Free Public Universities
2 comments
Free Public Universities means more people with academic degrees. More people with degrees means tougher job descriptions' requirements and lower pay.
I can't afford uni but I hope they won't make the mistakes other countries, like France, had done.
Check out how it works in other countries that have both publicly funded and private education.
The losers here would not be the elite private institutions, which will always have high demand and did even 50 years ago when public higher education was sufficiently subsidized that almost anyone could afford it with a summer job.
(Many of those institutions are already offering free tuition to lower and middle income students anyway. And they’re all incorporated as nonprofit entities.)
The losers would be the low quality for-profit degree mills that advertise on the subway and radio and charge students ridiculous tuition for degrees that won’t help them get ahead.
The losers here would not be the elite private institutions, which will always have high demand and did even 50 years ago when public higher education was sufficiently subsidized that almost anyone could afford it with a summer job.
(Many of those institutions are already offering free tuition to lower and middle income students anyway. And they’re all incorporated as nonprofit entities.)
The losers would be the low quality for-profit degree mills that advertise on the subway and radio and charge students ridiculous tuition for degrees that won’t help them get ahead.
So will the private university administrations be neutral or even favorable to this policy ?
The for profit ones mainly target students who couldn’t get into public universities. The elite ones target students who use public universities as backup. I think some of those students (particularly non wealthy students) will switch to making the elite universities the backup, contingent on the financial aid package. And I think that will have atleast some effect on administrative budgets. The elite universities maybe non profit, but in practice they are run more like hedge funds.
It students are willing to pay $20k more / year for private and public cost goes down by 20k, the private ones will be less competitive unless they also reduce their tuition proportionately. No ?
The for profit ones mainly target students who couldn’t get into public universities. The elite ones target students who use public universities as backup. I think some of those students (particularly non wealthy students) will switch to making the elite universities the backup, contingent on the financial aid package. And I think that will have atleast some effect on administrative budgets. The elite universities maybe non profit, but in practice they are run more like hedge funds.
It students are willing to pay $20k more / year for private and public cost goes down by 20k, the private ones will be less competitive unless they also reduce their tuition proportionately. No ?
The elite ones will probably be neutral to favorable. Certainly there will be a lot of individual administrators who feel strongly about education and want to make it accessible to more people.
I doubt competition will hurt the private ones that much. They already have orders of magnitude more qualified applicants than they can accept, and are making very difficult decisions to turn a lot of them away whom they'd love to have.
I doubt competition will hurt the private ones that much. They already have orders of magnitude more qualified applicants than they can accept, and are making very difficult decisions to turn a lot of them away whom they'd love to have.
The end can't come soon enough for institutions like Sweetbriar and Paine, that happily take students on and let them continue until they can't pay any longer.
It’s kind of similar to public free healthcare. Fee for service entities / insurance companies will suffer a downward pressure on business... but somehow the private universities seem politically separated from private insurance companies...