
Biden’s Free-College Plan Is a Solution in Search of a Problem - fortran77
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/bidens-free-college-plan-is-a-solution-in-search-of-a-problem/
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allears
The problem's obvious to everybody except the National Review.

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amacalac
sure. relieving an ever accruing college debt which cripples a nation is a
solution in search of a problem.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Well, Biden's plan may be a solution in search of a problem _that fits that
solution_. The problem is real enough. But...

Maybe, as a first step, we ought to look at why college is so expensive in the
first place. If you look at, say, Western Governors University, you see that
it can be done fully online reasonably well, at least for certain majors. Can
it be done fully online, still reasonably well, for more majors, for a lot
less money? If not, why not?

Then there's the problem that too often, college is remedial high school. It
would be a lot cheaper to fix the high schools.

Then there's the problem that, if you make college free, you're not actually
making it _free_. You're just changing who pays for it. That's defensible. But
even if "we the people" think we should pay for college, that doesn't mean
that we think we should pay for unlimited amounts of college for unlimited
people at unlimited prices. $50K/year for 40 million students is not what we
think we're agreeing to. "Everyone" has to mean "not _everyone_ ", and
especially "not everyone _for as long as they want to go_ ". Forty years from
now, we shouldn't be paying for some 60-year-old who's still trying to get his
bachelor's (or says he is, but the truth is that he just finds the life
comfortable).

What needs to happen is that the government comes in and says that we'll pay
for college, all right, but not at your price. Your college is overpriced, and
if we're going to send you students that we pay for, you can't charge that
much. What I fear will happen instead is that the price of college, which
(IIUC) has been going up 10%/year, suddenly goes up 20% or 30% as soon as it's
the government rather than the individual who's paying.

Now, Biden's plan may address some of these points. I don't know whether or
not it does, and I don't expect to learn so from this article.

