How expensive is community in Cali?
It does seem the system isn't made to inform people of their options.
While I'll gladly take the cheaper degree compared to those offered in universities, it isn't as cheap as most people anticipate. Many of my co-workers talk about it in a similar fashion and are quite surprised when I show them what I'm being charged.
Why can't this model be extended into a 4 year school for twice the price?
I had friends who were working class but not poor and they got that for school.
Let's be real... outside of trade professions like programming/carpentry/plumbing/etc. an associates degree is barely a step up from a GED (and sometimes worse: "Why didn't you just take the extra two years and get your bachelors???"). It also doesn't really matter how cheap it is, the main cost for the community college demographic is the opportunity cost. Most don't have support structures to give them the basics while they are at school, so they have to support themselves PLUS earn an extra 2.5k in disposable income, and then keep up with their studies on top of all of that. And since an associates gives you extremely limited social mobility in comparison to a bachelors most just forgo it, often replacing school with an extra job.
In terms of social mobility a college degree is the new high school degree, anything less is exactly that and will not give you sufficient social mobility especially when you're on the lower end of the spectrum to begin with. We need to accept this and begin treating college like we did high school, making it free and standardized for everyone. The only other option I can see is trying to radically change social norms that have developed over the past 30-40 years and I just don't think that's feasible outside of select industries like ours.
The real problem is a huge swath of the US economy is based on reputation not ability. Exclusivity is the goal, so the more people reach benchmark X, the further companies will move the benchmark.
Of course, you really don't have this problem in economies where middle class jobs aren't scarce...
A factory cares about it's absolute production vs cost. However, a lawsuit is based in part on relative skill.
High school already doesn't mean anything, making college free and standardized means that college becomes not just a defacto expectation but something everyone has to do and there's really no point in that when we have the level below that underperforming.
Both are monumental tasks, though.
I think the real genius of making college free is not making it mandatory (of course, easier said than done). It's there if you need it and want to take the next step in your education, but for those who would rather not be there or would do something else that should be a viable option as well, and then you don't have to marginalize the education across the board.
If you look at NYC, they have a model of neighborhood elementary schools and location based high schools, but also a network of merit based advanced and magnet schools.
When I was in high school in a rural upstate NY town, we had tracked programs with "smart" and "not so much" kids and rarely interacted directly with kids more than one track up or down in school. (There was only 90 kids in the graduating class)
It was a real eye opener when taking some mandatory class as a senior (something like civics) when I discovered that my writing partner didn't really know how to read or write. To me that's the tragedy of schools -- that should not happen.
There need to be other changes to go with that, but the people electing to stop school would be happier and I think wouldn't miss out on much learning.