I would like to see free college for all in the USA. Free college in all public universities, including the best. Free college along with the expectation that most will go to college, much as we have that expectation for High School today.
College should not be understood as job training, but as general education, "liberal arts" education to help train people to think and become self-educating, to become familiar with the arts and sciences of their civilization as they actually are, and not filtered through a private slant. The word is complicated enough that schooling should continue to the 16th grade because people need that much education and they need to reach that age before education stops. And industry is productive enough that we can get by without people in that age range having to work. Having them not work also helps maintain good wages for labor. There should not be workers for every possible job, but only enough workers to do what most needs to be done, and needs doing enough to command a high wage without question (even though there is never any guarantee that any wages will ever come close to the social value of work, and they especially don't for lower paying work, because wages are not set by a mythical free market but by conservative traditions).
But as long as college is not free, there should be no expectation that everyone should attend college, AND there should be no stigma or loss of the possibility of having a good career without attending college. And no family should be so poor that kids or young adults of college age are unable to attend college because income is needed from the young adults to sustain the family.
Thus I would sort of agree with the kinds of things that Robert Reich says here, in the world as it exists today. I remember Hedrick Smith making these arguments in the 1980's.
But we should remember that the better solution would be to have free college for all and a far more equal society.
College should not be understood as job training, but as general education, "liberal arts" education to help train people to think and become self-educating, to become familiar with the arts and sciences of their civilization as they actually are, and not filtered through a private slant. The word is complicated enough that schooling should continue to the 16th grade because people need that much education and they need to reach that age before education stops. And industry is productive enough that we can get by without people in that age range having to work. Having them not work also helps maintain good wages for labor. There should not be workers for every possible job, but only enough workers to do what most needs to be done, and needs doing enough to command a high wage without question (even though there is never any guarantee that any wages will ever come close to the social value of work, and they especially don't for lower paying work, because wages are not set by a mythical free market but by conservative traditions).
But as long as college is not free, there should be no expectation that everyone should attend college, AND there should be no stigma or loss of the possibility of having a good career without attending college. And no family should be so poor that kids or young adults of college age are unable to attend college because income is needed from the young adults to sustain the family.
Thus I would sort of agree with the kinds of things that Robert Reich says here, in the world as it exists today. I remember Hedrick Smith making these arguments in the 1980's.
But we should remember that the better solution would be to have free college for all and a far more equal society.
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