The Reproduction of Privilege
campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com
campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com
"Higher education itself has polarized" -- relative growth in competitive, very competitive, and most highly competitive colleges AND in community colleges, but not in the less and noncompetitive 4-year colleges.
This seems like something to be celebrated and encouraged, not reviled. I really don't see any reason for any but the top 100 universities (maybe less) to exist as residential institutions, focused primarily on research; the community college system, plus the Internet, should be sufficient for the vast majority.
High quality community colleges (and not forgoing income by going to school instead of working for 4 years) would go a long way to reducing the income gap, especially combined with decent public education and free Internet resources.
Pell Grants cover 62% of the cost of community college, and there are usually state funds on top of that. There are very good reasons to not cover 100% of the cost of education with "free money" -- bringing it down in cost to the point where the poor can afford it at some acceptable sacrifice should be the goal. Lowering the actual cost of delivering community college classes makes more sense than trying to use federal money to subsidize inefficient producers, too.
The big problem with community colleges is branding and prestige. A lot of people could get just as good an education in the community college format, but as long as employers view a 4 year BA in communications from some relatively worthless college or university as superior to the community college degree, it will be a problem. Some kind of independent credentialing system (vendor certs in tech are one example -- a self-taught CCIE is probably a better pick to build and admin a Cisco network than a guy with a BA in IT from U of Phoenix), merit based candidate evaluation (which in some cases runs up against antidiscrimination laws...), and a move away from hiring as employees to hiring contractors or buying services from small firms.
I wish there were a way for the super-rich to earn as much prestige by endowing basic technical courses at thousands of community colleges as by building yet another stadium at a mediocre large university.
I think that you shouldn't have to sacrifice anything to become educated. I think that would mean the poor are always sacrificing relatively more than their richer contemporaries. If we don't cover the entire cost of education for those most unable to pay then we are continuing the stratification of higher education.
Say the cost was covered at 80% for individuals coming from families making $40,000 or less per year. This family is probably already struggling to save money while paying their bills, and having to divert any amount of money to the continued education of a child is probably off the table. This requires that the child work while attending school which takes valuable time away from studying and getting enough sleep. Lots of people work while going to school and end up dropping out or going every other semester because they don't make enough in their low-paying unskilled labor job. This is a vicious cycle which results in the poor staying poor because they can't make enough at the job they must have in order to pay for education.
Children from wealthier families can afford to funnel a bit of money towards their education, and maybe only work part-time for some spending money. Don't get me wrong - highly educated people are great for a society and this shouldn't be discouraged, but I also think we have a duty to help those living harder lives than our own.
The community college model is that you can work while attending. I don't think it is unreasonable to expect someone to do so -- working full time while attending a 4 year university is probably not viable (I tried doing it, and ultimately dropped out), but I think the Internet should allow an expansion of the role of online courses and community college, both highly compatible with work-study.
I would go so far as to eliminate non-merit scholarships and financial aid (subsidized loans, etc.) for 4 year institutions (except for things like the GI Bill which are a form of compensation). They should not be the mainstream form of education.
This only works if we can remove "must have 4 year degree, we don't really care from where or in what" as a job qualification for most jobs. I'd like there to be qualification tests for jobs, vs. checking a box for a degree. In this case, only circa 1900 level of 4 year college attendance would happen, and the vast majority (95%+) would have high school for general education and some specialized training beyond that for employment.
My father was a professor in India, where college education is free. All state funded colleges are free and most of them are easy to get into. But most of the students are not interested in learning, they come to college for time pass. So, free education should be given to only those who deserve.