5 Comments on Wouldn’t It Be Better If Obama Took A Step Ahead And Socialized Higher Education?

baldone on Fri, 25th Dec 2009 11:15 am


Higher education is already “socialized so why bother?

WP Autoblogging Plugin on Fri, 25th Dec 2009 4:21 pm


We already have government grants and loans to pay for school. There are already too many people using them not to work and loaf around in school taking up space. We need more apprenticeships, not more free education. What other countries do cannot be done here because we have different rights, responsibilities and expectations under our laws. We have both private and public colleges and it has to stay that way.

Brian on Fri, 25th Dec 2009 5:51 pm


No, more people who have no business going to college would attend and costs would skyrocket..

Free Wordpress Plugins on Fri, 25th Dec 2009 6:52 pm


uhh – we don’t really want or need a country filled with lawyers. kthxbai.

sciwhiz on Sat, 26th Dec 2009 12:40 am


Jason, I’d like you to do some research on socialized education. Trust me, if anyone should support socialized education it’s me. I’ve got $120,000 in student loans for a B.S. I got out of state. I graduated Magna *** Laude from a Research I University with 50,000 students. Despite my grades, there were no scholarships for me, no matter how many I applied for. There were no grants for me. There were only loans.
But here are my arguments against socialized education:
1. In countries like France and Germany, where everyone gets free education, there is no ‘going back to school’ to switch careers. You get one shot to figure out your career for life.
2. It will raise our taxes. Education is never free. We are still paying for it.
3. Since everyone gets an education, schools would never need to compete for students. Lack of competition always produces poor quality products – in this case, college graduates.
4. Socialized education leads to uniformity in teaching across the country because that’s easier for bureaucrats to handle. This promotes collectivist thinking instead of individualist thinking. It stunts new ideas, new theories, and discussion. It creates schools of one kind instead of many schools of many different kinds (i.e. liberal arts education, anyone?). And it leaves a lot of room for the ‘collectivist’ vision (i.e. government) to slither into the classroom.
5. This already exists in our school systems today, but socializing education even further would promote the idea that every child is equal, of the same intelligence, deserving of the same education. This sounds good on paper, because Americans like the word ‘equality’. But children are not equal when it comes to education. They do not all deserve the same exact education. This is not equality – it is tyranny. In reality, ‘equal’ education only serves to punish those less intelligent (by placing them in a class that runs at a pace they cannot keep with) and to stunt those more intelligent (by placing them in a class that moves to slow). Children deserve an education that is right for them, not one that tries to fit them into a government-designed mold.
6. Education should not be defined or forced by educators or government. It should be decided upon by parents and defined by experts in fields of study. What does a science teacher truly know about physics when it comes to deciding the most important topics? What does a politician truly know about physics when setting national standards? I’m not trying to be rude to teachers (especially since I used to be one), but a person who has taught physics for 20 years has not been actively involved in the study of physics. Therefore, they do not know what have been the important advances in that field of study in recent years. They simply teach physics – they do not ‘do’ physics. They do not have the knowledge base to decide what needs to be taught. Physicists do.
7. Why are private schools so expensive? They are expensive because there is no market for them. Since there is public education available people simply take the free public education. Note that this means people do not care about the quality of the education – they only care if it’s free. Imagine how prices would drop if all education was privatized. Schools would want to create a quality product (i.e. an education) in order to compete in the market. And we all know that the company/school that offers the best product at the cheapest cost wins. You may be laughing at me right now, but think about technology and Apple. Think about when the ipod first came out and how expensive it was. Only a few people could afford it. But then everyone wanted an iPod because the product was of such high quality. This caused the price of the iPod to drop – even while the technology of the iPod was getting better and better with each version. The same would be true in free-market education.
Everything about our current education system (i.e. the socialized system) stifles competition, merit, and ambition. And the American people are getting a raw deal because of it.

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