We've talked about this before, well, here's a quick 3 question/answer post from Inside Higher Ed... I really wonder how this type of a movement (if any movement at all) will pan out... Link: We’re in a Moment: Making Community College Tuition-Free | Higher Ed Policy (insidehighered.com)
There's something funny about college compared to K-12. Most people don't have too much trouble with publicly funded K-12. (Although, to be fair, the voucher people are always trying to bust that up.) But when it comes to college, it is seen as an expense, not an investment. When I was growing up, community college in my state was tuition-free. You paid a registration fee and had to buy books and materials, but no tuition. But after Proposition 13, the state looked for myriad ways to cut back on spending, and community colleges were targeted. (As if they were somehow a frivolous expense!) If you think society is better with strong opportunities for tertiary education, you're in favor of this investment. If not, then not. As readers of this board will recall, I'm in favor of a more targeted approach with the development of a strong national qualifications framework. I'd rather see this than patches like student loan forgiveness (which I still favor, btw) rampant student loans, or free college for everyone. Why not target those expenditures on what this nation needs? (Determined by a partnership between government, tertiary education, and employers. And yes, these structures CAN be designed and built.) I wish I knew someone powerful.
Many states have scholarships and assistance programs such as Cal-grant, TAP, ISAC, etc that basically help with instate college tuition and for some of my sons classmates payed their entire college tuition and expenses. 1. Cal Grants are free money for college, money you don’t have to pay back. Cal Grants are up to $12,630* of free money annually for up to four years of college!!! ------Amount varies depending upon the eligible school that you attend. The Tuition Assistance Program (TAP), New York's largest grant program, helps eligible New York residents attending in-state postsecondary institutions pay for tuition. ------TAP grants are based on the applicant’s and his or her family’s New York State taxable income. The NYS Aid for Part-time Study (APTS) program provides grant assistance for eligible part-time students enrolled in approved undergraduate studies. Scholarship funding in Illinois by ISAC Illinois Student Assistance Commission [email protected]
Or, add 13 & 14 grades as optional and that would be free schooling. Then graduate with an Associate degree. Right now some kids can graduate from high school with a diploma & an Associate degree.
For many years, we here in Ontario had a Grade 13. No degree. It sucked. All you got when you "graduated again" was another High School Diploma, one that said Grade 13. I had one of those. Dated 1960. It was the ONLY ticket to University -- Grade 12 didn't do it, back then. Grade 13 served no other purpose -- although a lot of people took the year, who didn't plan on going to Uni. There weren't any Community Colleges as such, here in those days - until 1967. And when they finally came, Grade 12 was the requirement to get there. Around 2000, Grade 13 was formally abolished and HS grads entered either College or University with Grade 12. Having THAT Grade 13 wasn't a great system, according to this guy Johann, who was processed under it. I like MaceWindu's idea much better. I would have liked it as a HS student, too but NOBODY here had even heard of an Associate's back then. There are still very few of them to be had in this Province. Community Colleges generally award you a diploma and there is most often a "degree path" afterward that would involve a University. Associate degrees are prevalent in Western Canada, a realm which is more advanced than us, in many, many ways. Again - MaceWindu's idea is GREAT!
I graduated in 2008 and we were still hearing from teachers about how the double cohort of Grade 12/Grade 13 graduates was making things tough for graduates. Teachers preferred students graduating at Grade 12 though. For students who needed additional credits to graduate or to gain admission into a specific program you could complete a "victory lap" for at least a semester, but I want to say they changed the rules so that you couldn't do a full year if you had collected enough credits to graduate.
Much later in life, Grade 13 came in handy when I finally went to College - at night in my 40s. The "weekly special" when I enrolled granted me, on-the-spot, 24 out of the 76 credits I needed for a diploma -- for those 25-year-old Grade 13 courses!! When it came to Uni, when I was 50 - I got zero credits for either the Grade 13 or my fairly new College Diploma. I hear the College credit at Uni part is changing, but it was still a pretty glacial and uncertain process here, when I last looked. . YMMV greatly, in other Provinces.
I was retired, and working part-time at a College in that "Year of the Double Cohort." Oh, the wailing and gnashing of teeth from the full-time folks about the "Double Cohort." Sounded to me like a Roman Army thing, from my Latin days... Hysterical, for the most part. I just kept my head down and did my job. I had 30+ years of experience, doing just that. "Just workin' my job.. collecting my pay." - Apologies to Paul Simon.
1. Sitting here in the USA and this entire time I thought the Ontario Province was the most advanced; Ottawa, the GTA. Was mistaken. 2. Thanks!
That's what they tell you. If you move here, then the terrible reality sinks in. Doug Ford. There are even radio ads from Western Canada - "C'mon - move here. You can get a good job here, the pay is better, housing costs are less, you'll be able to afford to live downtown, handy for work etc. etc." The lure is real. There are small islands of sunshine here - e.g. if you're a software developer, you might find something good in Kanata, close to Ottawa. But there's more murky sea than happy islands. On the educational front, I think BC and Alberta are decades ahead of Ont. One of our Universities (Laurentian - Sudbury) just went BANKRUPT. I don't think our Premier likes or values education. He's a CoCo dropout himself. Then again, the situation has been just as bleak under his predecessors. Our member, Dustin can tell you what it's like. Ask him how things went for him, when he moved from GTA to Iowa. Don't think he's moving back in the foreseeable! I'm just about 80 years old. If I wasn't, I'd be answering the "Call to Calgary." Lived in this part of Canada for 70 years. Never seen it so broken down. And the West is beautiful, too. Really beautiful.
My fiancee is from Victoria, BC and it not only has the best weather in Canada, it has all the natural beauty of being both on an island and being in the Pacific Northwest, IMO the most beautiful region of North America. She wants to go home once her kids are all graduated from high school, and I'm happy to do that. If she were from GTA, though... no, not so much. (Housing in British Columbia is really costly, though, so nothing's perfect.)