Not2BSubjugated
Callous Individualist
I agree that vocational opportunities should be considered and integrated into our educational system options. Not all, actually, most, jobs are better served with an apprenticeship/journeyman/master type program than the typical US-style college/university meme. Unfortunately, we have allowed ourselves to be sold a bill of goods that emphasizes classical academic education and denigrates a more hands-on, practical approach to job training. Of course, the university setting facilitates the liberal/progressive propagandizing of young people, so the university/college (typical liberal propaganda centers) setting is emphasized. So, eventually, we'll have loads of people using the toilets and lights but no one qualified to install/repair either the plumbing or the electricity.College should be more free than a high school education is. We should actually pay students to go to college. Because though you can expect young adults to live at home when they go to high school, I wouldn't expect them to do the same when they are going to college. If a higher education has value, then it would be a benefit to society in general. Therefore making it worthy of something for the government to subsidize. Instead of expecting students to roll the dice when it comes to finding a job afterward with a huge student debt to pay off. France and Germany have free college education. And no doubt many other countries. The U.S. should too. I bet if this guy was running the U.S., we would have.
I think education is of the utmost importance, but I don't believe that higher education should be free. It should be cost prohibitive if for no other reason than to weed out those who aren't serious or intelligent enough to hack it. And let's face it, most people are too dumb for college. If you said we should add more vocational teaching to our k-12 system, or even that we should have free post-12 vocational schools, I'd be more open to the idea, but the last thing we need is double digit IQ flunkies creating a massive tax burden just to get degrees that are fun or easy enough for them to hack, but don't actually improve their economic value to society. A massive tax investment in bullshit degrees for people working as warehouse lumpers or bank tellers is a HOLY SHIT RETARDED investment.
The propaganda angle makes this whole conversation slightly chilling, in my view. I can't imagine most academics are unaware that most people aren't qualified to hack any subject that requires calculus, so free college for all would eventually represent a massive increase in miscellaneous bullshit degrees (things like Floral Design, Comedy, Pop Culture. . . sadly, there are US universities that offer these majors) and humanities degrees. Essentially, free college, more than anything, will result in a lot of not-quite-college-material types being pumped through social justice indoctrination courses (gender/culture studies), and we'll end up with folks that aren't only equating progressivism with intellectualism, and aren't only dumb enough to believe that life could ever be that simple, but more that have degrees to validate their zealotry.
The optimist in me says free college for all would be stupid because we don't need tax subsidies for PhD's in fly fishing, but in my cynical moments, I wonder if it's not an attempt at some long march, end game type shit.