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The Great Debate

Stevo

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No. Without funding the quality of the education and the ability to do research and promote scientific advancement would suffer drastically.
 

Such Irony

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Grad school is free.

Depends on the school and program, at least that's the way it is in the US.

I got my Masters in Library Science and none of my tuition was waived.


By the way I'm all for free higher education. So many careers these days require a B.S. degree or higher. Higher education is one way you can achieve better prospects. Unfortunately, it's so damn expensive. There are scholarships for the poor but not everyone is fortunate to get a scholarship.
 

Nonsensical

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Right now, whilst in the middle of my college application process, YES.

maybe later, NO.
 

IntrovertedThinker

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Yes. Just like in Denmark. Ideally.

Indeed. Many European/Nordic countries have already made higher education free, which is payed through high taxation. I would say that this is preferable to a system where higher education isn't free, as it enables a more educated population, whereas system which don't offer free higher education tend to have less educated people. Obviously, that's not ideal, politically speaking.

So, if those Nordic countries can do it, why not?

Is it so hard to overlook years of compressed ideology?
The western hemisphere is so lame.
 

The_Liquid_Laser

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In the US K-12 is free and the education doesn't rank so well compared to other industrialized countries. College is not free and overall US colleges are among the best in the world.

So the question is what is better: quality education or universal education?
 

Red Herring

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In the US K-12 is free and the education doesn't rank so well compared to other industrialized countries. College is not free and overall US colleges are among the best in the world.

So the question is what is better: quality education or universal education?

The Ivy League colleges are indeeed at the top of most rankings, they have millions of dollars for research and are extremely selective about their students. I´m not so sure about you average regional college though. If you go to the US as an exchange student, the German state won´t fund the first year of college, because it is considered equivalent to the last year of German highschool and unworthy of being considered true tertiary education.

I have to catch my train, but I´ll be back to the thread. IntrovertedThinker has a point, but there are further aspects to be considered, more later, gotta go!
 

The_Liquid_Laser

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You can have both.

Go on.... :)

The Ivy League colleges are indeeed at the top of most rankings, they have millions of dollars for research and are extremely selective about their students. I´m not so sure about you average regional college though. If you go to the US as an exchange student, the German state won´t fund the first year of college, because it is considered equivalent to the last year of German highschool and unworthy of being considered true tertiary education.

I have to catch my train, but I´ll be back to the thread. IntrovertedThinker has a point, but there are further aspects to be considered, more later, gotta go!

You have a good point. Actually in the US community colleges are steadily becoming more popular, and they essentially provide the first two years of education for a much lower cost. A side effect of this is that universities are becoming more expensive.
 

SolitaryWalker

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In the US K-12 is free and the education doesn't rank so well compared to other industrialized countries. College is not free and overall US colleges are among the best in the world.

So the question is what is better: quality education or universal education?

I don't know if we should assume that if an education isn't free to the public its going to better than it would have been in the case where it was paid for by the customers. If university education is to be rendered free to the public, isn't it a possibility that the government will provide enough money for Universities to perform at the level they do now? I think that we can accept that as a possibility at least, the real question is whether or not the U.S government will be able to match the funds that Universities earn by forcing tuition fees on their customers. Do you see that as a likely outcome?
 

Randomnity

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No. The people I've known who had rich parents/family paying for their education didn't take it as seriously and also tended to take more "fluffy" subjects. I don't really want to subsidize kids taking "women's studies" or something where the only job it helps with is teaching the same subject.

But I think it's a good idea to subsidize it somewhat so the student debt isn't crippling when you get out and it's impossible to pay for it by working. Mind you, the situation in the states with the ivy league schools is kinda weird. I don't like the idea of paying so much more for the same degree.

I like how we do it in Canada where it's subsidized enough to be substantially less (tuition's ~5-10k/2 semesters) and therefore more accessible, but still pricey enough to mean something.
 

IntrovertedThinker

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In the US K-12 is free and the education doesn't rank so well compared to other industrialized countries. College is not free and overall US colleges are among the best in the world.

So the question is what is better: quality education or universal education?

This is a horrible way of looking at things. Just because k - 12 is free, and has lower quality, while college isn't free, and has higher quality, doesn't mean that free always = less quality while not free = more quality. This is horrible logic.

It's an oversimplified understanding of a very complex issue.
Essentially, k - 12 is free and it largely lowers its standards because its geared towards average people, and the funding for it isn't really great here in America, because Americans dislike taxation. Hence, these two reasons explain the lower quality.

1. Average people need to graduate (so says the government). As a result, we will lower standards so that they can all graduate.

2. Americans dislike taxation, which means public schooling will be lower in quality.

Thus, the U.S. government simply doesn't have much of the budget to be spending on public schooling. So it's obvious why it wouldn't be so great in terms of quality.

However, if Americans simply learned that more taxes generally = higher quality social programs (since we're so afraid of socialism, OOOH so scary), we'd have public education with a lot more quality.

Surely, higher education which is funded socially wouldn't be as quality as it is here in America, but it wouldn't necessarily be low quality, as long as Americans learned the power of taxation. Hence, more people would be able to get a decent education.

So your question makes no sense.

Thus, the real question is: why should we prefer a system that enables only the wealthiest members of society to get a really great education at the expense of the least wealthiest members instead of a system that grants all members of society a decent education in general?

Answer that.
 

IntrovertedThinker

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I don't know if we should assume that if an education isn't free to the public its going to better than it would have been in the case where it was paid for by the customers. If university education is to be rendered free to the public, isn't it a possibility that the government will provide enough money for Universities to perform at the level they do now? I think that we can accept that as a possibility at least, the real question is whether or not the U.S government will be able to match the funds that Universities earn by forcing tuition fees on their customers. Do you see that as a likely outcome?

Indeed. Great reasoning, SW. However, I think it all boils down to taxation. If the government had more public funding (which is obviously lower, given our American dislike of taxation), we'd have more quality public schooling. This is the way it's done in Nordic countries such as Sweden. Either more taxation or better use of national budget. Either one of these would definitely help the situation out. But I'm not sure what is more likely, at all: the government spending the budget in favor of education, or the U.S. public becoming more tolerant of taxation. And it's sad, because the social ideal is for us to have as educated a population as possible. Yet, our exclusion of college to those who aren't wealthy only does the opposite.
 

Salomé

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Indeed. Many European/Nordic countries have already made higher education free, which is payed through high taxation. .
It is free here (Scotland) and we have lower taxation than the US.

Basically, we rock.
 
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