Education shouldn’t be a luxury item.
“The White House on Thursday announced a proposal that President Barack Obama said would make community college “free for everybody who is willing to work for it.” But administration officials provided no details about the program’s costs or where the money would come to pay for it.
Obama planned to formally announce the plan Friday at Pellissippi State Community College in Knoxville, Tennessee. He gave a preview in a videotaped message shot aboard Air Force One and posted on Facebook.” -Washington (AP)
When I think of all the causes, and ventures this country and administration and could chose to invest in, i couldn't fathom a better resource than its own citizens. Millions of potential students, graduates, self-improvers and elderly in my mind should be celebrating, as many are i believe. However there are some that arent all that keen on giving away post secondary education for a variety of reason though.
Some have expressed that now if community college is made free then all the lazy freeloading social services milking people are going to flood the community college system depleting all the resources for all the other well deserving applicants. Which i believe to be completely false, because I’ve spent quite a bit of time in community colleges, with a lot of students and even though many of us were there paying out of pocket or through fafsa loans or scholarships believe me the last place truly lazy bottom feeders wanna be is college. But in hindsight, wouldn't that be the best place for the people many opponents fear will negatively take advantage of?
Or some even have the belief that since they’ve paid all types of exuberant and down right disrespectful amounts of cash for class, that no one else should be able to receive such benefits, unless of course they get student loan relief. Students for the last 2 decades have experienced the fastest growth in the price of education in the last 20 yrs than any other period of time in modern history. Americans owe about 1 trillion dollars in outstanding student loan debt, and have just surpassed for the first the $100 billion dollar mark in loans taken out in 2011 alone. http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/perfi/college/story/2011-10-19/student-loan-debt/50818676/1
NO ONE should have to shoulder that kind of debt just to better one selves position in the world or in life. The exuberant rise in cost in education is atrocious and cannot continue. I paid for much of my education out of pocket as well, but feel like now that something that should’ve never cost this much in the first place is going to be given away for free now, i’m all for it regardless of what i spent on it. There’s tons of people that deserve better opportunity in life but because of financial limitations cant. So bring on the free community college for everyone!!!
But why do things get to be easier now for them than it was for us? Well thats just progress at work people, we used to poop outside in out house’s, but now we get to do it inside the comfort of our homes without racoons trying to crash our Zen time.
What if people just wanna take class just because its free, and is not motivated like me to pull myself up by the boot strap and pay for college out of pocket or secure loans? Everyone has a completely different set of circumstances that motivate them to better themselves, so we cant use just our own experiences to justify whether or not someone else deserves or qualifies for something. If someone believes it to be fundamentally wrong for a program like this to exist, by all means is completely free to attend a university and pay for college through loan or out of pocket just like you and I if their principles hold that strong. I don't believe you should have to hop through hoops and trudge through the dirt for your education, because quite simply a better and well educated public benefits us all right or wrong? But there are requirements to maintain your place in these programs, you’ve gotta maintain a 2.5 gpa, and what i’ve been told about other similar programs in other countries, if you fail your class, you have to take it over and you have to pay for the class out of pocket and you’ll receive no more assistance. But per the report and other articles in relation to this, the details, requirements, funding, etc are still taking shape.
Well how are we gonna pay for it? The United States is strapped for cash and carrying far too much debt to handle something like this. Long story short we can pay for it by reducing a few things, the defense budgets as we are ramping down a war in Afghanistan recently. But particularly corporate subsidies, also known as corporate welfare, aka corporate tax loopholes. Take a look at what is spent there on an annual basis against what we spend on public services and assistance, then add the potential of what free community college may cost… trust we can afford it. What we cant afford is the down spiral of an under educated, under employed public.. but yes great discussion though.
This is how things should work, i think we should continue to fight for how the world is supposed to work rather than give up or settle. I’d rather our tax dollars pay for this than a prison system that doesn't gainfully rehabilitate its inmates and profits off the prison cycle of return inmates. Times aren’t like they used to be. They want a degree for positions paying like 15 bucks an hour… Crazy.. Collage is damn near as mandatory as a diploma..
This is the best government handout, freebie, entitlement ever!!!
