Would be great to see this become a wider trend and college education for all deserving students become free. In that scenario, if a student who met the financial criteria still needed to pay for their education, it would be a strong and clear signal that they were in the wrong lane - the college and/or the selected course of study was not the right fit. A reasonable person could then re-think their options and go a different direction.
This is not too far from the model of what I experienced during my high school and college years in India. There were two ways to get to finish line - defined by a medical or engineering degree. You either pressure-cooked for four years, and went through an inhumanely competitive process to get into a government college which was heavily subsidized - this was one option. The other one was for parents to fund admission to a private institution. Needless to say the first was considered the more "prestigious" and "legitimate" option and the second was not. The reality is a bit more complex. In the India scale of things, the competition is such that only a microscopic percent of the qualified pool got make it to a government college.
All who failed to make it were not necessarily undeserving. In the worst of all worlds (which is not so uncommon) the kid failed to make the cut and the parents were not able to pay for private college. That is when things went in directions no one was quite prepared for. I have to say that in my generation those kids who were forced into non-engineering, non-medical colleges often ended up having very good outcomes in the long run because the fundamentals were strong and they still went to some kind of government college. I can see this filter working way more effectively in America given the higher availability of colleges and less competition per available spot. By removing money from the mix a majority of students should have a reasonable shot at landing where they should belong.
Comments