Edwards proposes expansion of his "College for Everyone" program nationwide

[mnhtnbb]

SNOW HILL - Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards returned to his small-town roots Friday to announce an $8 billion effort to make college education more affordable and accessible for students who are willing to work part time.

Based on a pilot program at Greene Central High School, which serves a rural area in Eastern North Carolina, Edwards said his effort would make college opportunities more broadly available.

<snip>

In 2005, Edwards initiated a privately funded "College for Everyone" program that covers the cost of tuition, fees and books at a public college for one year. In exchange, students must work at least 10 hours a week while in college, take college preparatory courses in high school and stay out of trouble.

The program has increased the rate of students from Greene Central High --which has a 62 percent minority population -- going to college from 54 percent to 74 percent.

For the full article:


available.http://www.newsobserver.com/102/story/573372.html

[mnhtnbb]

1. More about the price tag for programs Edwards is proposing

on this thread

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x3260915

[1932]

4. Anyone not willing to make this investment in America's future is either shortsighted

or totally blinded by right wing propaganda.

[draft_mario_cuomo]

7. We have a $2.9 trillion budget, with $100+ billion going to Iraq

Another half a trillion goes to the bloated defense budget. We have the wealth available. With a combination of ending the war, raising taxes on those making over $200,000 a year, and making common sense cuts to the military budget (we are spending more on defense now in real terms than at anytime since the Korean war. That is insane with the demise of the USSR.) we can reduce the deficit and invest and grow at the same time. Now is not the time for more band-aids and Republican-lite half measures. Let us be Democrats again.

[pnwmom]

2. Just as long as people don't think that he can make college-relevant jobs

available to everyone. Because they're being shipped off to India.

[mnhtnbb]

3. At least hands on health care jobs, teaching jobs, can't be shipped

and we're going to need lots of teachers and health care workers in the next decade.

[musette_sf]

12. but is college just the new "Vo-Tech High"?

i'm not only bothered by the high cost of college these days, but also bothered by the idea of college as simply a technical training center.

i believe that a large part of the intellectual depth to which Americans seem to have sunk in recent years, is the fading of the concept of the Life Of The Mind. college education these days seems to be all about being employable in work that is just marginally more than menial, and pays somewhat more than menial work.

there are so many factors that contribute to this, not the least of those being that the majority of decent serf jobs still available in this country have degree "requirements" that basically signify this: you were able to sit in the chair for four years and could somehow pay for it; you filled out all the paperwork correctly and didn't color outside the lines; therefore you are more trustworthy for what amounts to an entry-level job. and if you have several "certifications" (more chair sitting and paperwork), you can even get an entry-level technical job.

i see no room any more for the lovely Life Of The Mind, where the Humanities were more important than the technical courses and of course, the collegiate sports. Skills, passing tests and circuses suffice, instead of philosophy, analysis, and discussion. and then we wonder why the media is a vast wasteland of liars lying to the lowest common denominator.

[mnhtnbb]

16. This can be a chicken and the egg argument. The current Bushie

boy administration is a perfect example. No room for facts that don't fit
their desired point of view. If you haven't taken a look at Mark Crispin Miller's youtube commentary, about the schools that are training
theocrats to infiltrate our government, it's worth the time.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x28021

[midnight]

29. You are partly right about the need for hands on job, but

they have cornered the market on keeping those jobs low paying via importing workers in from the Philippines. Teachers at the College level have lots of T.A. from other foreign countries too. I imagine this latest bill going through congress as I write this will have some more of the same mechanics for giving our hands on jobs to people being shipped in from lesser paying countries.

[1932]

5. The education system in India is part of the reason these jobs are going there

and making sure that higher education in the US isn't just a way to get a heavy debt load is critically important for the future of the middle class and democracy in the US.

[mnhtnbb]

6. Babara Ehrenreich has been instrumental in starting a white collar union

with help from the SEIU


White-Collar Workers Unite
Barbara Ehrenreich received a grant from SEIU (Service Employees International Union) to start United Professionals (UP), whose mission is to “protect and preserve the American middle class…”

<snip>

UP’s mission is simple: “to protect and preserve the American middle class, now under attack from so many directions.” Specifically, the group is organizing two related yet disparate types of workers: recent college graduates and middle-aged workforce veterans. “It is important to align the two groups ,” says Tamara Draut, a UP Advisory Board member and the author of Strapped: Why America’s 20- and 30-Somethings Can’t Get Ahead. “Pitting the generations against each other like we often do isn’t an effective way to organize, given that many things would benefit both groups.”

for the full article

http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2938/

[pnwmom]

17. The jobs are going there because they speak English and work for less.

Not because their colleges are better than ours.

[1932]

18. How'd they get so many people educated well enough to take these jobs?

By educating a lot of people.

[pnwmom]

19. The jobs are moving there because the pay scales are lower.

Not because we don't have enough well educated people.

[1932]

20. China does it better than India, but India's doing it too -- educating your citizens

builds a middle class.

China is graduating way more engineers and scientists than the US, so, in that case, there aren't enough well-educated people in the US to stay competitive with them.

India only educates half its citizens, but they do a pretty good job with the ones they educate. Because their economy was battered by colonialism for years, they have a lower pay scale right now, but they have a lot of well-educated people and India's committment to building up an educated middle class is one of the several reasons they're able to compete with the US.

The US does need to continue to educated people and educate them well (and do it in a way that is not designed to make wall street wealthy and the middle class heavily in debt) so that we have any hope of keeping our democracy and staying competitve with the rest of the world.

[pnwmom]

22. Yes, we need to continue to educate people. But anyone in engineering

or science knows that the "shortages" are way over-stated. Rather than retrain older employees, who are at higher pay scales, many companies would rather hire new graduates just out of college or send jobs overseas.

China is graduating "way more engineers and scientists" than the US? True. They also have a population base much greater than ours. That doesn't mean we don't have enough well-educated people in the US to compete. But it may mean that we don't have enough well-educated people willing to work for Chinese-level salaries.

As far as India is concerned, as their pay scales go up, fewer overseas jobs will go there. This trend of moving jobs, where possible, to the lowest bidder is already happening around the world.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

27. Yeah. We're too educated and too skilled and too expensive.

Nobody wants us. We're on the scrap heap.

Boy am I glad I spent 12 years in grade school and 12 years in college earning THREE degrees so I would be a valuable employee. That's a quarter of a century I spent in school continuously.

Jobs. There ain't no jobs for smart people. It's a fucking farce.

[pnwmom]

23. Ninety percent of India's students drop out before reaching high school.

We don't need to emulate their system.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/13/business/yourmoney/13stream.html

According to India’s Department of School Education and Literacy, 90 percent of the country’s children enroll in school, but after five years in class around 50 percent of the students fail basic reading tests and are unable to perform single-digit subtraction. Ninety percent of Indian children drop out before they reach high school.

[1932]

24. I made that point above.

They have some great schools in India. They're trying to educate a lot of people, and if they didn't, they would not be writing software and doing the rest of the things they do.

China does this even better (100% literacy, almost, I believe). It's how they're lifting up their economies.

Meanwhile, in the US, we're trending in the opposite direction.

[dave_p]

8. Widen it. Education for all

A massive investment in effective distance learning would go even further toward expanding access. Improving technology means that its time has come, and there should be a major effort to make it a real cornerstone of education.

I'm puzzled by the work requirement: does that include unpaid work? And how does imposing such a requirement on disadvantaged students offer them the equal access that social justice demands, when the better-off are under no such obligation?

[mnhtnbb]

9. I'm not bothered by the work requirement of 10 hrs/week while

in college. Lots of students work at least that--some a lot more-- because
they don't have programs like this to help them.

[dave_p]

10. Understood

... that's what bugged me - it seems a pretty pointless requirement.

Maybe it's to weed out people who don't need it or have dubious earnings. OK, I can live with it. But I think it should include voluntary work.

[electron_blue]

13. Would you put a cap on the hours worked?

I see many students floundering because they are working 40 hours/week plus are a full-time student plus have a family, etc... A recipe for disaster for most students.

[mnhtnbb]

15. That's why this program is so worthwhile for these kids. It's often

impossible to make enough money to pay for school. Even in NC, where we have a state legislated mandate to keep higher education affordable, the fees for the state schools are getting out of reach for a lot of people.

[eridani]

11. Kucinich has proposed free college tuition to all qualified people

--funding it with a 10% cut in the Pentagon budget. Glad to see that Edwards is taking a leaf out of his book.

[mnhtnbb]

14. Edwards hasn't just PROPOSED this program; he put together money

to make it happen in this one small county in NC.

I think Edwards knows that we have a lot of resources in this country which can be used for something other than war.

[Czolgosz]

25. Yet another key issue where Edwards and Kucinich are driving the debate; time for Obama to weigh in!

[tomreedtoon]

21. My bugaboo; controlling costs.

Costs for everything in colleges have soared. It's the same problem as trying national health care; unless there's cost control in the entire chain, it'll be a boondoggle.

One of the biggest killers for a friend of mine, who's trying to earn her teaching credentials, are textbooks. The publishing, marketing and sales of textbooks are the most corrupt industry since liquor sales during Prohibition. I've had to buy some of her textbooks used off amazon.com, because the bookstore prices would break her and her cancer-ridden husband.

But there's graft in the entire chain, such as the insecure dorms where rape and theft is commmon, to the free pass given football players (who make a fortune for big colleges) and corporate sales on college campuses. (I just about choked when I saw a McDonald's on campus instead of a cafeteria serving semi-real food.) Pumping government money into this crappy system without an overhaul will be fatal.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

26. I'm strongly opposed to making students work while in college.

Some universities explicitly forbid, or at least strongly discourage, students from working in term-time.

The government ought to ensure that all students who meet the academic standards can afford to go to university, regardless of how rich their parents are.

[w4rma]

28. Perfection or nothing? (nt)

[Donald Ian Rankin]

32. It's a thin-end-of-a-wedge issue.

Once you've set the precedent that state funding for students from poor families to attend universities is contingent on them working, it will be very hard to reverse it.

In general, I'm all in favour of gradualism and taking something rather than nothing. In this case, though, there's a realistically-attainable better goal that will be hampered by this halfway step. I think.

[mnhtnbb]

30. In Utopia, yes. In the US? Not likely. Ten hours/week is quite reasonable.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

31. I would hardly call the UK Utopia.

There's nothing Utopian about decent student grants and college bursaries.

Ten hours a week is more than enough to impact negatively on studies, especially in subjects with a higher workload.