Loading...
Title :
link :
“Free” College Systems: 3 Downsides to Consider
America agrees: we need change in higher education. But how do we provide high-quality, low-cost learning to students who want and deserve it? Democratic presidential candidates suggest government-sponsored free college. Bernie Sanders, famed Vermont Senator and high polling presidential candidate, offered the higher education programs in Finland, Denmark, and Norway as promising examples.
But while cost may not be a barrier to student success in these free-college systems, other factors are:
1. Not Everyone Can Go to College
At first glance, Finnish students have enviable higher education opportunities. The Finnish government covers more higher education costs than any other member of the 36-country Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), according to the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), and international students rank Finland a top place to study for its high-quality academics, culture, and vibrant student life.
However, few students experience these benefits.
According to the OECD, Finland has one of the most selective higher education systems in the world, with 67 percent of applicants rejected each year—more than double the average OECD rejection rate of 30 percent.
“One reason for the low attainment rate is that Finnish universities have finite resources and considerable autonomy to set admissions standards,” AEI researchers wrote. “Largely lacking the ability to raise revenue from tuition, it makes little financial sense for institutions to admit large numbers of students, and therefore, they are highly selective regarding which students they let in.”
If America embraces free college programs like Finland’s, then like Finland, we must also face the possibility of trading an expensive higher education system available for all, for a tuition-free higher education system available to only a few.
2. Disadvantaged Students Left Out
While politicians like Elizabeth Warren suggest that free college will put disadvantaged students on a path to success, Nordic higher education models suggest it’s not that easy. In Norway for example, students need only apply and be accepted to a higher education program and the government will cover the cost of tuition. But the data suggests that students from less-educated families aren’t making the transition.
According to the OECD, only 25 percent of 25-to-64-year-olds whose parents have not graduated from high school, have received degrees. For 18-24-year-olds whose parents have not completed college, only 39 percent earn degrees, even though they make up 53 percent of their age group overall.
These numbers don’t necessarily mean that young Norwegians from less-educated families are worse off than their peers.
“A bachelor’s degree in the U.S. has been seen as one serious option for getting into the middle class, whereas in Norway everything is a ticket into the middle class, because everyone is in the middle class,” Curt Rice, President of Oslo and Akershus University College, told The Hechinger Report. “It’s now less clear that it really is a ticket into the middle class in the U.S.”
But if America’s goal in adopting a free-college system is to educate those from disadvantaged backgrounds, the Nordic model suggests that free college may leave us disappointed.
3. Fewer Students Graduate
Like Finland and Norway, Denmark also covers tuition for higher education. Better yet, Danish students receive a monthly grant to cover housing and living expenses.
But many students still aren’t graduating.
Although 81 percent of eligible students in Denmark enroll in higher education programs according to the World Bank, only 40 percent of 25-64-year-olds have earned a degree, according to the OECD. Norway has similar results. There, 82 percent of eligible students enroll in higher education, but only 43 percent of 25-64-year-olds have earned a degree.
The United States fares better on both counts. Although American government covers significantly less of the cost of higher education (35 percent as opposed to 96 percent in Norway and 92 percent in Denmark), 89 percent of eligible students in America enroll in higher education, and 47 percent of students age 25-64 have earned a college degree.
These outcomes make sense. Why would a student graduate, join the workforce, and pay for their own living costs when they could stay in school and explore career opportunities on the government’s dime?
“With education being free, the Danish word ‘evighedsstuderende’ has risen,” Daniel Borup Jakobsen, a 24-year-old recent graduate and vice president at the software company Plecto, told Business Insider. “It refers to a person who never finishes his studies but continuously keeps changing study program year after year.”
While we certainly should revolutionize the way we think about college, expectations of free college don’t match reality. If we want higher education to allow access for many, put the disadvantaged on a path to success, and develop students who are eager to contribute to society, then Nordic examples suggest free college may not be the way to go.
Fortunately, good old-fashioned American innovation offers a way forward. Apprenticeship programs provide access to jobs without incurring the cost of traditional college and for the few jobs that require higher education, income-share agreements foster investment in promising graduates. As these programs continue to grow, students will continue to face new opportunities to pursue the careers and education they aspire to without the disadvantages of the Nordic “free” college model.
SOURCE
A Daycare in Every Neighborhood
Loosening Childcare Laws Could Make the Dream a Reality
Being a new parent is hard. Babies are loud and unreasonable creatures. The lack of sleep that comes with a newborn can break even the most prepared couple. Parental leave helps ease some of the pain, but it’s not available for everyone and ends in a few short months. And when it’s time to head back to work, the pain doesn’t stop. In most places in America, daycare today is expensive, scarce or both.
Scarce, expensive daycare is a problem for working families but one that can be mitigated with sound public policy choices that proactively consider their needs. States and localities regulate daycare providers in two principal ways—land-use and labor regulations—both of which increase childcare prices and decrease availability. When rules are too restrictive, parents are forced to turn to informal childcare services or unwillingly leave the workforce, both of which are worse alternatives than enabling commercially available options in the childcare market.
Labor regulations dictate who can work in childcare services and how they must work. They set minimum training standards for childcare employees, including requiring providers to have a college degree in Washington, D.C. These regulations typically exist at the state level as part of occupational licensing rules. They can include mandatory training and classes, as well as minimum ratios of staff to supervised children and other specifics. Education requirements and staffing ratios are intended to head off potential health and safety problems, but when imposed without restraint, they make compliance costly and risky for childcare workers and businesses.
Land-use regulations, on the other hand, limit the spaces where childcare centers can operate. These are typically set at the local level, and often force daycare operators to be located in properties zoned for commercial uses. This dramatically limits options for small and new daycare providers, and forces working parents to drive their children from residential areas to commercial strips. Even where daycare centers are allowed in residential areas, towns can set the maximum number of children allowed or mandate the property have certain characteristics, like off-street parking for child pick-up and drop-off, commercial kitchens for food preparation and other changes that can force a would-be provider to renovate their property for use as a daycare center. Some towns place strict limits on the number of children a daycare center can serve, preventing successful centers from scaling up to meet parent demand. Together, these land-use regulations make potential daycare sites hard to find and expensive to renovate and operate.
Addressing the problem of scarce, expensive childcare will be a state-by-state affair. America doesn’t have uniform national standards for daycare regulation. Thankfully, efforts to reform state occupational licensing and local land-use regulations have become more widespread in recent years, and the prevalence of high childcare costs is a powerful argument for reform in both areas. Reforms to state licensing laws could lower minimum education requirements for caregivers, opening the market to many new and part-time caregivers. Alternately, a two-tier system that allows both “registered” and “licensed” facilities would provide more consumer choice and lower costs as a result. In Vermont, licensed facilities face more stringent regulations but boast lower staffing ratios in exchange.
Fixing land-use rules will be a more piecemeal task, with most of the work requiring updates to municipal zoning laws. Burdened town residents could make the case for expanding daycare availability, as happened in Arlington County, Virginia, earlier this year. But a broader fix could also be appropriate. Generally, costly childcare becomes a statewide issue if municipalities don’t allow enough places for daycare providers to set up shop. A reform-minded state could mandate that municipalities recognize small-scale childcare as part of the by-right uses of any residential property, up to some maximum number of children. There’s plenty of precedent, as such laws have been on the books in some states for decades.
Labor and land-use regulations make running daycare businesses too expensive and challenging in many places. Working families pay the price when we set needlessly high standards for who may care for children and narrow limits for where they may do so. For supporters of the status quo, that may sound reasonable. But for burdened households struggling to find someone to look after their kids, it’s more than enough reason to get loud.
SOURCE
Warren Trashes 'Obscene' Profiting off Students, While Textbook She Wrote Costs $250
Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts introduced legislation last month that would cancel student loan debt for tens of millions of Americans.
The senator previously stated it’s “obscene” to profit off of students, but she’s doing exactly that with a textbook she authored priced at $258.97.
Warren blamed the collective over $1.5 trillion in outstanding student loan debt on Washington, D.C.
“My very first bill when I got to the Senate was legislation to tackle the growing student debt crisis because I was sick of Washington allowing the wealthy to pay less, while burying tens of millions of Americans in mountains of student loan debt,” Warren said in a statement when she and Democratic House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn of South Carolina introduced the student loan debt forgiveness bill in late July, The Hill reported.
“Since then, Washington has only allowed this crisis to get worse — especially for people of color. Enough is enough,” she added.
Forbes reported the legislation would offer loan forgiveness for 95 percent of borrowers and entirely cancel the loan debt for 75 percent.
“The student debt crisis is real and it’s crushing millions of people — especially people of color,” Warren said in June, according to Forbes. “It’s time to decide: Are we going to be a country that only helps the rich and powerful get richer and more powerful, or are we going to be a country that invests in its future?”
The plan offers debt forgiveness up to $50,000 for all with a household income under $100,000 and gradually lowers the amount until those earning over $250,000 per year are not eligible.
Forbes reported that the senator’s bill closely mirrors a campaign proposal she made in April. At that time, she proposed an annual 2 percent tax on “ultra-millionaires” — defined as those with a net worth of $50 million in order to pay off the student loans.
In 2013, then-newly elected Sen. Warren called the fact the federal government profited from student loans “obscene.”
“Instead of helping our students, the government is making a profit on student loans,” Warren said. “That is wrong. It is morally wrong. That is obscene.”
As an aside, while the program was in the black in 2013, the Congressional Budget Office is projecting a $31 billion deficit in the federal student loan program over the next decade.
The Daily Wire’s James Barrett suggested if Warren is truly worried about profiting off of students she ought to look in the mirror.
A textbook she authored, “The Law of Debtors and Creditors: Text, Cases, and Problems,” costs $258.97.
For those students who can’t afford such a hefty price, they can always rent it at $126.78. However, the 2019 statutory supplement “Bankruptcy and Article 9” is an additional $60.
Warren co-authored another textbook, titled “Secured Transactions: A Systems Approach,” which is for sale at a more reasonable $122.83.
The lawmaker also didn’t seem to mind profiting off of students prior to coming to the Senate, when she was taking in an annual $430,000 per year as a Harvard Law School professor.
Townhall editor and Fox News contributor Katie Pavlich had a perfect response after Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont offered their even more expansive bill in late June to pay off everyone’s student loans.
“Not my responsibility to pay for your ‘dream college’” Pavlich tweeted. “Your dream, your choice, your debt. Not mine or anyone else’s. It’s called personal responsibility.”
SOURCE
thus Article
that is all articles
This time, hopefully can provide benefits to all of you. Okay, see you in another article posting.
You now read the article with the link address https://onechildsmart.blogspot.com/2019/09/free-college-systems-3-downsides-to.html
0 Response to " "
Post a Comment