Free College Simply Won’t Work In The United States
Even though Senator Sanders’ hopes of being president are gone like a Hillary Clinton email, his fervent supporters continue to carry his torch in a fight for free college. Sanders said free college programs worked in Germany and Norway, so why the hell wouldn’t they work here, in a much larger, more diverse, richer and complex nation? We’ll just make Wall Street pay for it.
The call for free or even cheaper college is ubiquitous: US universities have the second highest average cost of tuition behind England. Some kids I knew, who didn’t have better things to do, took to the streets last fall and again this spring, blocking traffic and rerouting buses, to protest for free college and a wage hike for campus workers.
Sounds nice. I like free things. Why not pattern our tertiary education system after the European nations’ and make ours free, too? Well, because (according to Yahoo Finance) it won’t work, and it won’t actually be free.
First, let’s compare our “tax wedge” (the dollar measure of the income tax rate) with Germany’s: ours is 31.5 percent and Germany’s is almost 50 percent. In fact, 23 European countries have higher income tax rates than the US. Not to mention, with a comparatively lower income tax and a higher GDP per capita, there are plenty of US students who don’t need free college, ergo we’d waste a lot of money.
Now, let’s continue this apples-to-oranges discussion by comparing the value of a US education versus a free, European education. Free Euro schools are like our community colleges: There’s no manifestation of student life on European campuses and little professor-student interaction. There are no dorms, no philanthropies, no 2/3 capacity stadiums of drunk undergrads shouting “P-E-N-N-S-T-SUCKS!” Forgive me for using a tired cliche, but American students are paying for an experience as much as an education.
Most importantly, free college here just isn’t feasible. Take a look at enrollment percentages: Only 62 percent of German kids pursue some type of tertiary education after high school/high school equivalent, compared to 94 percent in the US. Without even getting into population disparities, US taxpayers would have to pay a shit ton more to facilitate free college, considering we have ten times as many college students as our German counterparts.
It’s worth noting that most of my data came from Yahoo Finance and Business Insider: Not BBC, National Review or Breitbart. A little fiscal responsibility can go a long way. The clamor for free shit wouldn’t be nearly as loud if students knew what they were getting themselves into from the outset..
[via Yahoo Finance]
Fuck Bernie
10 years ago at 1:51 pmI felt the burn once, definitely overrated.
10 years ago at 2:33 pmSay 3 Our Fathers and 30 Hail Marys for your sins.
10 years ago at 3:51 pm#DontBernAmericaDown
10 years ago at 11:52 pmWelcome back to another episode of “No shit”
10 years ago at 1:53 pmDespite my shitty comment, people don’t really understand why this doesn’t work on a different level, if college was free, it would be just like high school in the sense that everyone could go and get a degree making it so much harder to get a job, now said that there will still be people that don’t want to go but, that argument can be made with a high school degree as well. College will become the same as high school, no one will have an edge over anyone unless you obtain a masters or doctrine.
10 years ago at 2:08 pmIt already happened.
10 years ago at 2:31 pmThank you. Nothing is free. If I pay more in taxes for shit I can buy for less in the private sector I’m not happy about it.
10 years ago at 1:53 pmUSA pays twice more health per capita than any other nation (with all the modern-world countries having single-payer). So health insurance definitely doesn’t fall under the “it’s cheaper in the free market” category.
10 years ago at 10:05 pmHealth care isn’t a “free” market. Can’t compete across state lines, screws consumers. It’s an unusually complicated industry
10 years ago at 10:25 pmBut the high price (more than twice as much as any other modern country) is the result of it being in the private sector with predatory middle men who have donated to politicians, including Killary, which is why she once advocated for single-payer but now just wants to add onto Obamacare. That will cost us even more. I don’t agree with most left-wing economics (fuck $15 an hour nationwide), but we’d save money with single-payer.
10 years ago at 10:58 pmSingle payer in the US would result in VA-like dysfunction and inefficiency.
Why don’t we try the free market for, I don’t know, the first time ever?
10 years ago at 11:14 amI’m beating a dead horse.
10 years ago at 12:10 amI think that I shouldn’t have to pay for other people’s college tuition… or other people’s healthcare…or other people’s children’s primary education… or other people’s roads… or other people’s police/fire protection… or other people’s library books… or other people’s national security…
If you want schools, roads, security, et al… buy it yourself!
(TFM?)
10 years ago at 1:59 pmtry less, friend.
10 years ago at 2:01 pmTry more, buddy.
10 years ago at 3:41 pmwut
10 years ago at 2:03 pm…in the but
10 years ago at 3:42 pmwut, wut, in the but
Drive on a highway and crash into a wall you uneducated prick.
Also we support the United States military on this website.
10 years ago at 2:20 pmWhy should I have to pay for someone else’s national security? If you want protection from Iran, pay for it yourself!
10 years ago at 3:40 pmActually certain aspects of most of those things could effectively be privatized but hey fuck me right I read into a topic before I comment on a website dominated by educated men who at least sorta care
10 years ago at 3:29 pmI’m with you brother… privatize EVERYTHING!
10 years ago at 3:41 pmIf you would like some educational reading material I can point you in the right direction so you can try to educate yourself. Or you can keep making baseless generalities and wasting your time poorly articulating your beliefs.
10 years ago at 4:36 pmPrivatizing most of that besides the military is actually a good idea. Look at private schools their test scores and student quality is better because the school has a reason to run efficiently and give them a great education. If they don’t then students will leave and their out of a job. But some things like the military need to be run through a government so we don’t have militias running around
10 years ago at 5:44 pmIsn’t really how a privatized military would work. I’m a fan of privatizing certain operations and letting the market compete for contracts from the DoD to carry them out. Maintain a standing force. Spend heavily on missile defense, air, and naval power because it’s too expensive for anyone to invest in without a guarantee of a contract for the aforementioned contracts. But certain land operations and security functions can absolutely be handled by private contractors. The biggest hurdle is government leadership. We already let our suppliers piss on contracts. We need to actually enforce.
10 years ago at 5:53 pmSocialism is trash
10 years ago at 2:02 pmIf these liberals started going to state schools and getting degrees that are worth a shit, maybe they’d stop bitching
10 years ago at 2:04 pmFuck what am I saying, of course they wouldn’t
10 years ago at 2:05 pmThese kids need some guidance before they turn into green-haired, coffee-reeking, insufferable assholes, $75k in debt. I’m a firm believer in starting at community or satellite campuses for kids who don’t have their college already paid. These kids could emerge as juniors with high gpa’s and little to no debt and THEN go away to their quaint little liberal arts colleges, tucked away in the mountains.
10 years ago at 2:14 pmCouldnt agree more. Maybe if trade schools got the credit they deserve, we wouldn’t have as many idiots paying thousands of dollars for liberal arts degrees. Go to tech school for two years and make real money in a real trade.
10 years ago at 2:36 pmSo many liberals overemphasized the need for a Bachelors and screwed thousands of people whose interests and aptitudes should’ve pointed them to a skilled trade. So many people with strong procedural intelligence and practical problem solving skills experience are wasting money in college
10 years ago at 3:27 pm“But it works in Europe…” goddamn I loathe that argument.
10 years ago at 2:05 pmThey must also have a different definition of the word “work.”
10 years ago at 3:32 pmIt “works” in Europe because only the smartest people get to go to college there
10 years ago at 3:46 pmAnd everyone’s white
10 years ago at 8:42 pmHell ya TSWRA
10 years ago at 9:00 pmI know countless people that have flunked out of college when they were paying for it themselves of their parents were paying for it. I can’t imagine the dropout rates if students weren’t putting a personal investment into their education.
10 years ago at 2:10 pmCollege is expensive because they know that the government will subsidize it no matter how much they raise fees. Just let the fucking free market work and tuition will drop dramatically.
10 years ago at 2:33 pm