Hot female teachers preferable with British or Spanish accents.....clothing optional. Ice cream dispensers in every classroom complete with toppings. Lay Z Boy recliners instead of those stupid plastic seats. Pop up books instead of the same old boring two dimensional books.
End all state funding and loan subsidies, end all regulations, accreditation and government controls, let the free market sort it out.
Make it free, like it is in civilized countries. Our brain power is a limited resource, and we risk wasting the vast majority of ours it that is born to poor or middle class parents. Genius is not evenly distributed; just one Einstein or Salk that has to become a politician just to make a living instead of benefiting humanity is too many.
Most countries that have free higher education also have standardized testing that limits who can actually get into college. Are you in favor of that too?
Poor kids have it easier to pay for college than middle class kids. Middle class kids do have to pay more for it, but most go to college for their future anyway.
Considering everyone from $80,000 on down is eligible for the same exact grants and loans this statement is false.
Not really. We have "holistic" admissions. You would see quite a different college student if we went to testing scores only admission.
What do you think SAT and ACT scores are? GPA requirements? Even to get into community college I had to meet certain requirements only an intelligent, competent, and educated person could meet.
Not really. You aren't being totally truthful. Has nothing to do with base income, but adjusted income. Or to put it more simply, $80k family income means a different thing for a family of 8 with 6 kids in college than it does for a family of two with 1 kid in college. Pell grants are pretty much only available if the family income is under $50k, and most of that money goes to people with family income under $20k. https://www.scholarships.com/financial-aid/federal-aid/federal-pell-grants/
I'd try some of the following: Implement lower division undergraduate courses using the MOOC model. Require departments to have one teaching faculty not teach each semester and instead work exclusively on curriculum. Require departments to either adopt or create open source text books, released in PDF only format. Require departments to provide online video lectures presenting all course content prior to the start of the semester. Repurpose currently scheduled lecture time with the mandate that professors should use it to more directly interact with students about that content through discussions, demonstrations, challenges, or otherwise.
To reform higher education, you would have to do things that would be politically unpopular, therefore, higher education will not be reformed. However as a wish list: Since the Student Loan Program is the biggest cost driver to higher education, it needs to be severely curtailed: 1. Limit Student Loans to STEM coursework or fields in which there is actually a big enough pay off to warrant loans. Student loans make sense if you are going to be a doctor, they make no sense if you are going to be an English major. 2. Or as an alternative, limit Student loans to students who score in the top 10% of SAT/ACT. 2. Limit the yearly amount of Student Loans to no more than 10K a year. Colleges have spent the past few decades loading up on wasteful administrative overhead and luxuries to attract students that have nothing to do with academics. My daughter goes to a college that has both a zip line course and a lazy river! Ridiculous! For all of his obvious faults, Rick Perry has come up with a reform idea to utilize online learning to provide a BA degree for 10,000 dollars. That's a bargain and for many degrees, that's totally doable.
How ridiculous. So, we need carpenters, trash collectors, plumbers, cashiers, cooks, carpet layers, painters, butchers, farm workers, brick layers, furniture builders, loggers, cable installers, janitors, childcare workers, road crew workers, secretaries, tellers, auto line workers, clerical workers, etc., etc., etc., need college educations? College is a luxury. It should be a personal expense. Why should I pay one penny for another's luxuries?
I'm split on what to do on tuition fees at university. There are basically three options. I) Free tuition for all. On the surface this looks ideal, it allows impoverished children access to university education which they couldn't otherwise afford and ensures that they aren't saddled with debt once they leave university. While that sounds good there is one problem-the vast majority of those who attend university are middle or upper class, the proportion of students attending higher end universities in the UK, let alone Oxbridge, is negligible compared to those whose parent have middle class professions or the wealthy elite. Free education is of course paid for by taxpayer money, and everyone pays taxes-including the poor. This leaves you with a problem-education can be free for everyone only if the poor essentially subsidise the rich. Since they are much less likely to attend university the lower income quartiles will be paying for the education of those who could otherwise afford it. II) A system in which you pay only if you can, this is my preferred option. The government can set a benchmark and if the parents of the student applying earn above that benchmark then they pay tuition fees. Everyone below that is given free education. This system can be financed by a) tuition fees paid by those above the benchmark b) taxation. This resolves the problem of the poor subsidising the education of the rich. III) Tuition fees, here in the UK the tuition fee limit is set at 9,000 regardless of what course you apply to study. This is effectively still a form of subsidy, some courses can cost at least 20,000. Students are allowed to borrow money to help pay for their education and start to repay it when they can afford to-that is to say when they earn over 21,000 a year. There is a problem with this-the debt is rarely fully paid off, current estimates suggest that only half is ever repaid. While this looks like it could put off children from disadvantaged backgrounds off applying to universities its worth noting that as a percentage of applications from all backgrounds those from poorer backgrounds actually increased once tuition fees were introduced.
