Education Should be Free

Can you give a good nutrition course if most of the campus is sponsored by McDonalds and Pepsi?

Is the medical curriculum the same when Pfizer, Eli Lilly, etc. are active sponsors?

@Pookie,

I agree that there are some problems with sponsors.

*Knowledge* is free, education isn't. You just need an internet connection to wikipedia. Now, if you want special "tutoring" and an actual person to present the material in an interesting and motivational way (and all the other cool things we do as teachers), then you're going to have to pay me (or at least pay the government who pays me).

How about if just the testing was free, or lets call it accreditation?

@Eric,

Or - you could do it the other way, education is free but you pay for the tests.

Well, here in Argentina public education is free. All levels from elementary school (primaria), high school (segundaria) and college (Universidad, the title is called licenciatura and it's somewhere between a bachellor degree and a masters degree). Even most people that goes to grad school to get a PHD doesn't have to pay (if you got good marks)

In high level education (college and up) most of the money comes from taxes, but also some of it comes from donations (that is a problem, because sometimes there can be interest conflicts between the company making the donation and the University investigation) or services provided by the University.

As Francisco points out, education is or has been free (as in beer) in several countries via the taxation route. When I did my undergraduate degree in the UK, there were no tuition costs and there was still a minuscule remnant of the grant system which covered an exceedingly tiny portion of my living expenses. When my mother went to university in the 1960's, essentially all costs were paid for by the government. This system proved unsustainable once the government realized that a good way of artificially lowering unemployment figures was to shove everyone into university for a few years, regardless of ability or desire to learn. Now we have tuition fees and student loans and the resulting debt has the unfortunate effect of making the students even more vocation focused than they were before.

However, this is not the same sense of free as used in the term "free software". For that, you would need to give students access to the "source code" of education and permission to modify it. I don't know what that would mean, but students putting together their own syllabuses from freely available material might have something to do with it.

Most developed countries have public universities with free or very low tuition. What's wrong with using tax money to enhance public welfare?

See The Myth of Europe's High Taxes

Anyway, as you say, free internet text/video + paid exams (with optional tutoring) is likely the future.

I wish the NSF or someone would produce a series of high-quality college-level science/math videos. In the video lectures from universities, it's often hard to see the blackboard and it's often kinda boring.

How about good old state tax-supported sponsorship?

Disclaimer: higher education is free in my country.

Only in the US it seems, do we think the cost of eduction through taxes is too great. Of course, then you couldn't spend all that money on fancy new bombers.

Think of this: the price of 2 (two) B2 bombers would finance the U Wisconsin at Madison for a year. (~$2 billion). We have 100 of the things. We can't do with 98?

The price of one month of the Iraq war would pay for the entire University of California system for a year. (~$22 billion)

The money spent on a single soldier in Iraq for a year ($390K) would pay the salaries of 8 (eight) teachers in NYC for a the same period. The month-long cost of the war would be the entire city budget. So a couple of weeks ought to cover schools.

I can't think of a place where more money and lives get wasted than that. We build billions in stuff (like, say, airplanes) for the sole purpose of blowing them up. I mean, that's what has to happen to it -- or you use it up and it sits in the desert.

I just find it completely baffling.

@calcdave

Access to materials required for gaining knowledge isn't free either. As a self study student it is frustrating how closed the science journals are. If you happen to be paying for university you can get access to these things through the school. Sure you can physically go to the university libraries without being a student, but when you have to commute an hour and a half each way to get to a good one, it is quite clear that there are many ways that access to information is not free, even in this day and age where there is a perception that information is free. I wouldn't call wikipedia a good source of in depth content.

I was very fortunate to go through the UK's universities before the introduction of tuition & fees and loans on a full grant. I am certain that upfront fees and loans would have prevented me from reaching my potential which would have been both a personal loss and also reduced my economic output. The whole point of the fully funded grant system was that the grants given to students would be recouped through the taxation system over their working lives as it was anticipated that graduates would have higher incomes & hence produce higher tax revenue. This model becomes less workable when the graduates have greater global mobility and hence can take the free education and then emigrate to a lower tax environment, this brain-drain from the UK certainly increased during the 1980's.

There is plenty of educational resources out there for free. Just see http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm for all the courses that MIT have placed on-line. This is a great way to learn about a topic but nothing can really compare tuition groups or discussing the finer points of your course over a few beers.

yes education should be free. but its a fact that knowledge is free but education is not.

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hi frend,thanx for taking a step to do what you are just about to do for me,help sponsor me in my education in any way you can,my heart and hands are open for you.Susan

How about good old state tax-supported sponsorship?

Disclaimer: higher education is free in my country.

POOP

maybe its because we are all pore as helll!! bob out

im pore i dont no how tu spel! because educations not free