lol - my kid just came downstairs and told me something “awesome” happened in math class.
During class, he accidentally hit the hotkey to turn on his camera filter, so it gave him a beard. The teacher saw and thought it was funny, so she asked him how he did that. He showed her and explained that there are other filters, so he changed his to a potato to demonstrate.
She told the entire class to come to the next session as potatoes.
Hey, we’re doing what we can to keep our spirits up! Getting kids to put on a potato filter would crack me up!
Liberal teachers teaching kids they can be anything they want and that identification can be fluid. Open the schools!
So my colleague told the VP about what we found out and directed it to the principal who called everybody for a meeting to tell us that so far three students have tested positive for covid. It’s frustrating that a Deep Throat needs to feed us information to get the administration to talk.
Doesn’t tell me why half my class was missing and I suspect that more than just those few have it. Wonder if the principal has the over on whatever day was set to shut down the school by.
I think a better question is, why not cancel debt? What’s the downside?
The upside is that it is a huge economic burden on our society in general. It is strangling the middle class. People are putting off families, and purchasing houses, and getting married. Student loan debt is a societal blight. Higher education should be free.
Free university is mainly parents of poor kids paying for kids of rich parents to go to college.
You need to actively build the system so it doesnt work like that. Means testing at the high end is one part, along with free grants for the lower end.
That’s not true, not at all. First of all a large percentage of rich kids go to private school. Pretty much all the free college plans are for public schools. Second, even after you correct for sales and payroll taxes, the richer people still pay most of the taxes. Free college is mainly rich or upper class or at least middle class people paying for themselves and poor people to go to college.
The millionaire’s kids getting to go to San Diego State for free is not something that should in any way stop free college.
(“not everyone should go to college, and there are better things to spend the money on” and “government throwing money at things makes them more expensive” are both better arguments against.)
Our reference points are different.
My reference points are developed world countries that have actually implimented free university.
Even with progressive taxation, the differences in economic background for who goes to university means thats its a regressive distribution from poor to rich.
Your reference points are proposed US solutions. Ill concede that the US is different, and the presence of high end private universities that could be out of scope will be a big factor. *
I nonetheless think the reality of it in pracgice in countries could be informative.
I would think that most of this “I graduated with $100k+” in debt is people going to private school or getting advanced degrees, especially medicine and law. Most public universities are $10-$20k/year for tuition. If you get no aid and count all living expenses for 4 years you can get up there, but I don’t think that’s where the bulk of the immense debt cases are coming from.
eta: Actually, less. The average in-state tuition for a 4 year public uni is about $10k/year.
I’m on board with free public university if and only if there are free vocational school and robust subsidized apprenticeship programs to go along with it.
Free tech bootcamps for all. I’ll finally learn to code. <== Not actually sarcastic.
Yeah, like welding is a fine thing. I think there’s plenty of value in liberal arts education in and of itself though and for the sake of an educated society.
I graduated with $106k of debt for a B.S. degree from an in state public college. Granted I was there for 5 years, but it’s way easier to reach 6 figures of debt than you might think.
I’ve been paying about $1k/month for about 9 years now, and my outstanding balance is down to $64,000. Shit is insane.
this isn’t the case simply because there are a lot more of poor kids than rich kids. i have no problem helping 99 poor kids and making one rich kid sit in class with them.
i agree those should be included, but iff sounds too strict.
i would extend free public university to adults all the way through age 50s and possibly 60s, so everyone has a chance to go back to school later in life.
I have a fairly good idea of what it’s like having gone to college myself and having two kids in college now. My eldest went to a very expensive private school* for the first year and even with a lot of aid/scholarships she/we owed them some money that took me a while to pay off. They are/will be in public schools from here on (I hope) and all together I’m hoping they can get through without any/much debt.
*It was a good experience for her and a very good education - in a different way than a big public school - and it was good for her. No regrets about that.
This. I don’t know that just financing/aid can fix this, but everyone going immediately to college after HS or never going to college at all is not great. A lot of people would do well working for a few years and then going to college.
How about taxing tbose poor kids so that rixh kids can go to college.
You want it to be one way. Its often the other way.
1% rake is a lot better than the interest on your student loan. plus the rich kid would probably be a better human if he had shared life experiences with the poors.
Its not 1%. You are only looking at one half of the equation. Its a regressive tax on the poor.