If attending these classes was even just free, this wouldn't be a problem. Giving out student aid for online classes is just ridiculous.
Perhaps I'm naive, but it seems like it would be a lot easier to avoid the scammers if they limited first time students to in-person classes.
The matter at hand, specifically, is one about how our ability to verify is overwhelmed by our ability to generate content.
This is playing out with recruitment, bug reports, complaint forms - and going all the way up to sophisticated fraud.
Anti-education movements may be a third order effect for this, but it's a first order effect for other groups who are deliberately pushing anti-education efforts.
The threat of its efficacy, is why, since 1960 onwards, a large chunk of the western world has been figuring out how to bend psychology, rhetoric, and media forces to undermine "Ivory tower" intellectuals.
Yes, a succesful movement has been undermined because it posed a threat to people with the money to spend to fight their battles.
This is old news.
I was able to get educated with full focus on that task, because my family prioritised saving for my education. I want others, without such privilege, to have access to such opportunity.
If you choose to frame it also that "your parents paid you to consume free education", then so be it. But let's not pretend the state is doing something strange or against its core mission here
This is also a sales pitch, playing to the far-right. (virtue signaling)
"Virtue Signaling" is often a term of derision placed from the right onto the left. But is often done just as much on the other side. It's part of the 'right's vocabulary of labels for the left.
I just like to point out all the times when the 'right' take part in "virtue signaling".
Right wing , political or religious, often take part in "virtue signaling". Yet, seem unconscious of it, un-ware of their own biases, because to them they are not 'signaling' they are just speaking 'truth'.
But of course, they are not. "God is real, hence I'm not just 'signaling' when I say it to my fellow believers".
"Generally accepted" by who? Based on what?
Sometimes the reactions on this site are silly. We're talking about community college here. The people going to community college are trying to transition their life from minimum wage retail job to useful careers as things like dental hygienists, nurses, IT workers and daycare workers.
Their own increased future earnings will offset the subsidies through higher taxes and reduced burden on social services, and everyone in society benefits by having people in the types of jobs that community colleges prepare students for.
Community colleges are just a massive benefit to society at large, regardless of whether you're leftwing, rightwing, rich, poor, young or old. Literally everyone is benefiting here.
Off the top of my head, so may not align exactly with formal definitions, but economics is the study of allocation of resources and how incentives play a large role in how human behavior is influenced by those incentives. I prefer Sowell for a primer but if he’s not to your liking try google, keywords economic incentives and resource allocation.
i have plenty of personal experience with community colleges and those close to me have gone from penniless immigrant to making more than the average tech bro because they attended one while working full time, and paying full tuition without aid. what kept them going was a reasonable roi . the i was their investment of hard earned dollars that they used to pay for their tuition and gave them the incentive to stay in. they had skin in the game so they endured. getting something for free doesn’t instill any obligation, and that’s a common lived experience.
But using student debt, as an incentive to study hard, as justification that debt is good, is bit of a stretch.
There are plenty of students that do well without pressure.
Programs that are trying to pull in people on the fence will inevitably have some that don't make it, the goal is for a net positive. If local employers have 1 extra qualified employee at the cost of 2 or 3 that don't make it, it still balances out. The state is out the money for a few tuitions for students that didn't make it, but the lifetime earnings of the one that made it is greater.
Working while going to school is not uncommon or isolated to California. Full time work while going to school is excessive - but that is also a California COL issue that the state needs to actually tackle. But it gets worse the more they don't address their deficits. Debt begets debt and it always drives up COL.
For a healthy, driven person, without other major responsibilities (or a time-sucking internet addiction)? No, it really is not excessive.
And that's assuming that "going to school" is also full time. Taking just one or two classes per term is an old tradition at community colleges.
Not for people fresh out of high school. You are usually trying to graduate with a Bachelor's in 4 years so you do full-time at community college for 2 years to get your AA-T and then transfer to a university for your last 2 years. California in particular has a program that lets you transfer get a guaranteed transfer to any state university or participating private university once you get your AA-T.
Just because I can do something doesn't mean it's something I would want or would suggest for the rest of the population.
OTOH, life in America is very unfairly miserable for tens of millions of people who are not going to school. And trying to tell all the taxpayers that they have to provide nice quality-of-life upgrades, for people who are already enjoying taxpayer-supported free classes? NO - in our non-utopian world, where money is real, that is a very bad idea.
My wife got her Masters from Harvard recently through online classes, and every class had...I want to say about 4 hours a week of actual scheduled, synchronous class sessions over Zoom, in addition to the coursework required.
Community college is explicitly to help local students who are generally working jobs, so these onerous scheduled sessions are not reasonable
> Giving student aid beyond just free classes enables students who would otherwise need to spend time working to support themselves to instead attend school to get a better life. Generally that's considered a good thing, not worthy of the disdain you're displaying.
I think the idea would be if someone's getting paid to go to school so they don't have to work, then they should go to in-person classes. Online classes probably shouldn't be an option.
If there's profit available and no personal cost (in either time or money), scammers will exploit the program as described ("fake students bent on stealing financial aid funds").
Until you solve the primitive animalistic problems of selfishness, greed, and energy conserving laziness, were not going to have nice things. Someone asshole is going to be mad they have to share. Some asshole is going to lie and scam to get as much free shit as they can.
Solving this is a very hard problem.
But the numbers mentioned there seem tiny for a federal programme like the Pell Grant. A lot of times it's a matter of scale: a bit of fraud isn't ideal, but entirely manageable, so whatever.
Since then the scale expanded greatly. This is often a problem when you move things online: you're instantly connected with everyone on the world, which also means you're instantly connected with every asshole in the world. And with AI a single asshole can now pretend to be 200 assholes.
The solution is to do less things online and more in person. There are some advantages for some people in doing things online, but it also negatively affects everyone, and in general it just doesn't seem worth it to do everything online. It's not binary: you can do many things online while still requiring some bits in-person (e.g. registration, exams, occasional events).
Technology always seems to be the solution until the tables are turned.
> The solution is to do less things online and more in person.
And then we go right back to these programs being attacked for being inaccessible by e.g. poor people and the disabled. Obviously the solution is to hire people to go out and bring these services to those who need it but once you see how much effort is required to do that it rapidly requires a lot of funding and looks inefficient.
A cultural shift is required to fix all this and I am not sure how that will happen. Even given that the major religion in the west is Christianity which preaches that being selfish is not cool has been appropriated by selfish assholes who vote selfishly. I dunno what to say anymore. I am 100% for these programs which will be massively beneficial for humanity and all these fucks can think of is "muh tax munney."
On the other hand, maybe the barrier to entry is just waaayyy too low for online community college classes for this to make any sense. Students should have some skin in the game. Maybe students should be required to take a couple in person classes before financial aid can be used for online classes?
I don't think the article was dancing around it though.
No, they provide student aid that covers some (it's not much) of low income students' living expenses so that they can actually study and get through college, instead of working fulltime and it taking 2-3 times as long.
It's the same type of financial aid scholarships 4-year universities give out too, and in most/all States.
It's just not reasonable when they're not even traveling to the office.
We all understand the context of words here. Believe it or not, many people think that the government providing things for its citizens via taxation is a good thing.
What points? You just insist that this is bad and that's the end of it.