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zeke4ahs

zeke4ahs

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Oct 26, 2003
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During President Obama's trip to Indy today, one of the questions was how will free two years of community college impact traditional 4 year schools. His answer : there will always be a market for IU or Notre Dame.
Sorry, Noodle. :) What are the arguments against this besides where the money comes from? I realize that is a huge besides, but it seems that we find more money for so many wasteful projects that this would at least be one step toward helping those in poverty achieve a higher level of education and marketability.
 
Where will the jobs come from?

Who will hire them when they graduate? An educated workforce without jobs is still an unemployed work force. And are you aware of the Cc graduation rate? It's putrid.

Im extremely hesitant to support something like this. No one has a right to a college education. 1. college isn't for everyone. 2. You have to earn it imo.
 
college isn't for everyone

And everyone still won't be able to get in. I assume community colleges have grade and test score standards also. If they meet those standards, they will have earned it. Won't they be more likely to get a job after two years of CC than with nothing?
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Re: No offense taken.

It's no surprise whatsoever that the President has no clue about Purdue being located in the state of Indiana. He no doubt thinks it's located in one of the other 56 states.
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Will free junior college make black lives matter?

If you cannot make the case that a Michael Brown wouldn't commit a strong arm robbery or an Eric Garner wouldn't make a life selling contraband with free junior college, I see no social utility to it. If you want to devalue something for everyone, give it away.

The problem isn't lack of jr college, the problem is high school dropouts and poor quality of the high school education for many kids. The populations who desperately need our help won't be helped by free jr college. If Obama is concerned about employability of young people, he needs to slam the door on immigration--all immigration. This what we did in the 50's and 60's and people who were here were actually working.

This issue is another Obama program du jour that doesn't serve an important purpose but sounds good.
 
I agree with you. However...

I've taught undergraduate classes, and know first hand how many of those students would have been helped by spending a couple of years in community college first (or instead of attending a 4-year).

I wonder...is it possible in the modern world that 2 more years of schooling should simply be normal? For everyone? Perhaps high school graduation should no longer be the end of education - for anyone.

goat
 
I don't think it's a racial issue

It's a poverty issue. I'm pretty sure there are kids of all races that can't afford to go to college. Those populations desperately need help too, and that's one way to do it.
 
Exactly

What happened to Brown and Garner weren't racial events either. That issue was made out of whole cloth. I'm trying to figure out if you think black lives matter in all aspects of life or only when they are stopped by police. It is no secret that minorities underachieve in k-12 and are underrepresented in higher ed. Do you think free junior college will help fix these problems.
 
Re: agreed

President Obama and "mistakenly thinks" in the same sentence is a very common occurrence.
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Free community college is a bad idea.

It will hurt, if not outright kill, a lot of small 4-year colleges.

Already, many students go to community colleges to take lower level classes for dirt cheap tuition, and then transfer to 4-year colleges to get their bachelor's degree. Making it free will make it much worse.

A few years ago, I was having a lunch with a president of a local community college. He was telling me about the recent trip he took to China. I asked him whether that was a vacation or official trip. He said the latter since he was there to recruit students.

Another community college set up a branch campus in Japan.

My feeling is why community colleges would recruit overseas, and with taxpayers' money. How does it help our "community?"

Sorry, Pres. Obama. There are lot of other issues that can use the tax money.
 
Hadn't thought of that part of it

I don't think it would effect the bigger schools, but you are probably right about the smaller, less expensive one. Good point.
 
do we know what Brown and Garner represent?

My guess is if historians look at race in 2014 in 50 years, we have no idea how they will view those incidents.

You know the story about AGW, we could never say this hurricane is due to AGW. But we could say increased storms are more likely.

Racism is much the same way. Few overt racists exist today. But we know from experiments where fake identical resumes are created, but some are portrayed by blacks and others by whites; whites are more likely to get callbacks. Impossible to blame racism on any specific person involved but pretty easy to blame racism on the overall affect.

CC could help. I am against the plan, but as you note blacks underperform. Part of that may be due to not believing education has a future for them. I had a very smart high school friend who knew there was no way he would ever go to college, so he never applied himself at school. If free CC had been an option, maybe he would have. Maybe not. But statistically some people in that position will apply themselves and take advantage.

We see an experiment similar now, no time as I am leaving but isn't it Lansing offering free education? Some Michigan City. If the results show kids applying themselves (and in theory a drop in teen pregnancies), might we be onto something?
 
My larger point is

looking at the society benefits of free junior college. Brown and Garner are just symbols. There are millions of Browns and Garners of all races and sexes. The war on poverty has included a lot of spending on things like ECE and other job training. Success has been fleeting and isolated if at all. It seems to me that this just another program with no strategic purpose. Those who might be in a position to benefit with free JC need other improvements in their lives.

If free JC is determined to be useful, I would like it to be attached to the K-12 system to be run by local boards, local taxes and maybe federal grants. Easy money has created a higher ed bubble, more costs, a glut of impractical degrees, and billions of student debt. We don't need more of that.
 
Obama addressed this issue...

..during the Q&A portion of his speech at Ivy Tech about free Community College Education.

Obama pointed out the strong possibility of CC graduates going on to college after two years. He stressed to the audience that inexpensive colleges, which would include some smaller colleges, offer good educations. Obama stated, "Expensive doesn't mean better".

Obviously students looking for a free two years at a CC are ideal candidates for smaller less expensive colleges upon graduating from a CC. Furthermore with good grades at the CC many would be eligible for scholarships in obtaining further degrees including graduate school.
 
at some point

We will need a list of impractical degrees. A friend posted on Facebook a couple weeks ago about an article on worthless English degrees that she is a one per center in a biotechnology company and her best friend also has an English degree and a similar job/status at a major pharmaceutical company.

Maybe they are total exceptions, I have no idea.

I do know that local control sounds good until one watches school board meetings. Seriously, there must be a self-selection bias on school board candidates toward total incompetency. I will not suggest federal control is better, I will just suggest it is a total mixed bag. Some communities will do better, some will do worse.
 
It isn't that difficult

We mostly know in what fields we have shortages of people with certain skills. If we need to subsidize education, we subsidize where there are shortages.
 
CCs aren't preparing people for white collar jobs

They serve as trade schools.
 
What is the objective of free junior college?

Does "going on to college" accomplish anything important? We have general surpluses of college educated people now. We have shortages in the trades, but I don't get he impression that Obama is addressing that. I'm all for education and I firmly believe that educational deficiencies are part of the reason for income inequality. But I don't free junior college as fixing this.
 
CoH, Check out the Ivy Tech degrees...

...and certificates where Obama spoke yesterday as one example of the type of community college about which Obama is talking. Appears to me Ivy Tech is offering degrees and certificates in a number of practical fields which offer good job opportunities in today's workplace including some trades.
 
I agree with you 100%

I know, it is surprising.

Your example is highly prevalent. If community college were to be provided free of charge, which I do not support or wish to pay for, there should be some type of legislation preventing the transfer from CC to a four year college/uni.
 
I've never favored transferability to begin with

But, how in the world are you going to justify it when someone is getting two years subsidized and then comes out with the same degree for someone else that chose to take on loans to pursue their four year degree because they knew they wanted to do work in a field that CC could not provide? Makes no sense.
 
Huh?

CCs are trade schools. Access to white collar jobs is extremely limited from CCs (IT being the main exception).
 
That's a legit concern, but I think we have too many 4-year schools, anyway

Or at the very least, most of the freshmen I taught (at Indiana State and Bowling Green, both "catch-all" schools) were entirely unprepared for college. Maybe two years at a CC would have been good for them.
 
Why should I fund that?

The purpose is to prepare individuals for trade functions, of which there already is a gap between supply and demand.
 
I'm not saying you should.

I'm just speaking to meridian's point that it might damage 4-year schools.

As for why you should fund it, I did ask the question below: is it possible that it's time for us to extend standard schooling to what would essentially be 13th or 14th grade? That is, should 2 years in a CC simply be standard after HS? Students in the German gymnasien go for one year more than our students.

In this situation, I wouldn't be thinking of CC as prep before going to college. Although, perhaps students could choose to bypass it if they met academic requirements. I don't know. Just a thought.

goat
 
education as vocation

There is a need for it, buy is that the sole determinant of value? Answer recalling Steve Jobs comment about Apple flowing from a typeface class.
 
Not just that

They are also gateways to 4 year colleges; mostly for those who don't qualify for the 4 year colleges from the get go. Similar to the old IU extension system of 40+ years ago.

I am well aware of the trade school and associate degree programs. These are worthwhile in some trades, but there probably an equal number of programs that award certificates for white collar occupations, (basic bookkeeping, medical coding, purchasing etc) that are a dime a dozen.
 
You are dead wrong!

Your hatred of your president is astounding, this after GWB whom you adored. Anybody who knows anything about colleges knows that Purdue is technically a technical college aka community college.
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The objective is to garner more votes . . .

from people that support giving people more "free stuff."
 
Technically yes.

I believe what you are saying is how community colleges' original charter was and maybe still is, technically that is.

Today, yes, they still teach carpentry, auto repair, X-ray technician prep, and such job-related courses. However, good many courses/majors are freshmen/sophomore courses taught at 4-year colleges such as English, math, computer science, Accounting, Anthropology (anthropology?), Astronomy, History(history to become a welder?), and just about everything the 4-year colleges teach. Go to a community college website and browse what majors and course they offer. Here are some samples I've just browsed:

History of Europe Since 1870
History of Africa Since 1800
Linear Algebra
Introduction to Eastern Philosophy
Multivariate Calculus
Differential Equations
...

Students often go there to take introductory courses (freshman and sophomore level course taught at 4-year colleges) to get good grades at dirt cheap price so that they can later transfer to legit 4-year colleges. Many moons ago, I taught a course in Project Management one semester. If the goal of CC is to prepare them as technicians, why Project Management? Come to think of it, such courses are usually taught at senior or graduate level in legit colleges. I found that the students were very grade-conscious, which translates to what I mentioned earlier.

What should be done is to go back to the original purpose of the community colleges: job training. On second thought, maybe that was not the original goal. Please correct me if I am wrong on this.

This post was edited on 2/7 4:20 PM by meridian
 
Assuming free K-12 was a good idea..

...and given today's requirements necessary to get a decent job or continue on to a college degree or above, why shouldn't we consider something like K-14 or even pre-school through 14?

I don't think it will happen in the next few years given our current political environment, but its day will come.
 
What are you talking about?

CCs have become transient stops to the big uni. Most of the students can't even get past preparatory reading, writing, and arithmetic classes at the CC. The trade portion is a tiny part of your average CC.
 
I don't think Obama thought this through

My kids could have taken at least their first year at IVY Tech and transferred to a state school. If it was free, we would have insisted. How many freshman would choose to do that over paying higher tuition at IUB?

Both my kids took summer online classes at IVY Tech. They were much cheaper and easily transferred.

Does that free education apply to adults of any age that never attended college?
 
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