zlacker

>>pessim+(OP)
This idea is not really new - the California Master Plan for Education essentially promised a free higher education to everyone in California. In 1960. [1]

As these things go, the plan was eroded over time, with the (in)famous Proposition 13 of 1978 dealing a big blow.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Master_Plan_for_Hig...

>>xmddmx+Bo
They implemented a great component of those ideas. Seems like cause for at least some celebration, right? :)

>>ajju+Rp
I'm an educator, and a social democrat (approximately) so "yes"?

What saddens me is that grand (and simple) plan "free education for all" gets watered down and chipped away to "free education for those who have money or connections" and later attempts to shore it up offten amount to "free education for $special_group". While I don't deny $special_group should get free education, what gets me is all the special-pleading going on.

In OOM programming terms, it's like we had a universal principle which was easy to implement, and this has now been replaced by a bunch of switch/case statements...

>>xmddmx+ar
I'm approximately a social democrat too, but I'm also a pragmatist. Asking for "free education" is like a child asking for a pony. Education, like everything, costs money, and we can't just wave a magic wand and change that. The only question is who pays for it: the student, or someone else. "Free education" really means education paid for by society at large rather than students. I'm not saying that's a bad idea. It isn't. In fact, it's a really good idea. But I really wish we'd stop calling it something that it's not.

>>lisper+Xs
Of course! Basically everything is paid by somebody (TANSTAAFL). Nobody thinks that free education is magically free, everybody understands that it's paid by taxes/government/society.

OTOH, it is a much cooler slogan than 'education paid by society at large :)

>>okaram+dB
> Nobody thinks that free education is magically free, everybody understands that it's paid by taxes/government/society.

That is far from clear. There are crazy people on the left just like there are crazy people on the right, and I think some of them really don't understand how the world actually works, and that you really can somehow magically make education "free for everyone".

Even if it's not true, it provides ammunition for the opposition to say that it's true. One way or another, I think using misleading terminology is generally not a net win.

>>lisper+MB
Oh come on. Literally no one believes that teacher salaries are going to pay for themselves.

When leftists say that something like public healthcare would be literally free what they mean is that the net cost compared to the alternative is null or negative, not literally that nothing is being spent.

If you want to give me a link of someone who literally thinks that free college means that no one has to pay anything for the college itself or it's staff, I'm willing to take a look. Otherwise, it's just an argument that the net cost to society is negligible or negative, which is a valid use of the word too.