New York Becomes Only State to Offer Free Four-Year College
nbcnews.com
nbcnews.com
What I foresee as a result: schools hiking Room & Board charges because "people can afford it." This step would've been far more effective if the state covered everything and price-locked it as a result; now schools will see the balance not paid by students on tuition as room for Room & Board charges to grow.
http://www.uno.edu/housing/residency-requirement.aspx
Other schools in system have a similar policy.
> All First Year students are required to live in on-Grounds
http://housing.vt.edu/contracts/apply/first_year_students.ht...
> All incoming first-year students are guaranteed, and required to live in, on-campus housing for their first year;
And that's just Virginia.
Do we know what lead to this policy becoming commonplace?
I'm not claiming that students should live on campus, but there are clear advantages if they do so to both those students and other on-campus students.
Practically, it's more likely just a revenue measure...
Yeah, there are more ways around it. One can work part-time. But my experience is that this is all a bit mythologised and represents a kind of superhuman best-case scenario.
Admittedly, I'm biased as a native Russian (in US since early childhood). In our part of the world, making school and university-age children work is still often regarded as a kind of violation of their human rights. "They need to learn financial responsibility" doesn't resonate strongly in cultures without this national folklore of individual self-reliance.
However, as far as I can tell, "working through college" isn't as easy as it's made out to be. In the real world, a good chunk of the kids that have to work enough alongside school to actually _support_ themselves (housing, food, necessities), rather than just earn some discretionary "spending money", don't end up doing well in school, for obvious reasons of nonlinear tradeoffs in human activities. After a 6-hour shift on my feet at the pizza joint, I'm probably going to want to come home and veg, not soar to the snow-capped summits of my survey of Western intellectual history until 2 AM ...
Being in tech, I got so engrossed in my work I dropped out to pursue my (at the time) meteorically ascendant career! :-) But that's a different — and decidedly luxurious — problem.
The state owns much of the real estate around campuses across the state.
Give away the content, make your money back on rent and living fees.
Similar to their StartUP NY program which offers income tax relief in exchange for leasing state owned office space.
The value of a degree largely lies in its exclusivity. The increase in people going to grad school, particularly Master's programs, is a response to the increasing number of people with bachelor's degrees in the workforce.
This is not to say affordable college is a bad thing by any means.
(I still wonder as to what kind of rube can get that wrong. I clearly said 'SOY MOCHA.')
We have plenty of qualified people. What we don't have are jobs where their qualifications are valued. See: the job market for hard sciences.
I've often fantasized about the possibility of a deluge of rich philanthropists just up and deciding to establish institutes modeled after IAS, Boyce Thompson or HHMI Janelia en masse to soak up the excess scholars produced by universities (Boyce Thompson might be a bit of a black sheep in that list, but I include it anyways since it's technically independent to some degree). Unfortunately, I don't see that occurring within my lifetime.
An expansion of gov't labs would have a similar effect, but that's a real stretch in these times.
And, as others have noted, this is really pushing on a string. We're not doing anyone any favors by having them spend five or six years studying a field in which they'll never be able to find a job.
The net result will indeed be better employment opportunities, as it opens up a large section of the job market requiring degrees across the United States.
They will be competing for better jobs than the ones they currently can get without a degree
Classical economics suggests this will lead to increased spending, growth, and higher employment. More money spent should also lead to higher wages.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_F._Taylor#Taylor_Oppor...
Or better yet, just simply make education free via making the cost be capped at 5% of your yearly (before-tax) wage for Y years, or a total of $XXX,XXX, whichever comes first.
This is simple to implement and effectively shields those who have "useless degrees" as well. Everyone wins.