[Kevin M]

It's been touched on a little in the health care thread, so why not have it out on this one too?

Personally, I see a public high school education as something everyone needs the opportunity to have. It's hard to amount to anything more than a self-sustaining biological organism without one. Without doubt, every citizen/lawful resident deserves the opportunity to at least reach the standard baseline of education to be a useful member of society. I doubt anybody here seriously dislikes public K-12 education. I think private schools should be an option for anybody who wishes to enroll their children in one, but they should not receive a single dollar of public funding. I'm ambivalent on charter schools. I don't think most parents or children have the necessary motivation and drive to ensure that someone's education is provided to satisfactory levels without direct supervision.

College, on the other hand, is not a right IMO. A college education is the ticket to greater wealth. You go to college (or at least I do) because it makes the difference between having an okay job and a great one- in my case I have somewhat valuable technical skills with autocad and experience with many types of civil engineering, and I could quit school and make ~$40k in today's dollars for the rest of my life with no further diplomas or even much continuing education. Since I want more from life than that much money can give me- i.e. larger, quicker maturaing retirement fund, money to travel, money for hobbies like building autocross cars, etc.- I am choosing to make the sacrifice of income I won't receive for the next few years because becoming an engineer helps me meet my personal goals.

I don't think getting through college financially should be much harder than it already is. I support subsidies for state university systems, federal tax breaks for students like the Hope Scholarship and Lifetime Learning Credit, and Pell grants. I'm also okay with students finding ways to get other grants and scholarships, because those things usually come with some sort of price. You have to work hard to qualify, or pay them back by working in a given field for a given time. But in the end, I do think it should require more than just showing up to receive a college degree. We all need to give a little to get the benefits.

Besides, if we handed out college degrees, they wouldn't have value anymore. It would be no better than getting a high school diploma. Nice that you did it, but so did everybody else. Not only that, but our semi-free market economic system demands a large percentage of us be employed in low-tech or unskilled labor positions. The people that cut grass, or make your hamburgers, or deliver your mail, or pick up your trash, or change your oil, or cashier you at the grocery store, or drive delivery trucks, or fight our enemies overseas etc. etc. etc. don't need college degrees. It's a free country, and we're all free to settle for the minimums society should provide for us. If you're born of sound mind and body, it takes essentially no effort to finish high school and get a boring, low level job that pays enough to pay your rent, buy your clothes, own a car and feed yourself. The only pothole in that right now is that people who aren't lucky enough to be born immortal end up dying sooner or suffering more because they aren't wealthy. But that's for the other thread.