Education

BigRedBuster said:
I still will not support a minimum wage of this type.  There are way too many variables.  Do you have the same minimum wage for an engineer living in Minden Nebraska compared to New York City?

I agree with the bolded.

This idea is one that sounds great....but, in reality, it would be a disaster.
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To answer the question, no, an engineer in Minden would have a different rate than one in NY. 

Every type of job would have a base rate and geographic areas would have an adjustment for cost of living etc. But like I said, theoretically I think it could work but in the real world.....doesn't stand a chance of not getting effed up.

There is something like this now for construction jobs on certain state and federal projects. Have you heard of Davis-Bacon pay scales? Certain projects have their own minimum wages tied to the specific job classification.

 
JJ Husker said:
Problem is, if we make college free and most everybody gets a degree, then companies will just implement some other hurdle to weed out the undesirables. If it's free, it's not worth anything.
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People still have to be accepted and graduate, and as has been mentioned, there could be a limit on how many years they have to do so, otherwise they have to start paying. The degrees wouldn’t suddenly be handed out to everyone. They just wouldn’t cost $.

I don’t think the hiring of graduates has much to do with how much the degree cost them.

 
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Moiraine said:
People still have to be accepted and graduate, and as has been mentioned, there could be a limit on how many years they have to do so, otherwise they have to start paying. The degrees wouldn’t suddenly be handed out to everyone. They just wouldn’t cost $.

I don’t think the hiring of graduates has much to do with how much the degree cost them.
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Do we start paying athletes then?  :D   Sorry for the tangent comment.

The more I think about it, I'm not sure free is the way to go.  I'd like to go back to something like this:

https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2014/aug/08/facebook-posts/1978-someone-minimum-wage-could-earn-enough-summer/

Starting on Jan. 1, 1978, the minimum wage was $2.65. Someone working at the minimum wage for 13 weeks, and 40 hours per week, in the summer of 1978 would have ended up with $1,378 for their labors.

For the tuition they would have faced in the 1978-79 school year, we turned to figures from the National Center for Education Statistics, the federal government’s repository of education data.

The cost of tuition and fees (in that year’s dollars, not adjusted for inflation) was $688 for in-state residents attending a four-year, public university.
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You could work the summer only and afford to go to school debt free (minus books/tuition) you could then scale down during the school year to part time to hours and afford books/tuition and graduate debt free.   And of course if you go out of state, it would be a jump in tuition.

This way, a student still has some skin in the game, as has been brought up, would still have to academically qualify, etc etc.   It would still place value on the degree and not burden society as a whole.    Using 1978 percentages, that would mean, in today's world the average cost per year for tuition and fees for in-state residents attending a 4-year university would be just shy of $1,850.   I would love to figure out a way to get close to that...maybe $5000 yr

 
sho said:
Do we start paying athletes then?  :D   Sorry for the tangent comment.

The more I think about it, I'm not sure free is the way to go.  I'd like to go back to something like this:

https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2014/aug/08/facebook-posts/1978-someone-minimum-wage-could-earn-enough-summer/

You could work the summer only and afford to go to school debt free (minus books/tuition) you could then scale down during the school year to part time to hours and afford books/tuition and graduate debt free.   And of course if you go out of state, it would be a jump in tuition.

This way, a student still has some skin in the game, as has been brought up, would still have to academically qualify, etc etc.   It would still place value on the degree and not burden society as a whole.    Using 1978 percentages, that would mean, in today's world the average cost per year for tuition and fees for in-state residents attending a 4-year university would be just shy of $1,850.   I would love to figure out a way to get close to that...maybe $5000 yr
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This is where I'm at. Not free tuition, but a reduction to make it more feasible for students to attend

 
Landlord said:
I like this in theory a lot but there's no way it could work. There are too many jobs that employers need to have some kind of shortcut towards understanding competency (which is what a degree is) that couldn't possibly pay that amount of money.

Like, it's important for a school to know that a 2nd grade teacher knows how to do their job correctly. But it'd be insane for most 2nd grade teachers to make eighty grand.
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I little bit of a tangent - but is it really insane for a teacher to earn $80K?  Obviously there is a regional component here, but I'd argue that his profession is highly underpaid, and it could be easily debated that without a solid education starting early kids never make it to the point of choosing college or trade school.  

  • National teacher starting salary avg at $38k and teaching overall avg is $58k.  Keep in mind to get to that $58k you are looking at 20 and 30 year tenured teachers, many who have had to invest in additional education to get that money.  Without a masters and more in the way of additional education you can get nowhere.
  • Poverty level for a family of 4 in the US is $25-$33k.  

https://www.niche.com/blog/teacher-salaries-in-america/

And this shocked me, I always assumed private school was where it was at for more opportunity ...

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I'm all for making it cheaper to attend college. It's frikken ridiculous as is. But I'm not convinced free is the way to go either. I'll be really pissed if I have to pay what I'm paying now for my daughter only to be stuck with a higher tax bill later so others can go for free. So don't ever count on my support for that. It may be selfish and short-sighted but that's the way it is.

 
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BigRedBuster said:
How do we pay for this?
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I’m on my phone so it’s hard to do much research. But a couple nuggets I found.

The tuition Sanders wants to fund is $70 billion and he stated in 2017 he wants the fed gov. to pay 2/3 and states 1/3.

Last year pell grants totaled $28.2 billion. That brings it down to $41.8 billion that we aren’t already spending.

I keep seeing that Trump’s tax cuts will cost us $1.3 trillion over 10 years. I don’t recall the source of the report or if it takes into account trickle down. Let’s call it $1 trillion.

That’s $100 billion per year. Also, what @RedDenver said.

We can afford it, we just don’t want to do it. We spend $ on things that are a lot less important than education and give huge tax cuts to the uber wealthy. It just sounds crazy because we’ve never done it, imo.

 
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Well then the place to start is to get some of that money out of the military and straighten out the tax code BEFORE we start spending more money that isn't currently being funded. It's pretty naive to simply say the defense budget increased X dollars so we can also spend Y dollars on higher education. It don't work that way. If you want to spend those dollars on something else then ya gotta figure out how to quit spending them on the other.

 
JJ Husker said:
Well then the place to start is to get some of that money out of the military and straighten out the tax code BEFORE we start spending more money that isn't currently being funded. It's pretty naive to simply say the defense budget increased X dollars so we can also spend Y dollars on higher education. It don't work that way. If you want to spend those dollars on something else then ya gotta figure out how to quit spending them on the other.
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That's not actually true. Where did the money for the defense budget come from? Or the tax cut? Congress signed a bill and the money gets paid. (It does however increase the deficit to spend more than what's being taken in in taxes.)

 
NM11046 said:
I little bit of a tangent - but is it really insane for a teacher to earn $80K?
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In a utopia, no, not at all. In the country we live in with the state of the infrastructure of education and our spending and resource allocation, yes, that is entirely insane :lol:  

JJ Husker said:
It's pretty naive to simply say the defense budget increased X dollars so we can also spend Y dollars on higher education. It don't work that way.
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I mean, sadly, it does work that way. It has worked that way for a long while now.

 
There are teachers making north of $80000 in Nebraska right now.

Granted, they will most likely be eligible to retire soon and sponsor/coach multiple teams or clubs, and have a Master's Degree and at least the equivalent hours of a second Masters...  

 
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funhusker said:
There are teachers making north of $80000 in Nebraska right now.

Granted, they will most likely be eligible to retire soon and sponsor/coach multiple teams or clubs, and have a Master's Degree and at least the equivalent hours of a second Masters...  
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I'd be interested to see the teacher pay scale for the school that pays $80k a year as proof of this claim. Most schools only give $1-4k annually for Master's Degrees, and maybe $1-2k for coaching. 

I ask because my wife is an educator, and we looked all over Nebraska for high-paying teaching jobs, and outside of Lincoln, Omaha, and Kearney, there weren't any comparable to her current pay, let alone scales that pay out $80k (or even close to $70k to go with your assertion) annually to teachers. 

 
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VectorVictor said:
I'd be interested to see the teacher pay scale for the school that pays $80k a year as proof of this claim. Most schools only give $1-4k annually for Master's Degrees, and maybe $1-2k for coaching. 

I ask because my wife is an educator, and we looked all over Nebraska for high-paying teaching jobs, and outside of Lincoln, Omaha, and Kearney, there weren't any comparable to her current pay, let alone scales that pay out $80k (or even close to $70k to go with your assertion) annually to teachers. 
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https://www.nsea.org/sites/default/files/content_images/Collective_Bargaining/18PAGEall.pdf

Education is along the top and experience down the left.  Look at the figures to the bottom/right on the chart.  This is "max' salary and doesn't include clubs.  I am a head 7th grade football coach and assistant MS wrestling and make about $3600 off of those two 8 week sports; and I'm nowhere near the lower right of the chart yet :)

 
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