Making Community College 'Free' Will Harm Serious Students

[Muda69]

https://reason.com/archives/2019/01/25/making-community-college-free-will-harm

Quote

It took nearly a dozen years after graduating from college to pay off the student debt I accumulated to get my degree—and that was in the days when tuition to a private university was around $5,000 a year including room and board. I've been through the college-shopping process with three daughters and have looked at asking prices of nearly $50,000 a year at some universities, so I understand the importance of affordability. It's depressing thinking of kids getting their start in life with college loans the size of mortgages.

Given that reality, it's also easy to understand Gov. Gavin Newsom's budget proposal that would provide California residents with a "free" second year of community college along with the provision of additional Cal Grant funding for parents who are struggling to put their children through college. This is well intentioned, but is one of the worst ideas in the governor's new budget given the real-world effect it will have on California students.

The idea of a free college education goes back to California's earliest days. As recently as 1960, the Master Plan for Higher Education reaffirmed "the long established principle that state colleges and the University of California shall be free to all residents of the state." Shortly after that, the state university systems began charging tuition—and prices have soared as demand has outstripped supply and the legislature cut back on subsidies. As a matter of policy, it's a good idea for people to pay for the things they use. If you want an education, you need to pay for it.

...

In all aspects of life, the price mechanism is the best way to assure the right balance of supply and demand. If, say, the government mandated that car dealers slash the price of new cars by 50 percent, buyers theoretically would be able to get a cheaper car—but they'd take a number and wait a long time to actually get one.

...

Community college already is dirt cheap, at $46 a credit. Making it free will only assure that people who aren't particularly serious about getting an education will take up space in sought-after classes, thus making it tougher for others to get into their preferred classes. This sounds harsh, but people unwilling to invest $1,100 a year in their own education perhaps ought to find something else to do. There is nothing like spending one's own money to force people to take the coursework seriously.

...

Bingo.

 

[foxbat]

3 hours ago, Muda69 said:

Making it free will only assure that people who aren't particularly serious about getting an education will take up space in sought-after classes, thus making it tougher for others to get into their preferred classes. This sounds harsh, but people unwilling to invest $1,100 a year in their own education perhaps ought to find something else to do. There is nothing like spending one's own money to force people to take the coursework seriously.

I think this is a misnomer ... there are plenty of people who spend their own money to go to college and don't take the coursework seriously.  Does spending their own money encourage them?  To a degree.  Does it force them?  Not really.  There are also students who have full-ride scholarships aka someone else's money who take the work very seriously as there are also kids whose parents are covering their cost of schooling aka someone else's money that also take it seriously too.  Similarly there are also kids with parents footing the bill that also don't take it seriously.

[Muda69]

1 hour ago, foxbat said:

I think this is a misnomer ... there are plenty of people who spend their own money to go to college and don't take the coursework seriously.  Does spending their own money encourage them?  To a degree.  Does it force them?  Not really.  There are also students who have full-ride scholarships aka someone else's money who take the work very seriously as there are also kids whose parents are covering their cost of schooling aka someone else's money that also take it seriously too.  Similarly there are also kids with parents footing the bill that also don't take it seriously.

It depends on the person now, doesn't it?    Does that justify making a post-secondary education free for everybody?   And what about the supply & demand issue Mr. Greenhut raises?

[foxbat]

1 minute ago, Muda69 said:

It depends on the person now, doesn't it?    Does that justify making a post-secondary education free for everybody?   And what about the supply & demand issue Mr. Greenhut raises?

How did you come up with this stretch from my post?  I merely pointed out that the idea that making folks pay for it FORCES them to take the coursework seriously is itself flawed.

As for it depending on the person, yes, I would say it does ...  which is what I was pointing out.  Again, that kind of makes that idea that paying for it forces the person to take it seriously a weaker argument.

As for the other issues, perhaps it could be a problem, but the question is what would that new demand be?  This piece as presented, is a conjecture piece.  It makes the assumption that the unwashed masses will be overflowing classrooms trying to get in for no go reason other than killing time during the day.  As for looking at the issue of impaction, http://www.calstate.edu/sas/documents/ImpactedProgramsMatrix.pdf, note that it tends to be a localized issue as opposed to a more sweeping issue as the article attempts to make it appear.  It depends, to a small degree, on area of study ... for example basic nursing is impacted across all CSU campuses ... but more so on location ... for example art is impacted at 6 of the CSU campuses, but not impacted at the other 15 CSU campuses where it is offered.  And that's at a four-year institution as opposed to the community college networks.  The author talks about compaction at places where there's more demand, but then expands the argument across the whole population of institutions.  That's similar to making the claim that because art is impacted at the Fresno campus, classes are over-subscribed at CSU-LA or CSU-Bakersfield.  It is an issue of resource utilization as opposed to capacity restraint.  The author makes a case for some programs being impacted, at four-year colleges, but doesn't do anything with the numbers to show the actual impact and then completely applies that argument to community colleges with no discussion of actual impaction there and not even an attempt at numbers.

Incidentally, the argument about people being unwilling to invest $1,100 for a comm college education leaves out the idea of UNABLE as opposed to unwilling.  I'd conjecture, that someone unwilling to invest $1,100 in their education is also unwilling to invest their time, for any decent length of time, taking those classes.  That would, however, not likely be seen as definitive in a person who was UNABLE to invest that for their education.  As you pointed out, the drive would depend on the person ... similar to what my original post points out.  If the argument is that this is too costly a proposal or a waste of local revenues that could be put to use in a better way for the community, then that's a whole different argument that might have a stronger argument; however, I find this author's argument premise about making folks pay for education because it forces them to be serious about it to be a weak approach to arguing against providing free post-secondary education.  There would be a stronger, more serious approach to this if the author provided any numbers tied to education as opposed to tossing out his car example.  He spent time on the canned example ... would have been nice to have seen a similar effort put in to the education capacity issue too.

  

 

 

[Muda69]

2 minutes ago, foxbat said:

I merely pointed out that the idea that making folks pay for it FORCES them to take the coursework seriously is itself flawed.

And I don't really care if they take the coursework seriously or not, if they pay for it with their own money.  Using taxpayer funds to make it "free" however, is another matter.

 

[foxbat]

20 hours ago, Muda69 said:

And I don't really care if they take the coursework seriously or not, if they pay for it with their own money.  Using taxpayer funds to make it "free" however, is another matter.

 

Then why post an article entitled "Making Community College 'Free' Will Harm Serious Students" and highlight a sentence talking about the seriousness of student effort if all you really care about in the argument is whether it's funded by taxpayer dollars?  This is like the local pastor arguing before the city council that he doesn't want a strip club next to his church because they fill up his recycling bins with the beer bottles from the strip club patrons.

[Muda69]

7 hours ago, foxbat said:

Then why post an article entitled "Making Community College 'Free' Will Harm Serious Students" and highlight a sentence talking about the seriousness of student effort if all you really care about in the argument is whether it's funded by taxpayer dollars?  This is like the local pastor arguing before the city council that he doesn't want a strip club next to his church because they fill up his recycling bins with the beer bottles from the strip club patrons.

I never stated that the taxpayer funded aspect was my only concern, aka "care about".     Providing something for "free", like a post-secondary college course,  will tend to have an affect on the demand for the course.