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Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Free ride at the University of Toledo

But not free for the taxpayers. The University of Toledo has begun offering free tuition for students based on need. Nowhere have I been able to find out how much this program will cost. There are only two sources of the news through google, found here and here, both of which don't mention any dollar amounts. I guess it doesn't matter to them, as long as people are getting stuff for "free". How nice of our government to hand over our money in this way.

It may not surprise some of my readers that I most definitely oppose this measure. I don't believe anyone should be educated by the government at all. Why, you may ask? Hop on over to the Alliance for the Separation of School and State to find out. They have a pretty decent write up with a lot of good reasons. If you feel the same as they do, take a minute to sign their proclamation, stating simply:
I proclaim publicly that I favor ending government involvement in education.
I love how short and sweet this statement is. They're not trying to throw in any extra stuff that could turn away someone who is so thoroughly anti-state such as myself. So far, 30,500 other people have signed it.

I went to a private, church-owned university and I had a perfectly fine education. I would almost say that college is actually pretty over-rated. My computer science degree left me unprepared for the business world. What I do now as a consultant I learned mostly on my own, thanks to private companies who were willing to invest in my time. I feel like I might have been better off if I had worked on real-world projects for those 5 years instead of being stuck in classrooms.

1 comment:

_ said...

If you're against public education, you'll wind up paying even more in tax dollars supporting people with unemployment benefits, welfare, medicaid, food stamps, etc.

Also, the innovation and small businesses that are the drivers for our economy - those folks who aren't born rich but pull themselves up by their bootstraps and create jobs and wealth for themselves and their communities - those folks need education and if the don't get it cause they can't pay double and triple the price for a private college degree, then more of your tax dollars will go to social services.

You don't like the notion of federal or state financial aid dollars going toward U of Toledo's scholarship, but most of the students this program is geared toward would otherwise never go to college. Without college degrees, they would be more likely to be wards of the state or the tax payer for generations.

Which would you prefer: 1.) 20K of state and federal taxpayer money over four years to help them get an education or 2.) 300K of state and federal tax payer money over decades for social services and welfare programs?

If you go with option one, the student will pay back the 20K in taxes dozens of times over and reduce the amount of tax payer dollars going to social services.

If you want to end welfare, you should spend on education now. Is libertarianism always so shortsighted?