Reply to DNC chair:ocasio Cortez represents the future of our party

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=jsteele][quote=Anonymous][quote=jsteele][quote=Anonymous]Agree. I'm the PP who listed 10 ways above to make college affordable.

Countries that offer free college limit who goes, and understandably so. It simply cannot be a free-for-all. When government (taxpayers) are funding free college, they naturally want to limit it to those who are likely to succeed.

And to the moderator: why would you say I might as well not list federal and state grants? I know some vey poor people who got through (modestly priced) state college with grants, and fully, when combined with a part-time job during the school year and full-time each summer.

My personal belief as to how to solve the problem is to go the co-op model. Students alternate between "work semesters" (which are related to the student's major and provide valuable contacts in addition to decent earnings) and "class semesters" (which are the traditional academic semesters). It can take five or even six years to complete (bear in mind that only about 60% of students graduate within six years from "regular" schools), but they graduate with minimal debt, if any, and valuable work experience in their field. 
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You know very poor people who got by on grants. What percentage of college students are "very poor people"? If you are not a very poor person, you don't get a grant. Instead you get a loan.

[b]The proposals for free college tuition that I've seen only apply to state institutions. Private universities will still be around just as we have private schools despite having free public schools. It's an open question as to how restrictive the free schools would have to be. [/b]

Your co-opt idea sounds good except that many students have no idea what they want to study when first entering college. I certainly didn't. I would have had no idea what work experience fit my major because I didn't have a major until I was a junior.
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That's rather disingenuous of you to first ridicule the opinions of others by stating that "every major Western democracy has figured out how to provide affordable college", and then concede that it's an open question how restrictive it would be when challenged. I support free community college for all - anyone who wants to go should be able to go. More selective public universities should be barred from building expensive showy buildings that are not at the core of their mission to research and educate - 40 million dollar exercise club/gyms, indoor practice fields, etc. Furthermore there should be a requirement for public funded universities to rebate students any surpluses that the university runs at the end of the year - if they need to hold on to funding for future projects these must be approved by an oversight body and be actually used for that purpose. [/quote]

These are good ideas. I hope they can be implemented.

My point about restrictions is being misunderstood because I didn't explain it well. Because we have a robust system of private colleges and universities for which, as far as I know, nobody is proposing to provide free tuition, the universe of college and university seats is not limited to those that would be government funded. If the government-funded slots were restricted, there would still be opportunities at private institutions. Moreover, as we see in the case of private K-12 schools, many students might not even consider the state schools regardless of price differences because they prefer the opportunities provided by private schools. As such, the need for restrictions in the US might not compare to the situation in other countries.

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Right now, our system is geared so that poor (for free) and rich kids (full pay) can go to college, and MC folks have to scramble. 
In your proposed system, you'd have rich kids still being able to go college either through the public option or full pay for the private option. 
I would imagine fully subsidizing a public option would mean fewer government dollars available to private institutions which would mean fewer of them would be able to offer poor kids the option to go free. That would be limited to those private schools with healthy endowments. MC and poor kids would have a harder time affording private institutions.
Which would mean for the most part, poor, MC, and talented rich kids would all be competing for the same public options, leaving fewer opportunities for all but the rich, and more debt for poor and MC students if they can't make it into the public options.

Are we also going to follow in the foot steps of other countries by testing our tweens or young teens to determine which track they should be on? So a child at 12 yrs old can be shunted to the trades rather than professions, because he doesn't test as well?
Or do we use the SAT/ACT and offer public placement to the top 10% of test takers on each?
Or do we try to continue our cultural value of diversity, and try to make sure we have a good sex, race, age, religion, geographical, SEX mix as well as children who are academically capable?

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