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Comment by outside1234 | Hacker News Reader

They are bad because they exist. Tuition should be free to those that achieve admission to a public school

I'm absolutely with you. If you want to attend state institutions in your home state, and maybe even as targeted as in your region in your state, the tuition should be free.

The problem is, states are not pulling their share of costs. It's federal dollars and loans or other private payments.

yeah, that's the problem. let's fix it. This is not a crazy amount of money.

We already have free primary and secondary education. Perhaps we should be asking how we can improve those institutions so people don't feel compelled to pursue post-secondary studies for career tracks that could be addressed by those institutions.

As for loans, they are a poor tool to improve accessibility to higher education and will agree that tuition (as well as many education related expenses) should be free for those who need it.

It is probably infeasible to cram all of this into secondary school.

Hard to imagine being able to learn how to be a doctor or get to "useful" in electrical engineering

It is also probably too hard to even do this for technical training that is almost required now for manufacturing jobs.

To me this points to a tertiary level of education that is academic or technical/professional.

I think that broadening this education out to "blue collar" job education (which is in fact these days highly skilled) will also increase political support for it.

I agree that lower level institutions need adjustments. I went to a state school and was genuinely surprised when I discovered how many of my peers struggled with reading books (short non-fiction, long classics, etc) or writing any sort of paper (creative, research, etc). This seems like straight gambling to me - people who are barely literate taking out loans to in the hopes of landing a good job. The schools don't care, they just want their money.

Alternatively, if we provided the first 13 years free, why can't we provide 4 more years? That includes vocational education for welders/electricians/plumbers etc. Ideally we find a way to extend the community college model to 4 year degrees without them being corrupted into the same financial issues.

Tuition is free for a lot of low income students. For example Harvard is free if your parents make less than $150,000.

But even with free tuition Harvard is super expensive because it's in a high cost of living area.

> Tuition is free for a lot of low income students.

That's not what was said. Tuition should be free. That's it.

I'm not sure why people are opposed to something we've done successfully in the past. I mean, the current situation is a result of Reagan not wanting the "wrong type of people" going to college. Why do we want to hold on to this and hurt Americans? Why?

The likelihood of being accepted into Harvard when being raised in a family with that total income is extremely low. The environment for studying, focus, discipline, mental health, etc. simply requires more material security.

$150k is about double the US median houshold income. By most definitions, exceeding that number makes you upper class. Of course there are areas that need local adjustments, but for most of the country, $100k-150k is a comfortable upper-middle class income.

150k is plenty for getting into Harvard

I think they're referring to <$150k, specifically low income 20-40k lower class families.

"Tuition should be free to those that achieve admission to a public school"

Sounds like a recipe for gaming the admission standards or setting caps on admissions. It might not be a bad idea with the right safeguards in place, but it would be a mess if we just threw that into the current system.

Of course there are other options that exist today. Scholarships are essentially the same model you are proposing, only with higher standards. Plus, almost anyone who wants free tuition (including to private schools) can enlist in the military.

Why are we talking like Europe hasn't already figured this out?

Have they figured it out for the US? The funding is a contentious issue. We've seen free tution schools in CA slip into paying large "fees". It's a similar story for previously free universities throughout the country. The money has to come from somewhere and most people hate taxes.

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