to education will depend significantly on what state you happen to live in.
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Good luck getting red-state governors to kick in their 25%. This would only stir up the lower classes into forgetting what their place is.
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Just wait until the for-profit rip-offs start dumping money on Congress. Herzing? Globe? Phoenix “University”? This would kill them.
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“students who enroll, borrow, and drop out are much more likely to default on their student loans.”
And make no mistake, that’s part of where the game is played to milk the system: predatory acceptance letters. Expensive private schools know very well who can hack it in their programs and who can’t, but they all accept a certain percentage of students who they know, from the get-go, will not be there when their classmates graduate. Maybe they want a new dorm to be built or a new building on a satellite campus or whatever, but they ALL do it.
States like California likely meet these tests already because community colleges traditionally have such low tuitions.
Hmm. Well, let me bring you in on a little secret: Community College in CA is far from free. It is definitely cheaper than a four-year university, but “free”? Not by a long shot. I have two daughters in a well-regarded and low-cost community college this year. They spend - each - about $1000/semester on tuition, plus another $500-600 on books (the books we do our best to cut costs on by surfing eBay and the like, but most classes require an online access portion, which can not be resold and thus has to be bought even if they can get the books cheaper). They live at home with us and need to drive 45 minutes each way daily to get to classes at this college, but I’m not going ton include those expenses. $3k per year is a damned sight better than $30k or more for a relatively low-price university, but we also know that they will need three years after their CC years to finish up that four-year degree at most universities, so they pay in time.
The other downside to community colleges is that enrollment is much larger than capacity. There is no guarantee for classes. Our daughters luckily are very talented in sports and so are on a sports “scholarship” (which doesn’t yield any money per CC rules, but does give them first-priority choice in classes, which is worth a lot!) But, if they were in the normal “lottery” for classes, they would take much more than two years to get their AA degrees. So, again, they pay in time spent.
If we could more than cut in half the cost of going to the college, that would be a huge boon to us, even in the relative Community College Paradise that is California.
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Well maybe if Obama had proposed it BEFORE the election?
But in the south, they have long regarded keeping large parts of their population mired in ignorance and poverty a sacred right. It’s central to southern culture itself!
So here’s a proposal progressives will applaud. But it’s not a radical proposal or a new idea. And Obama waited till now why? Just a month ago he had a majority in the Senate, and a higher chance of being able to actually do anything with this proposal.
No, he waits till the Dems are out of power to propose this mild piece of progressive stock in trade
remind me again why I’m supposed to be enthusiastic about voting for Democrats?
When did “the dilletantes” emerge as a swing bloc of voters? I must have missed the polling. Probably it’s people working to pay for middle school, who might have been energized by a proposal like this.
oh well, we can talk about it now, and then after the next election cycle, talk about how it was never possible
Is there any reason why students who can qualify for free college education can’t also be given a free car, free fuel, free condoms, free laptops, free smart phones including free unlimited data and minutes, free housing and free meals while attending college for these two years?