Time to subsidize 100% college educations for public universities. ...

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4. I support partial subsidies

I think that I would rather have the states more fully fund their universities and technical schools so that they could charge lower tuition.

I also believe in more needs-based grants to students and broader use of merit scholarships. I think the increasing cost of tuition and the decreasing utility of college are reaching the point where a lot of prospective students will decide that they will be better off going straight to work rather than going to college.

As a college professor, I am quite concerned about the future of our state colleges. I have another 8-10 years before retirement but I sometimes wonder if I will be able to make it that long. We have overall declining enrollments and a shift in enrollment toward online courses, which tend to be shorter in length and less rigorous than regular semester-long face-to-face courses. I don't really want to be part of that. While I believe that state colleges should find ways to serve our population, I don't believe that online programs are really the best answer, especially when our regular students opt for the online version of the course because it's shorter and easier and doesn't require them to actually actively participate in a class.