I think this is exactly what the federal government ought to be doing: building the national infrastructure and setting priorities. So I’m completely behind Obama’s proposal to make community college free for everybody for the first two years, a project that will lead to an expansion of our educational system, more employment for educators, and more opportunities for young people. It’s estimated to cost $34 billion — scrap a few defense contracts, we can cover that.
I’d also like to see more support for four year colleges — somebody needs to call state governments to the carpet for their steady decline in support for their educational responsibilities. Cecilia Munoz has said that one expectation of this plan is that they want this to be a high quality education, that enables a transition to a four year college.
“Community colleges have to raise their game by establishing standards to allow students to transfer those credits to a four year degree,” she said. “And students must take responsibility for their education, earn good grades and stay on track to graduate in order to earn free tuition.”
That’s a good start, but the places with four year degree options are also really strapped and reaching the limits of our capacity — a new influx of students into our upper-level courses (with their greater teaching demands) with no increase in our support from the state is worrisome. We’ll also need additional income to support those students, and it shouldn’t come in the form of even more tuition increases.
Kudos as well to the DFL for proposing similar measures in Minnesota:
Could we *please* just legalize marijuana and other drugs, and sex work? The government could fund all of college for everyone just on the taxes those businesses would generate.
Well, if the already established 4yr schools are concerned about their abilities to educate an influx of new students, maybe part of this program should work on expanding 2yr schools into 4yr schools. That’ll resolve the (nearly) intractable problem of proper & full transfer too.
@2 garnetstar
Hell, we could fund it on the savings from not sending druggies and sex workers to jail.
jufulu @ #43:
“durggies”? Really? What a derogatory and dehumanizing term, not to mention you’re responding to someone who was talking mainly about marijuana. How about “drug users” or even “addict” when you’re speaking specifically about addiction. Note: Not all drug users are addicts.
I’m curious as to what the Republicans will base their opposition on. The cost, or some other principle?
The few Republicans mentioned in that article support it.
As long as there is support for vocational education I don’t have a problem with this at all. I’m not convinced that encouraging even more people to get academic four year degrees is the answer. How many of our current college graduates are underemployed, working in jobs that don’t require a degree?
I’m definitely not against a good well rounded education for it’s own sake as long as it’s not a ruinous decision economically. There’s also absolutely nothing wrong with learning a so-called trade or getting a terminal certificate/associate if it successfully employs you. We have to destigmatize those career choices.
I just don’t believe college is the ladder to upward social mobility it was for our parents and grandparents. It saddens me a little, but if I ever have children I won’t necessarily push them towards a college education the way my parents did for me. I’ve been analyzing this issue a lot as I decide to enter law school and it’s scary but there are a lot of new lawyers mired in debt who make less than I could make right now if I went and got a job fixing generators. I’m not sure the situation is better for college grads as a whole.
What I am seeing in this are, yet again, pretty words said when there is no chance at all that they could be put into action. With Republicans firmly in control of both houses of Congress, not one penny will be authorized.
I think that’s a bit of an unfair cheap shot at CC’s. Back in PA most CC credits were transferable to any state university. Usual exceptions were either the number of credits that you could transfer or if the credits were to go towards someones major, they may not all transfer. Both of these had nothing to do with the quality of the courses, but on limits set by the universities. These same limits would be applied if you transferred from one state university to another.
Now that I am in Iowa teaching at a CC, there is communication between the universities in the area and the CC to essentially set up a “path” so that students can transfer all there credits and go right into a specific major at a university. The one difficulty is that you have several CC’s and universities that have to work together and agree on the transferable credits. Again this has nothing to do with the quality, but making sure specific classes are offered and not duplicates of what the universities have.
I’ll teach my biology classes the same way whether I am at a CC or at a university (where I was before my move).
Does this include trade schools (which aren’t always community colleges)? Because if so, I think this is a great idea.
Part of the problem is that a LOT of entry level jobs now require at least an AA.
The public sector is the part of the economy that is still lingering since the recession (the private sector has essentially recovered). This sort of thing is great economically, as it infuses it with more money.
If the first two years end up being free, that also provides some minor relief to student debt. But obviously way more needs to be done about that issue.
Damn, you are naive PZ. Even if they did support it, you know they couldn’t allow this happen politically. Big Spending. Cooperating with Obama. This is NOT their M.O.
Also:
But this is what you are thinking of
“That plan” doesn’t refer to Obama’s plan: It refers to the Tennessee Promise that Obama modeled his plan after.
If you think that Republicans will support Obama’s plan even if it is nearly identical to another plan that they support, you never paid attention to the discrepancy between their attitudes on Obamacare vs. Romneycare.
parasiteboy @ 10:
I agree with you. A lot of community colelges provide a fine education for lower-level courses.
Also, as an example, Phoenix (Community) College (of the greater Maricopa Community College district and having nothing to do with the for-profit “University” of Phoenix) has perhaps the best ASL Interpreter program in the state of Arizona (you do still have to transfer to a four-year college to complete the degree).
Also, as someone who is graduating soon, I have to say I am a little resentful that nothing is being done to help people who are already dealing with ridiculous amounts of student loan debt. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, sure. That’s cold comfort to those already afflicted though.
Honestly I thought my community college had better classes than those offered at the university I ended up going to.
Also it’s quite easy to get funding to make community college free or even pay you if your family’s income is below 50k. Meanwhile I transferred to university with a 4.0GPA and still had to pay for 90% of the tuition myself (and now have about 50k in loans that started kicking in, which isn’t even that bad compared to many recent graduates).
But this would mean the Koch brothers and the Waltons might get smaller tax cuts, thus preventing them from buying that ninth house or getting a lesser helicopter pad on the yacht. Either that, or the Air Force wouldn’t be able to cover the cost overruns on the F-35 or make its cannon work in the rain.
@ Larry,
Hey! I’ll have you know the Marine Corps is first in line for running up the tab on the F35. I used the base gym the other day and saw the hours are now cut. I told the front desk woman “Hmmm, an F35 helmet is 250K dollars but I guess we don’t have enough money to keep the lights on at the gym an extra 4 hours a day.”
I got to look at and touch an F35 once. I knew it might be the only chance I ever had to see 250M dollars in one place.
But yeah, we spend a lot of money that we don’t spend on medicine, education and roads. (Things you’d think a well run society might want.)
As a community college graduate who went on to a four year university (much later) and a graduate degree, I have to say that I found my CC education lacking in many ways. Some courses were very good, some less so. Freshman comp. didn’t deal enough with using academic sources. The college library sucked. Chem. 101 and Bio. 101 were sometimes just like advanced highs school science. The chemistry lab was halfway decent, I think. I got to take a sci fi. lit. class that was the only literature class I ever took that made literature make any sense to me. It changed the way I approached all literature after that. I had a great history professor in terms of his lecture, but there wasn’t enough rigor in grading papers and frankly, I got away with poorly sourced papers that I’d have benefited from getting seriously marked down for in terms of education. Don’t get me started on math courses. Awful. Of course, all of my credits were transferable, but that doesn’t mean they were academically at the level they should be.
On the other hand, I still took a couple of intro courses at my four year college and some of those were good and rigorous and some not. And I don’t know what Chem 101 is like on a four year campus. In general, I think community colleges in rural places can have a tendency toward underqualified teachers and disconnection from the active research of many fields. There probably is a need, in many places for these colleges to be better connected to four year universities and working together to achieve the appropriate standards.
I applaud this step in any case, however, and I look forward to one day having a four year education be free as well.
My one graduate adviser was from Australia, where he got his education for free all the way through to his PhD. His description of the system was if you did not get good grades the state did not pay for you any more.
I wonder how the US system would fair. Even state schools (again from my experience in PA) run a maximize profit at any cost business model (state schools are supposed to be there for affordable education for in-state residents) and will keep students on academic probation (Cumulative GPA below 2.0) for multiple semesters as long as they are paying. In a similar vein some state schools (CA most recently IIRC) are increasing their numbers of out of state student enrollment, because they can charge them more, thus excluding in-state students.
conorhall @8:
I actually had a discussion with a guest at my bar about this a few days ago. I’d remarked to him that I really shouldn’t have quit going to college back in ’97 bc at least with a degree, it might have been a bit easier to find a job earlier this year when I was unemployed for 4 months. He mentioned that a degree wouldn’t necessarily have helped, and that learning a trade might be something I should look into.
Course I’ve not the first clue what type of trade to explore or how to find out what I’d be interested in.
That’s fantastic news. I had no idea any such thing was in the pipeline.
I live on SSI and have had my college loans discharged (so I cannot make more than about 15,000 a year for the next two years unless I want my loans reinstated), but at some point I may be in the condition to return to school. This would help immensely since I was thinking a certificate program is more my style and the community college nearby offers a lot of certificate programs. The problem though, republicans will likely squash this whole thing. I have little hope this will actually happen, but I’d love to eat my own words.
@5 marilove
I apologize that I use what is apparently a derogatory term. Back in the day, that’s what we called ourselves. I also seem to fail at subtext.
I would like you to re-read what I said. I was commenting that we could saved a lot of money by not prosecuting and jailing people for ridiculous reasons. The money spent on the failed drug war alone would pay for four years of education.
I can read. I read what you said. I agree with what you otherwise said. But “druggies” is a terrible, dehumanizing term. I don’t care what you called yourself. This isn’t about you.
It’s amazing how much resistance I’ve already heard about this today, especially since it is all from liberals. The belief that if people get their education paid for them they won’t value it enough to do anything. Another one is sure this will lead to intensive state control in the form of No Child Left Behind over the people who teach in community colleges (I think we’re already headed in that direction if we don’t put on the brakes pretty quick).
gussnarp@19
I have had similar experiences as a student and seen it as a teacher at CC’s and Universities. In my experience it is either because the person does not like to teach or they have not been properly trained. Getting an MS or PhD may allow you to teach in higher education, but very few graduate degree programs will incorporate the necessary training for teaching.
marilove @ #25
Absolutely. “Druggie” is on the same line as “junkie” or “dope fiend”; something a strict conservative dad would use. I can’t image pot smokers from any era referring to themselves as a “druggie”.
Personally, I prefer the term “Marijuana Enthusiast”, but that’s just me.
BeyondUnderstanding @ 28
Yeah. That seemed suspect. Really suspect. For the record, I grew up in the middle of nowhere Arizona and have had many interactions with people who use/used meth regularly (including family members). None of them called themselves “druggies”.
I think this is a fabulous idea. What amazes me is how little it costs – as a proportion of the US government budget it’s tiny. But as an investment in people I think it will overperform.
I am not going to justify the use of the word druggie, but I have used this term to refer to myself in the past and as have other pot smoking friends of mine. It is usually, however, used in the sarcastic sense.
Not only is that a massive insult to everyone’s intelligence, including their own – it’s empirically wrong. There are whole countries where university is free for students.
That I can sort of imagine happening in the US, where No Child’s Behind Left is already a thing…
I’m not so sure 4-year colleges need to be reciving public assistance now when we don’t even properly fund our primary and secondary schools. Cart/horse.
It’s not just the influx – it’s the loss of the lower levels from students who will just transfer in as juniors. Esp. in sciences, the upper level classes are a hell of a lot more expensive than the lower division (senior level classes use more expensive equipment than intro), and if this assistance is restricted to community colleges, it cuts the moneymaker classes right out from under us.
Plus, community colleges get their funding primarily from the county they’re in – it’s the 4-years that get funding from the state and subject to those politics. So, for example, you end up with community colleges that have smartboards in every classroom, while the 4 year university down the road is struggling to get basic projectors in every room. The whole system needs overhauled.
You could provide free university for any USan who wanted it, if you’d just put a wee tax on financial speculations. A tenth of a per cent would do it.
Won’t happen til after Pitchfork Day, I’m sure, but it’s nice to dream.
I started college in a CC for financial reasons and went on to BS, Ph.D. at a top U.S. school, and I am now a science prof at a public university, with tenure, grants, patents, and grad students. The local CC has made an enormous difference in the lives of many of my relatives (mom, dad, brother, aunt, cousin, spouse). In many ways, the impact of CC’s is much greater than the U.S. 4-year public university system. Several education experts I have talked to have confirmed this–a renowned UK education expert was meeting with the US-NSF and was asked what was the best aspect or crowning achievement of the US system, and he answered that it was the CC system (the audience was expecting him to say “Research 1” public universities).
great idea but it has no realistic chance of advancing at all and everyone knows it. Until we make a decision to pay real money for what makes a highly functional and successful society to include an economy that gives positive benefits to all the people we will do nothing it will be grid lock perpetuity.
(see #18)
If anyone thinks in this political climate that we could legalize weed and the tax income from it could pay for education I would like them to go a examine the history of legalized lotteries and how that money has benefited education.
uncle frogy
unclefrogy @ 37:
Based on the history of extending public education in the past, in particular the rise of the public high school that took place in the first half of the 20th century, it’s not a stretch to imagine free community colleges. We’ve already got a widespread system of community colleges in place throughout the U.S. that are supported by state governments and have a fairly affordable tuition, which is why it wouldn’t take that much more money to make them free, if not compulsory as the current K-12 system is.
Yup. Absolutely according to schedule. Republicans take over Congress, Obama begins to actually start pushing for vaguely left-ish goals. He couldn’t do stuff like this six years ago, when the Democrats were in charge, because reasons.
gshelley
Republicans haven’t got principles. They’ll object because Democrats proposed it.
conorhall @8
I think that’s easy to say for people who’s parents and grandparents went to college, and for whom going to college was more of an expectation than a decision. I’d be curious how people who are the first in their families to attend college feel about that statement.
On why this is a big fucking deal, as Joe Biden would put it:
Yes, Free Community College Is Major, But Not Just For The Reason You Think
In a nutshell, it places a formal requirement on the states to pay for public education past K-12, unlike the situation now where states have discretion in how much they support higher education, which is the biggest reason why tuition rates have skyrocketed over the past 30 years.
David Wilford that may well be true and I would support it and I would go further to include as far as support all education to include advanced degrees as well but no one really has any expectations that it will happen any time soon. While a noble proposition it may be, in this climate it is purely a political gesture that may be aimed at the next general election. A way to set off the primary differences in policies between the right wing and the rest of the country. It is no more a serious proposal then the single payer option was for the “Obama Care” and will be dropped at the slightest squeal from the right.
uncle frogy
I saw a statistic (forget where) that showed the ROI of investing in education is somewhere in the range of 25 to 1! If it’s even close to that, maybe they could convince the congress critters with the Rs by their name based on that.
That is, of course, after they’ve been talked down from their ‘it’s another plot by the ebil commune-anarchist-mooslim-kabal’ schtick…..
Suddenly, Cuba détente, immigration reform, universal community college…
…what the hell. I thought the Republicans won last November, but somehow amidst the carnage of the midterms we seem to have elected a Democratic President.
Check out this article from ThinkProgress:
If only.
I second the suspicion about the timing of this. Gee thanks Obama for not trying any of these things in any of the 6 out of 8 years when there was a reasonable chance of it succeeding.
Folks should keep in mind that the USA national government has been pretty much entirely captured by the 1% to the exclusion of the interests of everyone else. If this happens then you can rest assured that the economic elites find it to be in their interests.
@46 SallyStrange,
I’ve started to hope that at some point our economic overlords will consider that those of us at the bottom of the heap would sure like to buy more of their goods and services if we had the money to do so.
Having a huge underclass that doesn’t have the disposable income to meaningfully participate in the economy can’t be good for the fatcats in the longrun can it?
‘Captured’?
When did they ever lose control of it?
conorhall
Conservatives are very bad at thinking in the long run. So, in the main, are the rich (for that matter, no subgroup of humanity is really all that good at long term thinking, but those subsets are notably worse than most). Rich conservatives are about the worst there is at it that I’ve ever seen.
True, they’ve never exactly LOST control of the government, but it’s also a fact that in the past 30 – 40 years there has been a steady trend of divergence between the actual interests of the electorate (as measured by opinion polls) and the actions taken by the legislators purporting to represent them, and this is a direct result of interference in electoral processes by the 1% and their flunkies.
Tony at 21,
I’ve had the same kind of thoughts. I’ve even taken some aptitude or interest tests and they were… not so helpful. With the rise of the maker movement you may be able to find workshops where you could try your hand at something and then if it really trips your trigger you can look for instruction in that field.
For the building trades you can always volunteer at Habitats for Humanity and get a little taste of many different specialties.
@50, SallyStrange:
Well, duh. FDR, all the way back in the ’30s, admitted that the Democratic Party was there to do the minimum necessary to keep the people from rising in revolt against the very rich. As the population has been less likely to rise in revolt, that minimum becomes smaller and smaller, to the point where it becomes purely rhetorical — such as making promises they know they won’t keep. The Democrats exist precisely to fool enough of the people, enough of the time, and keep an alternative which actually would take up popular causes from gaining traction. That’s really the reason for Democratic hostility towards the Green party, when all is said and done — the Greens are a bit too plausible, they hold office in other countries and actually want to discuss important issues, and so they must be destroyed in the name of keeping us wretched enough to hate things, but not quite wretched enough to do anything productive.
Thus Obama gives us periodic doses of rhetoric — but only when it is certain that he will be unable to follow through. At the one point where it looked dangerously as though the Democrats might be forced to take action, they deliberately steered into a boondoggle (health insurance) which had already failed multiple times before, and scuttled any actual reform for reasons which do not pass muster. Fortunately, after that the
bad copsRepublicans took a majority of one house of Congress, so they’ve been able to blame everything on that ever since.I went to community college, and I found it to be useful, as I never would have graduated from the awesome university that I graduated from without having first attended a CC. I have no idea how Obama will pull this off, but it’s nice, at least in principle.
SallyStrange @ 50:
It may be worth noting that opinion polls have, in the last 30 to 40 years, been made far more representative than they previously were. The key component have been attempts to eliminate skew in polling techniques towards the more affluent, for most of that period assisted by technological development and the increased availability of tech. That’s something the current technical shift (towards mobile phones and Internet use) is again making somewhat more difficult.
But, yeah, it’s quite interesting how the old elites – financial and aristocratic, largely – managed to get hold of the reins again between 1970 and 1980. That’s almost across the entire “first world”, not just in the U.S., which is intriguing. But it’s pretty easy to understand from the perspective that the people who own politics no longer see a need to make concessions in order to avoid bloody revolution, as The Vicar points out above.
FYI, I went through high school in Madison WI in the late ’70s. My friends and I all smoked an impressive amount of pot, and we all referred to ourselves and one another as “druggies”. It’s what we were. We did drugs and we enjoyed it. Few of us were into anything beyond pot, hash, opium, or shrooms. A few of my friends occasionally did acid or various pills, but most of us preferred “organic”. It was the “other” drug aficionados at school who preferred synthetics whom we referred to as “graters”, “greasers”, or “burners”, which we considered a pejorative.
cactusren
As one such person, it’s still a huge fucking deal and such privileged statements piss me the fuck off. Of course, it’s not the ladder of upward mobility that it was because now you need a degree to fight for such jobs that the poor used to be able to get. It makes me think “Awww, welcome to a slice of our world, you get it easier and take our jobs then complain how much they suck. Go fuck yourself.” and “Oh, you say you don’t need a degree now but because of you fuckers, practically every employer wants one, lists it in ads, and put you ahead of us. You’re taking for granted the leg up you have on our backs and fucking complaining about it. Go fuck yourself.”
It is still a big goddamn deal for those invisible on the bottom. It’s just now we need it to compete for the same fucking job instead of trying to move farther upwards with the rest of society. Try not fucking getting an education without the fucking contacts and transportation and all the rest of your privileged shit then fucking complain to me about college being useless, you asshole. Fucking stupid middle fucking class bullshit.
/rant
JAL
I hear you.
but I think that ‘the middle class’ does not exist any more.
or there are very, very few
@ Jal, 56
Thanks for the reality check, I know I struggle at awareness of my own privilege.
I just don’t want to see people getting mired in student loan debt that they can’t service, especially if they would have been better off learning to weld or do plumbing etc.
I don’t want college to be useless and I hope it isn’t. I’m basically worried that minorities have seen the privileged benefit from college for decades and are still being sold on an american dream that they might not be able to benefit from themselves. I hope I’m wrong and as I alluded to above I’m fully prepared to work on checking my privilege and understanding my failure of analysis.
chigau
And what there is of it is only slightly less fucked by the ‘need’* for a degree for anything but the most menial of jobs, what with steadily rising tuition and usurious (and permanent; can’t get rid of them even if you’re bankrupt )student loans. JAL and conorhall are both right: a degree doesn’t go as far as it used to, and people who can’t afford college or even more fucked than they used to be.
* 99% of these jobs don’t need any such thing, of course, but hiring agents want to der one anyway for some asshole reason.
Chigau at 59,
Thanks for the attempt to connect my position with Jal’s. I was kind of surprised by their response but it’s understandable after a moment’s reflection.
I am pretty confident that the other middle class folks like me are going to be okay. I’m more concerned that the people at the bottom will wind up getting screwed over. But Jal is someone who’s living it and if they say it’s still a good deal I can accept that at face value.
@59, Dalillama, Schmott Guy
I have seen, in practice, three reasons for requiring a degree, none of them legitimate:
1. The business has an HR department which has far too much spare time on its hands (as most HR departments do), and which demands that all hiring go through HR rather than be handled by the people who will actually work with/be in charge of the new hire. The HR department demands that the boss specify “what we’re looking for”, and turns her list of “things which would be nice in case we ever need the new hire to do something else” into “things every applicant must have or we will toss their resume into the trash immediately”. Since HR has no clue what the rest of the business actually does, they will see no incongruity between the not-really-requirements and the actual function of the job. (This is also where incredibly long lists of job requirements which are bafflingly unrelated to the actual job come from; the boss said “it would be nice if the applicant could do more than just the X we’re going to hire them for in the short term, such as Y and Z and W” and HR posts “must have experience with X, Y, Z, and W”… and the applicants turn out to be a lot of weasels who padded their resumes with experience they don’t actually have, because anyone who actually has experience with X, Y, Z, and W isn’t going to be looking for work, and would laugh in your face if you offered them the salary in question.)
2. The employer is a bigot of some kind who is hoping to have an excuse not to hire any of “them”, which can involve race or gender or class background, and since education is theoretically available to anyone, requiring it permits exclusion without legal liability.
3. The employer knows from recent experience that every job posting will get sixteen million applications, doesn’t have the time/energy to winnow through them all, and is willing to use absolutely any method to cut down on the number. Requiring a college degree will (they hope) reduce the numbers somewhat, particularly if the job pays poorly.
JAL: Snark, Sarcasm & Bitterness @56:
Thanks. That’s more or less what I thought when I read conorhall’s comment. But I didn’t have relevant personal experience or data on the subject, so I was somewhat uncomfortable countering the comment myself. Sorry if I seemed like an asshole passing that off to someone else.
And I definitely agree with Dalilama, Schmott Guy: “JAL and conorhall are both right: a degree doesn’t go as far as it used to, and people who can’t afford college or even more fucked than they used to be.” I’d argue that to some degree this is due to the weakening of unions, which used to provide support and training for many trades. Now if you want to learn a trade you need to pay for an associates degree. So in that respect, this proposal could help (though so could allowing unions their previous roles). Maybe I’ll bring that up as an alternative when conservatives balk at covering the cost of students going to community college ;)
For all of the why didn’t he do it sooner folks, Obama had a functional Democratic House and a filibuster proof Senate for less than a year. Remember there was a fair bit of hinkiness that delayed Franken entering the Senate among other things and by his second year he had lost control of the House and Republicans had the filibuster in the Senate. In the short time he had he managed a fair bit, including the first big step towards universal health care since the 70s.
I do wish he had pushed immigration reform earlier. If he had it could have energized the base and we might not have had as bad a result as we did in the last election. The move towards normalizing relations with Cuba is huge and several decades overdue. I’m hoping his last two years will set up 2016 for big Dem gains. We will have some strong structural advantages going into the Senate race. There are a lot of R Senators coming up that were elected in the 2010 R midterm wave election that won in solid Dem strongholds. Republican stances on social issues are starting to get some of the scorn they deserve. Here’s hoping that not too much damage is done in the next two years and 2016 is good to us.
A four year degree isn’t the guaranteed stepping stone it used to be, but it does give a lot more options than not having one. As has been mentioned it is used as a sorting mechanism. When things become more democratic and more people are able to earn that education and move themselves through that filter, the filter becomes less valuable for the people that have passed through it. Contrary to the opinion of many who had the privilege of passing through that filter before it became more democratic, that is a good thing.
It isn’t less valuable, as some of them would have you believe, because it does a poorer job of preparing the people that gain it. It is less valuable merely because it is less exclusive. Now the people that were virtually guaranteed to have that privilege and thus a strong advantage in finding work have to compete with people that couldn’t have gained that privilege previously due to accident of birth. That is a good thing, a very good thing.
Obama has been one of the most ineffectual (in all definitions of the word) presidents I’ve seen in my lifetime, so for him to actually do something productive surprises me. I’ve been an advocate of this idea for a long time.
A century ago, high school education was made free and mandatory for all children. At that time, a high school education was sufficient for a person to have a successful career. Many businesses still offered paid apprenticeships. People could actually work and learn on the job and rise to the top, could earn sufficient income to have a family.
That doesn’t exist anymore. As others have pointed out, almost every decent paying entry level job requires some level of post-secondary education. Making two years of community college free is simply returning educational opportunities to where they were a hundred years ago.
A bonus of such a plan is that student loans for further education can be tied to grades and other performance factors. If a person signs up for and takes two years of free college education, their effort as a student can be used to determine if they deserve loans to complete their degrees. People who take it as a free ride won’t get loans, while people who have high GPAs or decent grades while (for example) working their way through college could be seen as a good risk. And with half the credits of a BA or BSc already down, students would only have to take half as much in loans to complete a degree.
Two free years of college means less student loan debt, a more educated country and workforce, more taxable income by said graduates (and by employers, if Obama had had the spine to let Bush’s tax breaks expire) to pay for future students. Everybody wins.
This is excellent but as they say, if con is the opposite of pro, the opposite of progress is Congress. Hopefully this will survive.
One thing they need to do in conjunction with this is some workforce shaping through incentives. As artificial Intelligence technologies continue to improve, many of the jobs we think of as skilled labor will be taken over by computers. If we don’t want massive disruptions in terms of employment in 10 years, we need to start now in providing the skills needed to either develop/support these technologies or be less likely to be replaced by them.
The thing that kills me about the money they’re talking about is all we need to do to fund the whole project is for 1 member of the Walton family to pay the actual tax on their yearly income and boom, it’s paid for. Nobody has to lose anything, except for a point 0 something on a bank account in the Caymans.
chigau (違 ,う)
It is shrinking yes, but those people even if the middle class disappeared tomorrow, will still have middle class mentality and privileges they’ll bring while slipping down and crushing us.
—————
That’s what I fucking said:
(I know you’re not saying I didn’t say that, but with the way the comments are going about it, it feels like people are sticking with “JAL said it matters but conorhall said it didn’t” and ignoring that the fact it doesn’t go as far was important to my entire comment as well.)
And my rant, which was a response to the question and to
conorhall
Bolding mine and I could’ve bolded a fuck lot more to illustrate the privileged whining. Thanks so much for your approval of allowing people to get a free TWO YEAR DEGREE and complaining more people will have an education making it harder for your and your children to fucking compete when you’re competing for typically poor people jobs that the only ones we can fucking get.
(Not trying to beat a dead horse, just quoting what I should’ve quoted for context behind my rant and as an fyi.)
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conorhall
First, you’re welcome. Second, your worrying comes off as very condescending. There’s still a benefit beyond saying you’re the first in your family to go to college (which does still matter to a lot of people after being denied opportunities and their very humanity by society) because college grads still make more than those with less education and have a lower unemployment rate. No one trusts a high school diploma or G.E.D, that won’t get you anywhere anymore. (That system totally needs fixing as well and for the record I’d rather have all education free but that’s not happening now so…) But knowing you can get to college offers an opportunity to make more and the fact it’s through community college is a good thing because the lowest end students can go through those to get bachelor’s degrees with Pell Grants and come out with little to no loans. The first two years being free if this goes through will help them out even more.
Basically, you’re so privileged your liberal worries are privileged. The people affected by what you’re concerned over are still the privileged. The people who are disillusioned with getting a degree and being screwed, are well, people like you.
Minority college graduates DO have a harder time getting employed (though still better than those without) but that’s not because the degree is worthless, it’s because society is fucking racist and all those precious snowflakes everyone’s wringing their hands over get the jobs first. (There’s stats in there for STEM fields as well, which ties into the other thread.)
If you really want to worry about the oppressed, worry about that and work on the minimum wage, high school dropout rates, social safety nets, public transportation and making it easier to get to college after all those hurdles (like this bill) and the hurdles that pop up when entering the college world built around the privileged. Worrying minorities believe in the American Dream when they’ve been used as fodder for others to progress it just seems silly and patronizing. Remember white flight? Even when they make it, they can’t really make it. The barriers are moved like goal posts. Not getting a degree or saying they shouldn’t get one does them far more harm than good. In fact, doing that would just give the white middle class more fucking cushion by piling on bodies beneath them.
JAL
You did, and sorry for not mentioning it; I was posting from my phone at work and kind of in a hurry (getting ready for work now, or I’d elaborate further). For the record, I am in favor of educating everyone at public extent to the degree of their ability and desire, in addition to all the other measures you mentioned that would help. Also seconding everything you’re saying @ 68 there.
@#65
How do you figure? Even if all he had accomplished was making sure the PPACA was passed that would make him more productive than Clinton and both Bushes. Beyond that he saved the American auto industry and the retirement of the autoworkers. He dismantled the Minerals Management Service, cutting out a key energy industry lever of power in government. He unilaterally increased the minimum wage paid to federally contracted workers. He banned lobbyist gifts to anyone in the executive branch. He helped usher through and signed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. He ended “don’t ask, don’t tell”. He extended benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees. He nominated the first openly transgendered person to a cabinet level position. He ordered a change in HUD rules to prohibit gender and sexual orientation-based discrimination in housing. He signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. He issued an order requiring hospitals to allow visitation by same-sex couples. I could go on, but you should get the point. The Republicans have their undies in a knot about the ”imperial presidency” because Obama has managed to get some needed things done despite their obstruction. Moving closer to normal relations with Cuba and further immigration enforcement changes are welcome additions to that list.
@Grewgills,
So, what you’re saying is that he’s the most radical president ever? ;-)
Frankly it’s just a wonder he accomplished anything given the obstruction he has faced.
Just read a really good take on the Obama discussion: Thomas Frank at Salon. Teal deer says: “Obama didn’t do more progressive stuff because he didn’t want to.”
http://www.salon.com/2015/01/11/its_not_just_fox_news_how_liberal_apologists_torpedoed_change_helped_make_the_democrats_safe_for_wall_street/
@ck 71
He’s the most radical liberal president in my lifetime. Of course that is very faint praise. The only choices there are Carter, Clinton, and him. Carter was very ineffective and evangelical. Clinton was very centrist and both DOMA and don’t ask, don’t tell were on his watch. That leaves Obama and the list above. Of course LBJ has them all beat by a country mile, but he left office before I was born.
Grewgills
Don’t forget how B. Clinton fucked up welfare, the fucking asshole, unfortunately I doubt Obama (or the next pres, especially not H. Clinton if she’s elected) will be fixing that shit.
@70, Grewgills:
1. He used the ACA as an excuse not to do anything else — like punishing the banks (which had massive, unswerving support, and still does).
2. Obama was, personally, responsible for making sure the ACA had no public option (it was admitted by his aides after the thing passed that he went around to all the Congress members who were talking about that and ordered or bargained with them to get them to shut up about it. He was also responsible for making sure nobody mentioned single-payer at all, ever.
3. The ACA’s negative effects, in the form of guaranteeing the (out-of-control, extraordinarily corrupt) insurance industry a 20% profit more or less forever, will far outweigh the benefits in even the medium-term.
4. Obama was also the motive force in constantly weakening the few positive things in the ACA in the name of trying to attract Republican votes, and never once did he say, as any smart person who was negotiating in good faith would have done, “well, if nothing will make you vote for it anyway, we might as well push this as far away from you as possible, right?”
5. Nor did he give the ACA any real boosts through speeches to the public, a grave oversight considering his most-touted skill is oratory. Why, it’s almost like he didn’t really care about it at all.
Debatable whether or not that would have happened without him.
…while championing “clean coal”, which doesn’t exist, and helping the coal and natural gas industries continue to dominate policy.
…a tribal thing, the same way DHS is a Republican tribal thing.
With no statistics on enforcement, yet, your celebration may be premature.
He dragged his feet on all of that for as long as he could, refusing (for example) to issue orders to the armed forces to stop DADT, as he was entitled to do as CIC, and in general refusing to take any active role in making any of it happen. Even though the position was demographically safe, he didn’t give it any active support — nor does he actively support other majority-supported reforms, like legalizing marijuana (laughed openly at the idea during the runup to the election).
And I could go on citing much more powerful examples of Obama being regressive — and probably keep going longer than you could. He has continued the drone bombing program even though the CIA, who began it, has admitted that the targeting is largely random and the effect is to create more terrorists. He has continued George W. Bush’s nasty little “signing statement” system, designed to cast doubts on whether the executive branch is subject to the laws being passed. He has stepped up deportation of immigrants. He has prosecuted more journalists under the Espionage Act (you know, the ridiculous thing from World War One?) than any other president. He continues to prosecute whistleblowers to an insane, evil extent — Chelsey Manning is doing more time than all of the people who committed the crimes she revealed, put together. He continues to have his legal team push to prevent anyone from even having the standing to challenge things like Gitmo or the NSA’s spying programs.
@75
1) cite
2) cite,
Keep in mind he only had filibuster proof majority in the Senate for about 7 months and said majority included some very conservative Democrats that had to be bought off. You are expecting things that couldn’t have been delivered by anyone. The president isn’t magical.
NOBODY was willing to extend the auto companies credit, NOBODY. If it wasn’t the Feds they auto industry would have gone under. If you think President McCain or President Romney would have done it you are kidding yourself. I doubt President Clinton would have either, but the might have. She would not have undone DOMA or don’t ask don’t tell though. I don’t know who you think the magical politician is that can force the congress to do his left wing will is, but he doesn’t exist. Obama is a charismatic, but rather conflict averse and very moderate Democrat. We aren’t going to see a real ™ liberal getting elected president for a while. Thankfully we won’t be seeing a real ™ conservative winning that slot either.
Grewgills, “better than the Republican he ran against” is not praise for a Democratic president.
Seriously, it isn’.
And you don’t know what Congress would have done in response to Obama had used his bully pulpit, because he didn’t use it.
@Esteleth
Which Democrat that had any chance of winning would have done better? Realistic answer please.
@Esteleth
Also note above I compare him favorably to the two most recent Democrats that preceded him. You have to go back at least to Johnson to find a president that did more for the downtrodden and Vietnam was a pretty big black eye for him.
Grewgills, opinion polls indicate that a sizable percentage of the country is to the left of Obama, and if you carefully step around Republican buzzwords a majority are. The failure of the Democratic party to do anything about this is a failure of imagination and lack of guts. Genuine leftists who might actually have a chance are told to sit down and shut up in the name of “electablity,” and the party nominates milquetoasts.
@Esteleth
1) Your argument is the flip side of the Republican no true conservative argument that hard right tea party types put up to explain the losses of McCain and Romney. It simply doesn’t work out in the real world how people on the fringes think it should or would.
2) What does a sizable percentage mean?
3) Do you have a cite for your claim that this “sizable percentage” is the to the left of Obama?
4) There are certainly specific issues on which the public is to the left of implemented policies, more background checks for guns and abortion rights spring to mind, but that isn’t the same as what you said. Also keep in mind the make up of the House and Senate matter. There is only so much that can be done when the House is as skewed as it is. The Democrats could, I guess, gerrymander California and New York as bad as Texas from the other side to try to make up for the bad actors in Texas. We could move to multirepresentative districts in the House so the minority party in all districts has a chance at a voice, diluting the effects of gerrymandering. Democrats could do a better job of mobilizing voters in off year elections. We could move more state races to coincide with national races to boost turnout and weaken the Republican advantage in turnout. All of that would face stiff opposition and isn’t likely to happen anytime soon. Simply throwing up a further left candidate and expecting your desired outcome is akin to wishing for a unicorn though.
Grewgills @ 78:
John Edwards was marginally more progressive but he didn’t support single-payer either. IMO, if single-payer had been that big an issue with voters, Dennis Kucinich would have been more than a cipher back in 2008, despite his other drawbacks as a candidate. Those who keep on insisting that things would have been magically better if only Obama had Green Lanterned the Bully Pulpit aren’t aware of just how many veto points there are in the U.S. system of government. It’s one thing to have 60 Democrats in the Senate, but when that number includes the likes of Joe Lieberman it’s clear that you can’t bully pulpit them into voting for what you want.
Caitie Cat @ 72:
Thomas Frank’s take on Obama is seriously flawed, as Scott Lemieux can tell you:
Real, Hard-Headed Political Analysis Pretends That the United States Congress Doesn’t Exist
Brogressives like Frank are just bloviating when they insist that Obama. Didn’t. Even. Try! Having followed politics since 1968 myself, Obama has done well given the Congress he had to deal with.
@Grewgills/David Wilford:
The whole “but… but… the ACA couldn’t have been any better because reasons” thing, which I notice both of you continue to trot out, is a red herring. As was the ACA itself.
In the 2008 elections, everyone knew the Republicans had broken the economy, and everyone hated the banks for what they had done. Polls were showing 90+% support for jailing the bankers, breaking up the banks, bailing out mortgagees, and regulating the whole mess. Even Fox News was talking it up, and even now, those ideas tend to poll in 70+% range. That’s an opportunity which it was insane not to pick up; there are no issues which have that kind of public agreement (Obama began his “support” of gay marriage at 57%, to give you some idea) and everyone and his brother was expecting Obama to start beating the drum for Congress to get off its collective butt and do something. If he had done so, then opposing him on that would have been political suicide. The Republicans would have had to knuckle under or self-destruct. And that would have absolutely cemented Obama’s reputation with the populace and given him political clout beyond the dreams of Huey Long.
Instead, Obama focused on health insurance reform — an issue which had already been raised and which had failed within memory — and refused to discuss anything else, while quietly putting former too-big-to-fail bankers like Geithner into as many official positions as possible, and refusing to get any of the legal team held by the executive branch to investigate any banks. He also did exercise as much diplomacy as he could — to get the banks bailed out. His mortgage bailout program, on the other hand, turned out to be so poorly-conceived that most holders of underwater mortgages were ineligible for any assistance, and those who were often ended up getting bureaucratic runaround until their eligibility expired. (The banks got their money right away, of course.)
As for talking as though I am in favor of Hillary Clinton — you are a fool of the first water if you believe that. Obama and Clinton are basically the same person, politically, with minor differences which would make little to no difference “on the ground”. Frankly, the Democrats have moved so far to the right in my lifetime that they will not get any more support from me if they nominate another Obama/Clinton right-of-center clown. Which means — thanks to assistance from tribal apologists like you — they won’t be getting any more support from me. I don’t care whether you think voting for Greens and Independents is “throwing my vote away” — voting for a candidate who stands for things I actively disagree with (as the Democrats now nearly always do) would be throwing my vote away, so what does it matter?
As for “what magical candidate do you think could work”? That’s not my responsibility. That’s the Democratic Party’s responsibility. Do you go to someone who had an account with a bank which failed because of embezzlement and said “well, who do you think the bank should have made CEO? You should just shut up unless you have a better idea!” That’s not how it works; the institution which wants our support or business has to offer something in return, and the Democrats no longer do. It’s not “first we give our unconditional support, and then the Democrats maybe nominate some decent people”, that would be unbelievably stupid, and yet it’s what you want everyone to do. Go walk off a cliff.
@Vicar 84
Do you understand how the House and Senate work? Do you understand that the Democrats only had a filibusterproof majority in the Senate for about 7 months and that majority included people like Lieberman and Nelson? If you think something better could have gotten through the Senate I have a unicorn ranch to sell you.
Punishing bankers, like increased gun safety checks are high approval low intensity issues, that is many people agree(d), but very few will change their votes based on those issues. There was nowhere near enough support in the House and Senate to get it done.
If you can’t see the difference between a centrist Democrat like Obama and any Republican then you are blind.
The Vicar @ 84:
Dude, you’re the one dealing in red herrings. “Jailing the bankers”? Excuse me, but some of them were, after they were convicted of an actual crime. The rest, well, they were guilty all right, but only guilty of losing money. That may be criminally stupid, but it’s not criminal.
As for health care reform, it was a big issue during the 2008 campaign and was always going to be a priority. The fact that the Democrats in 2009 not only managed to deal with the stimulus package and health care reform in the face of implacable Republican opposition is to their credit, and Obama deserves his share of that. Saving General Motors also was a big fucking deal by the way, not to mention the Cash for Clunkers program that gave U.S. automakers a much needed boost at a critical time.
The bank bailout wasn’t a pure bailout by the way either. It was a loan from the Fed that was eventually repaid. I’ll agree with you about the homeowner mortgage bailout being unsuccessful, but the reason for that was the fact that most of those homeowners were too far underwater on their mortgage for a simple lowering of their interest rate to help them afford their home.
Now, if you want to find a Green Lantern candidate to run for President, hey, maybe Nader will give it a go again in 2016 and you can go cast your pouty pity purity vote for him. Otherwise, quit yer self-serving attention whoring whining already. Ha, as if that’ll ever happen…