zlacker

I'm all for making education more accessible, but why does it have to be one extreme or the other (free or tuition) - if taxpayers are making education free, can't we levy a requirement for the graduate to at least volunteer Peace Corps style? Perhaps the term of volunteering could be inversely proportional to their grade such that someone who drops out early has to volunteer for a longer period of time.

>>steven+(OP)
Then it's not free. Opportunity cost is real.

I don't ask my kid to volunteer because he got a chicken pox vaccine, he just gets to not have chicken pox for free. And that's ok.

We can choose to make the next generations lives better than ours, even if we gain no material benefit ourselves. (Though I'd argue that an educated youth does materially benefit the populace.)

>>steven+(OP)
Do you plan to ask this of everyone who goes through K-12?

>>steven+(OP)
It's not volunteering if you are forced to do it.

>>pawelm+fx
Agreed. From the JFK mindset of “Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country”, I could see a system where a certain level of volunteering (either by the students or their surrogates - parents, grandparents, siblings, friends, etc) might make one eligible for discounted/free tuition.

>>hollan+N4
My comment was targeted at a tertiary education post. That being said, some of my children went to an expensive private K-12 school where the tuition HAD to be supplemented with volunteering at the school (or elsewhere). I felt it was a valuable lesson for all involved. Nothing is free.

>>nxx788+G4
Nothing is free. It is estimated that state and local governments spend 9 percent of state and local direct general spending on higher education [1]. One could argue that the opportunity cost of higher education to taxpayers is 9% of their work life.

[1] https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiative...