No, education in America is expensive. If tuition was free or cheap, you could work part-time to pay living expenses and take more time to finish your degree as many students in Europe do.
Community colleges and state colleges aren't expensive at all. I went to community college for ~4 years, and I never paid for a class because of something called the board of governors fee waiver. Beyond that, I got pell grants and scholarships that were my primary source of income. With the addition of food stamps, the occasional side hustle and some creative cost cutting measures I was able to make it work with a single 4.5k loan.
When I transferred to a state university, my yearly tuition was ~6k, which was a great deal since it was a prestigious place as far as public schools go.
> Community colleges and state colleges aren't expensive at all.
> I never paid for a class
Your survivor bias makes you think that is the case for everyone. It isn't. State schools are no longer affordable in most regions of the U.S. without high debt load. It is true that community colleges for the most part are affordable, but the acceptance rate of students coming from community college is not optimal.
I congratulate you on your considerable achievement. You truly earned it through your hard work and good fortune to receive the grants and scholarships.
Many students had the misfortune of being raised in states without affordable state schools, despite being willing to put in the same amount of effort that you did.
More important: if tuition were free you could fail your students. With the present model there is a perverse incentive to pass everyone no matter what because they pay the salary.
I went to two years of community college for under 2k. My parents invested in a state program when I was younger which promised to pay for 4 years of state schooling. Not sure exactly how much they put in, but had you withdrawn the amount to use it for private schooling it was like 10k, so I'm assuming not much more than that.
Because community college was so cheap, I was able to use that other funding to pay for a graduate degree and part of my PhD program.
It's not expensive, people just have goofy ideas about what being educated means.
I agree completely, I have no idea why you're being down-voted. I got a 4-year bachelor's degree in CSE at my community college (through a partnership with a bigger name school). I did all 4 years at the local college, and it would have cost me less then 30k for the entire program. However with scholarships (Which over half of my class receives) I graduated without any debt at all.
We have students transfer in from the local community college. They struggle mightily, some even survive. With online labs in the physical sciences (instead of real glassware) it's an experience that I wouldn't wish on anyone. You can't call it education, the level is too low for that.
This may be true in the situation you're looking at. In neither of the community colleges that I have been to has this been the case. We've been in real laboratory sciences with skilled instructors and successful students have gone on to do well in university.
I think, though, the point is worth mentioning: not all community colleges are as good as the ones I've been to. Students would be well advised to consider the options and opportunities prior to matriculation (especially in light of an order of magnitude difference between even state university and community colleges).
As a counter point, I attended a community college program that partners with a larger school to provide a CSE degree at my local community college. When we have combined classes (Which are taught via video) the students on the community college side on average score a letter grade higher. With that, when students on the main campus join us for some classes (commonly during the summer) they frequently have a hard time due to not learning everything we did in previous classes.
That's not to say you're wrong, but you can't judge every community college program the same. Some of them aren't great (Especially if it's involving online labs, like you pointed out), but some are extremely good.
I went to my state's top public school for <7000/year. It's doable. In addition to a predatory loan system, the US also has a problem of too many kids who can't afford it being suckered to private or out-of-state schools.
Tuition != education. Tuition pays for far more than education, administrative costs are skyrocketing (look it up) and colleges spend like drunk sailors because competition on tuition costs is nearly non-existent (you'll take the loan anyway, so what does it matter the 10% difference in loan size?) and raising tuition won't result in significant application drop (since most applicants are either subsidized or take loans anyway).
Yes, many schools offer work-study programs and you're free to take fewer classes per semester (within certain limits) than what a 4 year plan would require.
So long as you consider your time worthless, education is free. You are but a Google search away from learning about anything you want. If you want to go to school, that can be expensive, but that is quite different to education.
When I transferred to a state university, my yearly tuition was ~6k, which was a great deal since it was a prestigious place as far as public schools go.