
Tennessee begins free community college plan - ca98am79
http://www.tennessean.com/story/news/education/2014/04/16/tennessee-lawmakers-approve-free-community-college-plan/7772245/
======
daphneokeefe
I said this here recently, but I think it bears repeating: When I attended the
University of California at Berkeley in the fun 1960's, there was no tuition
for in-state students. Zero. There were 27,000 students at that time just at
that one campus.

It would be hard to quantify the return on investment to the taxpayers, but
free quality higher education must have contributed to the thriving California
economy and culture.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7013042](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7013042)

~~~
mjn
There's been a general decline in California's willingness to fund the UC
system, which is mostly what ended that. Surprisingly, the UC system doesn't
seem to have had significant cost-per-student growth (unlike many
universities), so it should still be able to provide free education if it were
funded at the same levels as in the '60s. But it isn't: adjusted for inflation
and population, it's had about 50-70% of its support cut compared to the peak
years (depending on what you take as a starting point), which has been mostly
made up for by tuition. Partly also by expanding cash-cow programs, like
professional masters programs, and by admitting a smaller proportion of in-
state students, since out-of-state students pay much higher tuition.

I collected some numbers on that a few years ago:
[http://www.kmjn.org/misc/uc_funding.txt](http://www.kmjn.org/misc/uc_funding.txt).
That table shows total and per-student support; the latter is partly impacted
by the growth in student numbers. But if you convert the numbers for each year
to percent of state GDP, or support per resident, there's a large decline in
those terms as well (in GDP terms, from roughly 0.3% to 0.1%).

Interestingly there's no real correlation between partisan politics and the
numbers. Funding was generally high under both Republican and Democratic
administrations in earlier years, and has been cut under both administrations
in more recent years. My guess is that as a "discretionary" line in the budget
the UC is just relatively easy to chop, when someone making up a budget needs
to close some holes, so it ended up bearing the brunt of the recent budget
crisis that was caused by other parts of the budget.

~~~
humanrebar
> My guess is that as a "discretionary" line in the budget the UC is just
> relatively easy to chop, when someone making up a budget needs to close some
> holes, so it ended up bearing the brunt of the recent budget crisis that was
> caused by other parts of the budget.

More like, it came down to cutting education, cutting pensions, or cutting
healthcare spending. This is a problem across the entire country, but
California has more generous pension and healthcare promises, so the problem
is especially acute there.

------
jawns
As the article points out, one major reason why people don't enroll in
community college, even if it's free, is that they need to work full-time (and
sometimes even more than full-time) to support themselves (and sometimes their
families), leaving little or no time to devote to college studies.

I'd be curious to hear some creative solutions to that problem.

~~~
tomp
In Denmark, students get a sizable stipend (I heard 1000EUR a month).

~~~
cobrausn
There are something like 17 million enrolled higher education students in the
US, and with the current exchange rate, that would equal about 24 billion USD
in stipends. Not really sure such a thing is politically tractable, not to
mention the quality of the product (the degree) varies highly by college.

For reference, it appears Denmark has about 230,000 enrolled college students.

~~~
mjn
Denmark spends about 0.7% of GDP on the "SU" student support system [1]. The
same proportion of American GDP would be $110 billion; $24 billion would be a
mere 0.15% of GDP. So I don't think there's a feasibility issue; it's clearly
_possible_ to spend as much as 0.7% of GDP on such a scheme. The U.S. has many
more students, but also a much larger economy. I agree that such a scheme
would be politically difficult to pass in the United States, though. I suspect
the U.S. will end up spending a pretty large amount of money anyway, but on a
more haphazard scheme rather than direct grants, such as occasional student-
loan amnesties, or more heavily subsidized loan interest rates.

[1] Somewhat outdated figures, but I believe still roughly accurate:
[http://www.sustyrelsen.dk/udst/in_english/cost_of_study/kap4...](http://www.sustyrelsen.dk/udst/in_english/cost_of_study/kap4.htm#Direct%20public%20support)

~~~
e12e
But if higher education was already free, why would the poor go to war for
corporate America, defending big oil wherever needed around the world ?

------
scottu1
This sounds great until the part about taking money away from the Hope 4 Year
Scholarships comes up. At the same time they reduce the Hope Scholarship, they
continue to raise state tuition costs, making it that much harder to attend a
4 year school. This feels more like Haslam trying to establish a legacy more
than actually helping people.

------
jpollock
The Southern Institute of Technology [1] in New Zealand has had free tuition
funded by the local city council for over a decade now. The city justified it
because the students bring a lot of money into the local economy. Much the
same as any government providing a subsidy to a local employer.

[1]
[http://www.sit.ac.nz/pages/about/fees](http://www.sit.ac.nz/pages/about/fees)

------
jscheel
This is good news for my fellow Tennesseans. The only thing that still bothers
me is that we use lottery, with all it's baggage, to fund these schooling
initiatives. Well, let's be honest, I don't like that we have a lottery
period. It is interesting, however, to see this kind of policy planning.
Lower-income, lower-educated people tend to play the lottery more, which in
turn funds programs that makes it easier for lower-income people to go to
college, which hopefully reduces the number of lower-income, lower-educated
people in the state. Making education more accessible is an awesome goal, and
I hope that it works out here.

------
jaxn
One of the larger potential benefits is that kids planning on earning a
bachelors degree from a TN university can now drastically reduce their overall
cost of education by spending the first two years in a community college for
free.

------
btrautsc
Good for us (tennesseean here).

I sincerely hope these colleges are providing quality courses and lesson
plans. This could be a major win for the state's workforce/ future hiring for
our company here.

I also think this is a great outlet for TN lottery money - but I very much
hope can trickle more into early education as well to provide much better
starts for young kids around the state. Its much easier to start strong than
catch up later (cough, Memphis/ Shelby County, allow casinos downtown and use
money for elementary education, please).

