{"id":6724,"date":"2013-09-17T07:43:49","date_gmt":"2013-09-17T11:43:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shermandorn.com\/wordpress\/?p=6724"},"modified":"2013-09-19T08:27:53","modified_gmt":"2013-09-19T12:27:53","slug":"general-education-courses-and-barriers-to-entry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/?p=6724","title":{"rendered":"General-education courses and barriers to entry"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few days ago I made a number of suggestions for state higher education policy<\/a>, the first of which was for state legislators to pay the costs of general-education courses that students currently pay in tuition and fees, at least at community colleges.<\/p>\n

This morning, Matt Reed writes that he is concerned<\/a> about two consequences of what I proposed. One is that covering instructional costs does not touch the non-instructional costs of general education. The other is that having some part of the curriculum be free to students creates distortions inside an institution and will lead to perverse incentives.<\/p>\n

First, I appreciate having my ideas being read and taken seriously. In my book, there is no higher form of flattery than a serious critique. And it shows that I made an error in describing what I was thinking, though Reed’s point about distorting what happens inside a community college is correct, because I\u00a0was<\/em> trying to propose something that changed behavior.<\/p>\n

So, to the error I made: the mechanism would be in the form of the state paying the tuition\/fees for those courses. The tuition\/fee structure would not change, but the funds would come in the form of state aid on behalf of the students. Does that matter? Consider Reed’s fear:<\/p>\n

As with the proposal last week to make community colleges free, I\u2019d expect to see some serious misgivings at the state level as soon as they figure out that they\u2019re essentially replacing federal money — in the form of financial aid — with state money. It would be lovely to assume a dollar for dollar match and then some, but lots of things would be lovely to assume. And I maintain my view that becoming more dependent on state finances would prove catastrophic when the next recession hits. Which it will.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Reed is assuming that the political dynamic in a state legislature would be resentment at paying student costs. I think the political dynamic would be different, that it is hard for a state legislature to pull back from a financial-aid program that is broad and generates its own constituency. The Florida legislature has been unable to find the will to end its merit-aid program, Bright Futures, because its constituency is broad. Instead, the legislature has tightened up the requirements and capped the award amount, despite the huge expenses of the program. A program to pay the tuition\/fees for general-education courses at community colleges would be significant but would also create broad support.<\/p>\n

And if a state legislature decides to back off that commitment at some future point? Then we’re back to where we are today, but probably no worse for wear.<\/p>\n

But Reed is fundamentally correct that making general-education courses free to students would change what happens inside community colleges. That’s the whole point: reduce the barriers to entry for potential students, make it easier to stay in college at an incremental level. Reed made that very point<\/a> just last Tuesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few days ago I made a number of suggestions for state higher education policy, the first of which was for state legislators to pay the costs of general-education courses that students currently pay in tuition and fees, at least at community colleges. This morning, Matt Reed writes that he is concerned about two consequences […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education-policy","category-higher-education"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pag0MB-1Ks","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6724"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6724\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6730,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6724\/revisions\/6730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shermandorn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}