Thursday, February 01, 2007

Free college tuition

The Yankee Institute is suggesting a way for town's to save money. Yankee is urging "school districts to pay full tuition at one of Connecticut's 12 community colleges for any student who finishes high school in three years." (WRA, by Randy James)

This could happen fairly easily in Cheshire as kids already have the option to graduate in three years. At least on the surface, something of this nature makes a lot of sense to me for many reasons. However, I don't think we should actively encourage kids to graduate early. Anyone have any ideas on the pros & cons of this idea?

Tim White
Town Council, Budget Committee

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Tim, am I reading this correctly. Is the YI proposing that the school districts themselves pay for the kids tuition? If so, no go, no way , no how. That won't fly. Who pays for that, the taxpayers....out of our pockets....

Anonymous said...

We have to figure out the offsets to taxes-then and only then will be be able to decide if it workds

Tim White said...

8:48... having thought about this a bit more, I think it's mostly theoretical...

If a kid costs $10k/yr to educate, then two years of CC at $5k/yr is breakeven... but you get more education for your money.

Of course, while the $10k/yr is "factual," it is also theoretical. Not sure what the best word is, but I'm sure you understand.

Still an interesting concept though... not necessarily spending fewer tax dollars, but getting more education for our tax dollars.

Anonymous said...

Bad idea. I don't see that it could possibly save any money.

Tim White said...

10:13... I agree. I like the idea in theory. But I don't think it would work in practice.