So far as I know, Democrat David Garcia is the only gubernatorial candidate who has a plan to allow all Arizonans to attend state colleges tuition free, or the outline of a plan anyway. He wants to start by making community and tribal colleges tuition free, expand to top high school graduates attending Arizona universities and eventually include all in-state students. If other people running for state office have listed free college tuition as part of their platforms, I haven’t seen it, but lots of candidates are springing up saying lots of things, and education promises to be a red-hot item this election season. We’ll have to see where things go.
Details? Yes, details are important and Garcia promises to supply them in the next few months, but there’s something more important. It’s the basic question, “Should college be tuition free?” If the answer is yes, the next question is, how do we get there? It’s within the realm of the possible if we think it’s important enough, and we don’t have to get all the way there right away. If we begin the journey toward free tuition, we’ll keep moving closer to the goal.
The answer, by the way, is yes, making college tuition free is a good idea, a very good idea, especially when it comes to community college. Today, 14th grade is the new 12th grade. Looking backward, in the first half of the twentieth century, 12th grade was the new 6th grade. In the mid-nineteenth century, minimal literacy was replacing illiteracy as the new norm. Times change and educational needs to change with them. Post-high school education isn’t a necessity, but it’s a damn good thing to have, both for personal enrichment and increased economic prospects. It’s not a luxury item which should be available only to those who can afford it. Community college should be free and readily available. High school students who have an interest in continuing their education, even if they’re not sure what they want to do with it, should be encouraged to take the next step by knowing tuition won’t be an issue. People who are years out of high school shouldn’t have to check their bank accounts to see if they can afford college, or worry about saddling themselves with years of debt if they decide to go.
A variety of approaches to free college tuition are being tried in Tennessee, Oregon and New York (San Francisco has a program of its own), and other states are looking into it. It’s real; the movement has legs. You can tell how real it is by the number of people going out of their way to write about why it’s a bad idea, and even if it’s a good idea, why it’ll never work, and even if it works, why it won’t be completely successful so don’t even try. You don’t have a lot of people running around trying to stamp out something they don’t like unless they fear it’s growing.
Can free tuition happen in Arizona? It’ll be a tough haul, no question. We’ve been reducing, not increasing state spending on higher ed for years. Getting rid of college tuition costs money, and the current state government is allergic to things costing money, or most things anyway. But it doesn’t have to be that way. When we think something is worth doing, somehow we find the money to do it. Cities and counties find money to help businesses get going, then give them tax breaks to keep them profitable. We’ve built stadiums. We’ve built light rail. We’ve built roads and bridges. Even with the state’s stinginess over the past eight years, it somehow found money to pay for private school tuition. And somehow, year after year, Republicans always seem to find money to hand out to their wealthy friends in the form of tax cuts. They find the money they need in state funds meant to maintain and improve infrastructure and social services and education, kindergarten through graduate school. Lots of people think those funds and the things they do are important, but look, Republicans say (or would say if they were honest), it costs money to reduce taxes for our rich friends, and it’s gotta come from somewhere.
If people in positions of power, in and out of politics, advocate for lowering college costs for students with the goal of making higher education as nearly free as possible, it can happen. These days, Arizona voters say they want to increase funding for education. Advocates can always harken back to the wise folks who included these words in the Arizona constitution:
“The university and all other state educational institutions shall be open to students of both sexes, and the instruction furnished shall be as nearly free as possible.”
If they say it loud enough, if people running for office make tuition-free college part of their campaigns, if elected officials make it one of their priorities, we can make progress in that direction.
This article appears in Jun 8-14, 2017.
There is no such thing as a free lunch. A university education is not for everyone and it should not be. There is nothing wrong with that! As a society, we should be more invested in creating high level apprenticeships and trade schools opportunities, to open doors for the tens of thousands of kids being pushed down a path towards college that does them more harm than good.
Our education system is failing because of the flawed ideal that all students should go to college. The end result of this philosophy has been a massive increase in demand for seats at universities, subsidized by loans, which has caused the cost of higher ed to bloat. Look at the number of university students in Arizona who have to take remedial math and English as freshmen and sophomores, it is staggeringly high. Look at the drop out rates. Look at the debt load placed on those who drop out because they did not belong there in the first place.
Why do we insist on putting square pegs through round holes? A university education is only one path and we need to lay down alternative paths to good employment for the majority of Arizona students who do not belong at a University in the first place. A great place to start is K-12 where the ‘university only’ culture is strongest. Germany provides a great model on combining education with trade school and apprenticeships at the high school level and post high school level.
A free University education is just another step in the wrong direction and ignores the real issue: fixing K-12 and creating opportunities for those who do not belong in a purely academic setting. If we can fix K-12, create a system of high school and post high school level trade schools and high level apprenticeships, well then, and only then, should be begin to talk about about making it university free.
Until then, I refuse to subsidize an education policy that is detrimental to the economic well being of our state. I will vote against this clown the same as I will vote against Ducey. Two sides of the same coin. Of course none of this makes for a good sound bite, ‘Free University’ sure does sound good, especially to those blinded by ideology or unfamiliar with the implications and true costs. Keep drinking the Kool-Aid David.
Very well said HB.
Human Bean:
What are the average wage rates, benefits packages, and social safety nets available for someone who has foregone college to work in a trade in Germany? How do they compare with the average wage rates, benefits packages, and social safety nets available to someone in the same position in the U.S.? What has Germany done with its manufacturing base? Has it been outsourced to foreign countries, as much of the U.S.’s base has been? The U.S. won’t benefit from adopting some aspects of the German system without adopting other components of that system that make those aspects livable and acceptable. It’s unlikely that those features of the German system could be transferred here, given our current economic and political situation.
David Safier:
At the roots of the college funding problem in this country are the student debt industry and the tuition discounting consulting industry:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/maggiemcgrath/2014/07/30/the-invisible-force-behind-college-admissions/#ae98b9170a55
http://www.consumerreports.org/student-loan-debt-crisis/
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/09/business/dealbook/states-say-navient-preyed-on-students.html
We will not be able to address the problem and stop the indenturing of the next generation without confronting the vested interests that profit from loading students up with debt. It seems unlikely that these interests can be confronted successfully without campaign finance reform, so your proposed policy solution is treating the symptom, not the cause. If the proposed policy is adopted, the cause will be unaffected and the symptom will simply shift its demographic range slightly and target a slightly different set of victims (those not utilizing the public system). Meanwhile, there will be new problems created in the public system when it becomes the only portion of the higher ed system that has no costs associated with it.
As for your friend David Garcia, it seems unlikely that he will solve any of our problems in this state. He has far too many ties to the malfunctioning portions of the Democratic Party in Southern Arizona. And the Democratic party here and elsewhere has too many ties to the financial industry and its loan peddlers. Quite a tricky problem, isn’t it, finding campaign promises that will lure enough people to the voting booth to get your candidate into the driver’s seat, while distracting voters from the fact that those promises entirely fail to address the real problems and confront the real villains? It’s a trick too many Democrats are adept at playing these days.
As a nation we are $20T in debt. many of you fell for this and are responsible. Please begin to look for solutions or it will be your retirement and health insurance that they need to take away.
Perhaps the reason that 14th grade is the new 12th grade is because standards have dropped. Remember this article that made the rounds of the web a few years back? It’s called “An 1895 8th Grade Final Exam: I Couldn’t Pass It. Could You?” https://newrepublic.com/article/79470/1895-8th-grade-final-exam-i-couldnt-pass-it-could-you
Here are a few of the questions:
“Give nine rules for the use of Capital Letters.” (If you’re reading this, this means you, Francis Saitta.)
“Define Verse, Stanza and Paragraph.”
“District No. 33 has a valuation of $35,000. What is the necessary levy to carry on a school seven months at $50 per month, and have $104 for incidentals?”
“Find bank discount on $300 for 90 days (no grace) at 10 percent.”
“Write a Bank Check, a Promissory Note, and a Receipt.”
“Describe three of the most prominent battles of the Rebellion.”
“Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton, Bell, Lincoln, Penn, and Howe?”
“Name events connected with the following dates: 1607, 1620, 1800, 1849, and 1865?”
“Use the following correctly in sentences, Cite, site, sight, fane, fain, feign, vane, vain, vein, raze, raise, rays.” (Hardly anyone on the Internet can answer this one anymore.)
“What is climate? Upon what does climate depend?” (I bet Scott Pruitt can’t answer this one.)
“Name and describe the following: Monrovia, Odessa, Denver, Manitoba, Hecla, Yukon, St. Helena, Juan Fernandez, Aspinwall and Orinoco”
And so on. Can the average eighth-grader still pass a test like this? Can the average high school graduate? A lot of people under 35 nowadays seem to complain about the difficulties of “adulting,” and while some of their complaints are indeed quite valid, especially considering how much more complicated modern life has become, the people who complain about not being able to figure out how to pay a bill at the age of twenty-five kind of leave me scratching my head. Meanwhile, over 120 years ago, a thirteen-year-old had to know how to do it. So is higher education really teaching anyone anything now, or is it just making up for all the ways in which the educational system failed our youth while they were underclassmen? In other words, should 14th grade *have* to be the new 12th grade? Is 12th grade no longer up to par in terms of curriculum? Why am I seeing classified ads that require a high school diploma in order to obtain a menial custodial job?
“As a nation we are $20T in debt. many of you fell for this and are responsible.”
The biggest contributor to the debt is the military spending, which our president just boasted about raising.
That’s odd. SS, Unemployment and Medicare make up 60% of the budget. Defense is 16%.
https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https://media.nationalpriorities.org/uploads/total_spending_pie%252C__2015_enacted.png&imgrefurl=https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-budget-101/spending/&h=915&w=1003&tbnid=aZKoWgEilLVVXM:&tbnh=160&tbnw=175&usg=__LH3FTLd0AWisP3K–Zx1l3N_BZk=&vet=10ahUKEwiXxOn34b3UAhVK8WMKHZFrBKEQ9QEILzAA..i&docid=WKwLr8MRBaeUtM&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiXxOn34b3UAhVK8WMKHZFrBKEQ9QEILzAA
You bunched together multiple sectors, military spending is the biggest by itself. And that chart is from 2015
https://www.google.com/amp/s/fivethirtyeig…
You bunched together multiple sectors, military is the biggest by itself, i didnt say it constituted a majority. And that chart is from 2015 and will be erroneous if trumps budget gets through
https://www.google.com/amp/s/fivethirtyeig…
College is necessary to TUSD grads because as the Tucson community allows members of the district’s governing board to continue their destructive grandstanding, conspicuous extended absences from the podium while business is conducted, bickering and infighting, the weaknesses in the quality of services the district delivers to its forty-something thousand students never get addressed, much less fixed.
Seriously, David. I ask you to watch the entire Board meeting that took place last night from start to finish once it is posted on the district’s website. The June 13 meeting will be posted on this web page within the next few days:
http://tusd1.org/contents/govboard/gbvideo_archive.html
That what was recorded in the TUSD board room last night can take place in the governance of an educational institution serving tens of thousands of students is an embarrassment to Tucson, to Arizona, and to the country as a whole. Ducey is bad, but how could it benefit the state to have Garcia, a firm friend of TUSD’s 2013-2016 Board majority, two of whom are still on that board and contributing actively to its ongoing dysfunction and discord, as CEO of our state?
Are this district’s problems stemming only from insufficient funding? Will additional funding necessarily fix its problems? Please watch last night’s proceedings of that group of elected officials, as parents and community members who have the misfortune to be directly affected by this degenerate district’s governance decisions regularly have to do, and ask and answer that question honestly for yourself.
Military spending is budgeted at $824.7 billion. The biggest expense is the Department of Defense base budget, at $574.5 billion. Overseas Contingency Operations will cost $76.6 billion.
Mandatory spending is $2.535 trillion. Social Security is by far the biggest expense, at $1.005 trillion. Medicare is next, at $582 billion, followed by Medicaid at $404 billion.
2017 Budget
https://www.thebalance.com/u-s-federal-budget-breakdown-3305789
(Trillion is larger than billion)
The issues for college are even more intense than the issues for k-12. There have been comprehensive longitudinal studies of University students. The results are devastating. Fifty percent of students who survive two years in college show no signs of cognitive gains. Think about that, 42% of students are so dissatisfied they don’t return for a second year of college at that school. 30% don’t return to college at all. They get it – for most students at most colleges, college is a zero value added environment. They are cows being milked for money.
Think about that. They have piled on debt to their eyeballs and all they have to show for it are memories of hook ups and beer parties.
As the percentage of people with college degrees has risen, the percentage of people with college degrees not in the workforce has risen right in concert.
The Board of Regents (I attended these meetings for four years) is inundated with data that wouldn’t survive a freshman econometric course. We all know that College graduates make more money than high school graduates but how much of that is ****caused**** by college and to what degree is college just a very expensive filter or gauntlet that everyone must run through to participate in society?
In Econometrics, this is called specification error – earnings are a function of whether you graduated from college or not.
College (NAU) transformed my life and certainly they transform many people who go on to lead very accomplished lives. But, the data says they can do much, much more for many more students.
Over the last decade and a half, university quality in Arizona has steadily been on the rise – 1 percentage point a year when 7 percentage points are possible and we have the leadership in place to achieve 7 points. And, guess what, that coincided with increasing the student responsibility for tuition, not reducing it.
Not one Republican legislator should dare say, “we just don’t have the money,” when they have billions in tax credits, tax exemptions, exemptions from sales and income taxes, corporate giveaways economic”freedom ” programs, and millions for private schools laundered like drug money. (Voila! See its magically not public money anymore!). Every lost revenue item, surely essentially to the State economic development effort. Guess what Jay Lawrence, $500 million is only $500 per student statewide, moving us all the way up to 49th!