
“Free College” programs vary in how they define both “free” and “college” - swebs
https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/09/12/643673271/if-free-college-sounds-too-good-to-be-true-that-s-because-it-often-is
======
noobermin
It would help if people read the article. This has nothing to do with social
democratic calls for government provided universal college, it's about
scholarship and grant programs sold as "free college" subsidies in various
states in the US and how they all sort of fall short of being "free" or being
"college".

~~~
jefftk
They have a summary chart: [https://apps.npr.org/dailygraphics/graphics/free-
college-com...](https://apps.npr.org/dailygraphics/graphics/free-college-
comparison-20180905/child.html)

It seems overly strict. For example, Maryland, Indiana, and Washington cover
living costs and fees in addition to tuition for 4-year colleges, but they
count it as not being "free college" because you can't use it to enroll half-
time or as an adult.

~~~
psalminen
I find the criterion of no college GPA requirement above a 2.0 to be stupidly
strict. IMO all should have a requirement higher than this.

~~~
ppseafield
I somewhat agree. In Georgia the HOPE scholarship used to guarantee 100% of
tuition if you had a 3.0 GPA. They moved to 80% for 3.2 and above because many
students took 30 hours, didn't meet the requirements, and dropped out.
Although I think the numbers would have been better if the students were
actually prepared to be autonomous adults and college students.

------
__d
From the mid 70's until the late 80's, Australia's university education
(tuition) was free.

In the late 80's, a scheme was introduced whereby degrees were assigned to a
number of bands based on your likely income as a result of that degree. At the
time, IIRC, medicine and law were in the top band, while eg. philosophy was in
the lowest band. Each band had an annual price for enrollment, but they were
iirc, $2500, $3500, and $4500 in maybe 1988 or 1989.

You paid nothing during your studies, but once your taxable income exceeded a
threshold, you paid an additional couple of percent on your income tax until
the accumulated debt from your education was repaid. This was part of the
income tax withheld for most salary earners, and so was largely invisible.

In addition to that, students enrolled in a recognized educational institution
get an allowance for living costs. In the 80's and 90's, this was sufficient
to live on (food, rent) and you could earn enough extra income to get a social
life and textbooks and so on without losing your allowance.

Healthcare is basically gratis in Australia too, so it was quite feasible to
attend university with a small amount of part-time work with limited or even
no financial support from your family.

Over the last 30 years, the repayment percentage has increased, the starting
threshold has gone down, the annual fees have gone up, and the weekly
allowance hasn't kept pace with the cost of living. But ...

Even without going to the "extreme" of genuinely gratis tuition, there's
plenty of precedent for a system which gives everyone a decent opportunity for
education regardless of their financial circumstances.

~~~
Retric
It seems backward in that you charge less money for lower paying degrees
independent of what someone actually makes.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
That would just incentivize people to pile onto the perceived high value
programs like when everyone got into CS during the first dotcom bubble. Not a
fitting solution for an institution intended to develop capable members of
society rather than just making money.

~~~
geezerjay
Your comment would only make sense if higher education institutions didn't
evaluated students throughout the whole degree. If a school ends up graduating
individuals that are not capable members of society then clearly the problem
is not how many freshmen enrolled in a course.

------
sntax
I am aware that this is not what the NPR article is about but, can someone
please change my mind on this? The vast majority of college degrees in the US
do not have a return on investment. Many people are struggling because they
studied information that is not a marketable skill from a university that
accepts low-quality students. Why is the solution that the nation just foots
the bill to make a bad investment instead of the individual?

~~~
drngdds
Even people who get degrees with good employment rates go into a ton of debt
(by non-American standards) for them unless they have a scholarship.

~~~
sntax
I don't understand your point here. If your degree has a return on investment
it means that you can pay back your loans because you have a higher paying job
that was a direct result of your degree. You will go into a ton of debt to
become a nurse but you will make up your investment in salary eventually. If
you spend 100k dollars on an art history degree from Univ. of South Carolina
Aiken your job prospects have not changed from someone who never attended
college at all.

------
nimbius
disclosure: I never went to college. I was a C student in highschool.

I started studying 15 years ago to be an engine mechanic. I apprenticed with
an occupational outlet in my state that paired me up with an 'old-timer' named
Simon.

I was paid a regular wage to simply show up, and pay close attention and
learn. for the first year or two i had no major responsibilities outside of
oil changes or other pretty rote things. Finally one day I had the
responsibility to do a major overhaul on a large diesel generator on a job
site. I showed up, and Simon handed me a sheet of customer specifications and
rework specs. I didnt realize until lunchtime that I had been crawling all
over that engine for 4 hours, doing all the work myself. Every individual
thing I did was part of what I'd learned, and I did it without so much as a
second thought. I did it to Union spec, and I was troubleshooting real
problems.

When the time came, I signed off on the work that day and certified as a
master mechanic that week.

I guess what im getting at, is that at no time was there a question about my
education, or my pay. Why is college different? How is it different? Why are
there so many shady players?

~~~
slededit
I think the main difference is that in University your assignments have
negative economic value. Even doing an oil change is beneficial work to the
company, but in University you need to pay a TA to spend time grading your
essay which has zero value.

------
sashimy
This article made me realise the gap between France and the US, whereas free
college is rare in the US, in France people are fighting and getting on strike
so there isn't any selection in free universities.

------
ggm
The end of grant aided study was introduced to the UK from Australia. One of
the worst exports we ever gave the world. Scotland, bless them, ignored it.

And, the generation of politicians in Australia who introduced it? Got free
university education to a man (and I do mean man)

Bastards. (I write, as a recipient of a UK grant funded degree in the 1980s)

------
skh
My dad and his two older brothers fought in World War 2 for the U.S. They grew
up poor during the Depression. After the war all three of them went to college
for free as part of the GI benefits. The three of them went on to have good
careers and lived well.

The two younger brothers did not go to war. They were not able to go to
college. They ended up poorer and died younger than the older brothers. They
did not prosper nearly as well as the three older brothers.

We call the World War 2 generation the greatest ever. I think they were the
greatest generation because they ended up with the greatest opportunities not
because they were more special than other generations. Government that cares
for its people and seeks to create a fair society is what creates great
generations.

Universal access to healthcare that is free at the point of service and
universal access to higher education for those who are qualified are not too
expensive. It just requires a shift in priorities.

~~~
paulddraper
You might be right about universal healthcare, etc., but the reason people
call it the greatest generation is because it recovered from the worst
economic depression in economic history and saved the free world.

> In the book, Brokaw wrote, "it is, I believe, the greatest generation any
> society has ever produced". He argued that these men and women fought not
> for fame and recognition, but because it was the "right thing to do".

That title doesn't have to do with their post-war fortunes.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Greatest_Generation](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Greatest_Generation)

~~~
skh
Yes, I know this is the reason. My experience with the people from that
generation is that there was nothing special as such with them. They ended up
having the greatest opportunities due to GI Bill and other programs.

My dad didn't join up because it was the right thing to do. Neither did his
brothers. They joined because they got drafted and at that time, at that age,
if you were a guy and not in the military there was a lot of social pressure
put on it. Like, "What is your excuse?"

The title partially has to do with post war fortunes because of the great
economic expansion that occurred after the war. That generation did build
great things and greatly enhanced the way of life of the nation. I think this
came from the opportunity government gave them and not from being innately
special.

By the way, they didn't save the free world. The vast majority of the fighting
and killing in the ETO was done by the Soviet Union. They are the ones who won
the war. The British and Americans helped but did not do the bulk of the
fighting.

------
Swizec
Where I come from (Slovenia) you only pay for college when your grades aren’t
good enough to get in for real or you have to retake exams. Universities don’t
even accept colleges that take tuition and people take your degree less
seriously if you go to one of those.

The perception is that paying tuition would misalign incentives and harm
learning because how can a business fail a customer? Imagine taking 6 figures
from someone and then saying “No, sorry, you flunk out”

Works pretty well and yes I know we pay with taxes and that’s okay. That’s
what taxes are for: public good.

~~~
dylz
Can you explain a bit more about how the grade system works? College is
generally equivalent to uni in the states.

~~~
Swizec
I might br mistranslating concepts.

The idea is that you have a university, like NYU, which is comprised of
colleges, like comp sci, economics etc. You go to your specific college, like
major in something, and they count you as their student. You also apply to
colleges specifically but are then also a student of the university.

There are also independent colleges. Some of them are good enough that they
eventually get accepted into a university. Some aren’t. Sometimes the
university itself founds a new college like a new major and builds it up. Like
when I studied CompSci it had been some 10 years since it became its own
college, but was still physically hosted by the college of electronics and the
college of mathematics. It first became a course within those some time in the
80s. Nowadays it has its own buildings and stuff.

At the same time there was a multimedia college founded around the time I went
to uni. Features video and stuff but also a lot of web development. They were
not allowed to join the university and take tuition (I think government only
funds universities). Uou can get a college degree in webdev, but not a
university degree in webdev. So it’s more like a post high school vocational
education.

I believe in broad strokes we have the german education system if that helps.

~~~
wink
I think you're using the college in the UK sense and dylz meant "college as in
undergraduate study institution, where you get your first degree". but I might
be wrong.

Also I've hardly heard of independent institutions joining universities here
in Germany. Maybe you thought of the Hasso Plattner Institute "HPI was founded
in 1998 and is the first, and as of 2018 the only entirely privately funded
faculty[3] in Germany." So the University of Potsdam has a private IT faculty.

------
mr_tristan
What concerns me is how the US college system created a market where colleges
have been without price controls for a long time. These grant mechanisms seem
like another way to just give colleges the ability to crank up fees and drive
up prices. Effectively, the "solutions" seem to take the guaranteed loans the
students have to pay and making the public pay for it.

Have there been any other systems that have successfully converted out of such
a out-of-control market without direct price controls from a central
authority?

~~~
pitaj
Guaranteed student loans did most of the damage. If we stopped doing that,
prices would almost immediately fall to reasonable levels.

~~~
dv_dt
That may fix prices, but doesn't fix the problem of giving a wide swath of a
nation's population the opportunity to attend college.

~~~
chimeracoder
> That may fix prices, but doesn't fix the problem of giving a wide swath of a
> nation's population the opportunity to attend college.

No country has really figured out how to solve both of those problems
simultaneously on a large scale.

The US has high prices, but also one of the highest rates of higher education
in the developed world. In addition, it also has provided people from all
racial and ethnic backgrounds not just with the theoretical opportunity to
earn a degree, but with the tools needed to actually deliver on that in
practice. For all the faults of the US educational system (especially at the
primary and secondary level), it performs much better than its European
counterparts on this criterion if you look at the actual rates of degrees
granted.

~~~
dv_dt
You blithely say that no country has it figured out, but I'd note estimates of
covering all tuition for a year to be $58-$75B[1]. The cost of the defense
budget increase alone this year was $60B - the total budget is some $700B. So
even with the inefficient (nonexistent?) cost controls of our current student
loan system, it seems quite feasible in the US to rebalance budget priorities.
If one were to start putting more serious cost control strings (e.g. no more
than x% in admin budget) on a direct funding stream to public universities, I
suspect the cost could get even lower.

[https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/07/28/487794394/hillary...](https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/07/28/487794394/hillary-
s-free-tuition-promise-what-would-it-cost-how-would-it-work)

~~~
drngdds
Yeah. To add insult to injury, Trump's useless tax cut actually could have
paid for free college for everyone instead:
[http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/12/05/the-tax-bill-
compared-t...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/12/05/the-tax-bill-compared-to-
other-very-expensive-things/)

------
djrogers
I’ve got a big problem with this item:

— Helps low-income students cover living expenses and covers fees in addition
to tuition: "[Students] have to eat. They have to have shelter. They have to
buy books," says Tiffany Jones, director of higher education policy at The
Education Trust. "If a politician is selling a program saying, 'I'm making
college free,' and they're not dealing with any of that stuff except for
tuition, that can be really problematic." —

Plenty of people work their way through college, and with the burden reduced
to room and board, waiting tables a few nights a week often does the trick.

------
Yoric
For what it's worth, Free College works pretty well in most of Europe.

~~~
TomMarius
Does it? I got a chance to take a look inside and I'm no longer sure about it.
Corruption is rampant (not in relation to academic results, but other things
like employment, grants etc), favourism is flourishing, and huge amount of
money is wasted instead of used to help the students. I personally blame the
lack of monetary incentives.

EDIT: What about having a discussion instead of just downvoting? I presented
my observation and expected to talk about it, downvoting isn't helping anyone
and my comment is on topic.

EDIT2: Seems like some of you misunderstood me, probably my mistake, sorry
about that. I'm not trying to convince anyone, I'm not trying to argue any
point, I'm asking a question - to see if others' have similar experience or
not. That's it, no claims to prove.

~~~
metafex
Can you specify which country or university your experience is based on? In my
experience (Austria) there were issues sometimes, but nothing which would even
by a long shot could be called "rampant". Here it is more of an issue that
there is a lack of funding and not much political will to increase it. The
amount of the GDP which goes to funding universities is lower than average
recommended by the world bank [citation needed].

Edit: I couldn't find the recommendations but here is a chart by the world
bank:
[https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.XPD.TOTL.GD.ZS](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.XPD.TOTL.GD.ZS)

The most recent data is from 2014 though, interesting nonetheless.

~~~
TomMarius
I'm Czech, living in Czechia. I'm not going to say more, sorry - I'm not
trying to convince anyone about my story, I am trying to collect more data,
see if other people have similar experiences.

~~~
metafex
Thank you, that gives more context! It is just anecdotal and a few years back,
but last time I spoke to students in Prague they didn't bring it up as there
being that big issues. Is this something that changed in the last years or has
it been that way for longer?

~~~
Scea91
I am also Czech and do NOT have similar experience. I am very satisfied with
the level of education I received and with the environment I was able to be
part of at my university in Prague.

~~~
TomMarius
Are you sure? If you've attended any of the top 3 universities, you just were
shielded from it; generally IT/math/science related faculties work well, it's
the social-related faculties where it works really badly, but still, you won't
see it as a student. I'm happy to tell you more in private.

------
keiferski
I really don't understand this meme. Most of the non-Anglosphere developed
world has free or very low-cost education. Typically they aren't full-
inclusive luxury resorts like colleges in the U.S., but they do provide good
educations for 95% of the population.

The idea that the U.S., the single wealthiest country in the history of
civilization, "can't afford" to make college affordable is just plain wrong.
In fact, it was affordable until just a few decades ago. The only reason it
isn't affordable now is because the profit motive has been introduced into a
space where it doesn't belong.

~~~
TulliusCicero
There are certainly downsides to those programs that progressives in the US
would hate, though. For example, in Germany, part of why it works is that they
have a fairly strict "tracked" system post-elementary school that's kind of
classist, that makes gaining admittance harder.

Plus they don't really 'support' students in terms of counseling or special
programs or anything the way US universities do; it's expected that you're an
adult, and if you can't hack it, you're out. In practice, lack of support
means students who come from more affluent, educated backgrounds have a large
advantage over first-generation college students.

~~~
fifnir
> In practice, lack of support means students who come from more affluent,
> educated backgrounds have a large advantage over first-generation college
> students.

I'm pretty sure poor students would prefer no support and no debt over a bit
of support for huge debt.

~~~
TulliusCicero
Some would. But if you come out of it with no degree because of a lack of
support, "at least it was free for you to get nothing" may be cold comfort.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Well, it's still better than having gone into debt to not get a degree. The
support is only worth the money if it was the difference between you making it
and not making it. That will be true for some people. Others won't make it
even with the support. For them, "support but expensive" is worse than "no
support but free".

------
assblaster
Here's a simple fix for free college:

Online-only courses that everyone in the United States can get into regardless
of ability (no admission department). Standardized exams with rigid grading
criteria (no need for TAs to grade). Lectures are recorded once, so it's only
a one-time fee paid to a professor.

No athletics department. No dorms. No campus. No clinic.

There's your free college education.

If you want your sports and luxury dorms and catered meals, then you gotta pay
for it.

~~~
mcguire
No interaction with your instructors. No questions answered, no updates.

No essays, no writing requirement. In fact, no specialized grading is
possible. There's only limited curricula that can be satisfied by multiple-
choice grading.

Presumably it would have the same work requirements as a traditional class: ~3
hours of lecture / week, ~15 weeks, plus an additional 3-6 (?) hours of
reading and exercises per week = 90-150 hours of work. My degree required >=
120 credit hours, so overall that would be 3600-5400 hours of work. Going to
do that in your spare time while you wait tables or clerk a convenience store?

~~~
assblaster
Why does college education need such a rapid pace? With self learning, you
would be able to view lectures on your own schedule.

Why wait tables or clerk when you can live at home with your parent and spend
your time doing class activities? The education is free, so what's the extra
income needed for?

You don't need essays to assess understanding of material. My education was
evaluated with 99% standardized testing.

You don't need interaction with professors if your questions were answered by
a FAQ.

------
Dowwie
Free college in the US will amount to wasted taxes unless the programs are
highly competitive. Otherwise, if a state managed to arrange an associate's
degree program paid by taxes, the programs would teach that which should have
already been taught in high school. These college programs aren't college.
They're the 13th and 14th grade.

~~~
estomagordo
Care to explain why?

~~~
throwawayjava
The course "College Algebra" has the highest fail rate among all university
courses in the US; this course covers roughly what you already should've seen
in high school. A lot of time is spent e.g. practicing arithmetic, plotting
polynomials, solving linear equations, and so on. See this book:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book:College_Mathematics:_Alge...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book:College_Mathematics:_Algebra)

For many students, this is the only mathematics course they take for their
degree and they fail/drop multiple times before finally succeeding. For those
students, their mathematics course in college is quite literally a repeat of
high school.

It's worth noting that many colleges have even more remedial mathematics
courses, which (no joke) cover elementary school stuff. E.g. the standard
algorithm for division...

So in some sense I would agree with Dowwie's concern, but also point out that
_we already have this problem anyways_ , so there isn't much to lose.

~~~
octorian
> The course "College Algebra" has the highest fail rate among all university
> courses in the US

After I finished my undergraduate education, I moved to a different area and
started to hang out around people who were attending the local state
University. Often, they would say "I'm bad at math" and "I struggled with
College Algebra" in the same sentence/context.

My initial reaction was a dumbfounded "Algebra is a college subject? I didn't
know that. I thought it was a high school subject, sometimes started in middle
school."

Of course I didn't do my undergraduate education at a state University. I went
to a more engineering-focused school, where the lowest math class in the
entire course catalog was a dumbed down variant of Calculus for non-
engineering majors.

~~~
mcguire
Once upon a time, there was a student who went to a middling poor school in a
middling-poor school district. The highest math class he took before
graduating was algebra. He proceeded to test out of geometry and trig, getting
dumped into calc his first semester in college.

He did not do well.

~~~
throwawayjava
I don't think anyone is arguing that K12 education in the US is perfect.

The argument is that using expensive colleges/universities to fill course-
length gaps in K12 education is a poor use of resources.

Society should not pay PhD-trained analysts or algebraists to teach FOIL...

