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Originally Posted by aceventura3
All I suggest is "thinking outside the box". I think it can be done, however I think some school like the fact that they are being "selective". It is a badge of honor. I think that is the wrong focus.
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Except I, as a student, want to go to a school where there are other students who really care about going to school. I want the 'high school rif-raf' out of my hair as a university student.
So the question becomes -- is it more useful to educate 2 people who don't care about education or schooling, or 1 person who does?
Because running an institution with 10,000 to 100,000 people going through it every day doesn't take any administration?
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With proper planning a school district can accommodate every student in a district. A state university system could do the same thing. There is no acceptable reason to have more students than available space. I am not sure I understand the position you are taking on this issue.
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US pre-university education is, statistically, utter crap. Much of it is baby sitting.
Everyone in the USA is guaranteed a pre-university education, and the institution cannot (for the most part) kick students who are disruptive to the learning environment out of the programs.
US university education is well enough regarded that people from around the world compete to enter it.
University students in the USA have to put down a serious commitment (usually, money wise), pass standards to get in, and pass standards during the course of study. Students who are disruptive to the learning environment can be kicked out.
US graduate education is yet another notch up. At this point, the students have to pass another yet higher bar. In some areas, they actually get paid to help other students (undergraduates) learn, or do research with their professors. Students who fail to completely demolish the material and produce research and results are not invited back. (admittedly, this last takes time)
In each of these cases, the selectivity goes up, and so does the quality.
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Up here in Canukistan, there is a tax credit on money spent on higher education -- I think it is about 17% of what you spend (note that this lowers taxes, as opposed to income), plus a fixed amount for every month spent (about 100$). This can be transferred to a parent or someone you are a dependant of, or kept indefinately until you need to use it.
As an aside, it works on foriegn education institutions, so my brother ended up with a _huge_ pile of tax credits after getting an MBA in the USA.
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I think it is interesting that there is a trend in the world to "socializing" property, while knowledge is becoming more privatized. Public investment in privatized knowledge probably should trend lower.
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The trick with public investment in private knowledge is that private knowledge often causes public spin-offs. This is known as positive externalities, and conventional wisdom is that innovation and new knowledge has significant positive externalities even if it is privately owned.
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How many people actually want to go to college but can't? I would argue the number is zero.
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How hard do they want to go to college? How much are they willing to give up to go to college?
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I use simple numbers in examples, but the point was not in reference to $100K or $150K. The point was that if the real cost of higher education is $X, but that the stated cost is $X + aid, and the student pays $X then the aid had no impact on the real cost.
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In theory, that aid will pay for a higher quality college experience?
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Real change would be doing something like making community college tuition free for all who qualify. I would support that, and I think we could afford it, however, I would target all the higher education state and federal aid to that level. I think as a nation, at this point in time, 2 year degrees are a net benefit to society ( similar to a high school diploma is), a four year degree is a net benefit to the individual. I think this would be a more efficient use of government funds in higher education.
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You don't think a 4 year degree is a net benefit to both the community and the individual? Or do you think we are playing a zero-sum game?
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Yes, under Democratic party policies. There has been a few threads on tax policy and I went through some examples of how the working poor can face marginal tax rates of up to 50%. I agree Democrats want to make it impossible for people to do it on their own.
Imagine a working poor family. Mom, a waitress and dad a bus driver. The make a family income of $40,000 and have 2 high school children. the decide to get second jobs, and the children get part-time work. the income goes up to $75,000. Of that extra $35,000, how much do they pay in taxes, lost credits, state taxes, FICA? then on top of that, they may have worked themselves out of some forms of aid. So, they actually may be better off not working harder and staying "poor". That is wrong in my view.
Democrats are fooling people into thinking their policies are helpful when they are not.
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Yes, marginal taxation on the poor that is higher than on the rich is very questionable. And means-tested aid, especially when you have multiple programs, can often result in ridiculously high marginal loss of income.