General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: "Making the perfect the enemy of the good." [View all]Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)is that this is often framed as "either/or", as if we somehow have to choose-or as if people who support low tuition or tuition-free college don't give a damn about the problems in K-12. To move forward, even the suggestion of that really needs to be put to rest.
Improving K-12 is an absolutely valid goal.
There are a lot of things we could do to free up the funds needed for both university affordability and improved K-12.
And we could tie at least one to debt relief-we could vastly expand the type of program that forgives student loans in exchange for community service(in this case, literacy and STEM tutoring for at-risk students) for a period of time. Expanding that would make a massive difference at little cost-and would free up state and local educational funding for hiring more teachers and upgrading classroom materials and facilities.
We could make additional funds available by finally pushing for significant cuts in the war budget.
The Cold War is over and we no longer need to be either "the world's policeman" or to perpetually be prepared to fight a two-front war or two war at once.
It's not as though our defense policy has to be "bear any burden, fight any foe/the boys'll be home by Christmas" for the rest of eternity.
I asked upthread but will ask again...what do you see as the reasons university costs are high and what would you do about that?