Very true. When they say "free," they really should say that they are shifting the cost from the individual to the taxpayer.
Occasionally I wonder why there aren't more schools like the work colleges (Alice Lloyd, Berea, Ozarks, etc.). If these relatively small colleges can make it work, why can't others? Home | Work Colleges Consortium
"CUNY was free for qualifying city students..." Qualifying students. That standard could not today be applied.
This same type of line is always parroted in these types of discussions even though it doesn't really add anything. We've heard it a million times before. We know someone has to pay for it, so what else can we talk about?
New York State income tax is pretty high compared to our neighbors in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. If you live in one of the five boroughs of New York you also pay city income tax. That's a lot of money coming in. Albany drastically cut back on the amount allocated to CUNY. So, what did we all get in return for that cost savings? Did they lower our taxes? Nope. Did they provide us some other valuable service? Nope. We were already paying for the "free" and low cost tuition of CUNY. Taking it away, but still charging us the same (and more) in taxes isn't really a public service. CUNY schools are excellent and quite pricey for out-of-state students. That's handy because some of them, like Hunter College and Baruch, attract some pretty significant foreign students. Baruch had a few Saudi princes pass through its doors. The Saudi Princes can afford the pricey tuition. The people who cannot, the people who benefit the most from the low tuition, are the low income residents of New York who, every year, get pushed further and further from the city center as affordable housing gets gobbled up by developers eager to provide a newly created gentrified community. Hell's Kitchen was once working class. Then the developers re-branded it as "Clinton" and it became a trendy place for hedge fund managers to live. Now the only working class people living there are live-in help. So yeah, someone does have to pay for that reduced tuition. We do. And we've been paying it for many, many years. And we rather resent the fact that it is being taken away by the likes of Cuomo while our taxes continue to climb. Meanwhile you get turds like Martin Shkreli who took advantage of that cheap tuition but can afford to hire a team of accountants to ensure he pays a smaller percentage of his income to taxes than the people who work in his apartment building who likely have to live in the outer boroughs or New Jersey.
We can talk about how they are going to pay for it and if taxpayers are willing to pay for it. Saying that someone has to pay for it is a given. We already know that nothing is really "free." Repeating over and over again that nothing is free is just arguing semantics. The tuition will be free for those attending, but their parents probably paid taxes. They, themselves, probably paid taxes. They definitely will pay taxes in the future for others to attend college. People all over the country have already voted to heavily subsidized community colleges. Now, the focus is on how much people are willing to pay and how much they want to subsidize CCs.
Very true, in essence everyone has been paid for by someone else done the line somewhere. Everyone has received help some way or another. If someone says they have made it through life with no help what so ever, they are wrong, plain and simple. I would rather have my tax dollars pay for things like this than for fucking over the top corporate welfare.
Given that false dichotomy, so would I. But when so much political power is centralized, it will inevitably end up being bought by the highest bidder, and that's going to be the likes of Goldman Sachs, not students in late adolescence.
In most states, most of the cost of a public education is provided "free" by taxpayers already. I tell students who complain about what they consider to be tough grading that's going to cause them to go on academic probation or be suspended for a year, "Look, part of my job is to run those of you trying to extend the party from high school for a year or two out the door, because while you think you're paying for your education, in this state tuition covers about one-third of it, the taxpayers cover the rest, and every day lazy butts stay here is a waste of taxpayer dollars." Sounds harsh, but that's what I tell them. Bet that most states are around that 1/3 tuition, 2/3 taxpayer funding as well. So all CUNY would be doing is making taxpayers cover that last third.
Sure the parents pay taxes, but they're paying a small sliver of the benefit they're receiving, the burden's upon all taxpayers in the state, including the majority who do not have children attending a public university at any given time. That said, in theory everyone gets the benefit of a better-educated population, whether directly or through being cared for by well-trained nurses who hopefully know the difference between 50ml and .50ml, having local engineers who design bridges that don't collapse, having 401K plans with mutual funds invested in corporations led by executives with good ethical training and accountants who know their debits from their credits.
CUNY receives money from both the State and City of New York though the bankrupt State portion has been decreasing. The majority of CUNY students do not now pay tuition.
It's a bit like the argument that I hear from senior citizens that they shouldn't have to pay school taxes because they don't have a kid in school. I don't have a kid attending LeMoyne. So it would be weird if LeMoyne sent me a bill for tuition. But the whole funding by taxpayer thing only works if everyone, not just the people immediately using the services, pays. It allows for $1M people to pay $10 rather than 100,000 people paying $100. I could also argue that I don't like my tax dollars being used to repair highways in parts of the state that I never travel to. Why should my tax dollars support the State Police when both my home and my work are covered by municipal and county police departments? The list goes on and on. And, if you go to some third world countries, you find systems where all of the universities are private or, even if public, require tuition payment up-front so that only the wealthy can attend. They also have privately owned and maintained roads and water supplies. In fact, in some countries, literally every public service is a la carte. You only get what you pay for. One of the benefits of living in the first world, however, is that we generally expect the fire department to respond to us even if we haven't paid them an annual fee, we expect the police to enforce the laws without being given "facilitating payments" or "fees" first (maybe not in New Jersey), we expect a vast network of interconnected roadways that are in relatively good shape and we expect reasonably well funded schools to educate our children at no direct cost to the parents. I believe the Philippines only provides free education up to the fourth grade. Us providing it up to the 12th is great. Making university affordable for all is even better. It's really our choice; we can be a highly industrialized nation that invests in its people or we can not.
