[HamsterDan]

The author tried really hard to dance around the real problem here: California is apparently paying students to attend online community college.

If attending these classes was even just free, this wouldn't be a problem. Giving out student aid for online classes is just ridiculous.

[gcanyon]

Giving student aid beyond just free classes enables students who would otherwise need to spend time working to support themselves to instead attend school to get a better life. Generally that's considered a good thing, not worthy of the disdain you're displaying.

[philipallstar]

This is the first-order, emotional reaction, yes, but policy should be made based on its full effects, not just its sales pitch's popularity with first-order-emoting voters.

[intended]

The second order effects of cheap education are immense, ranging from longer life span, better health, stronger economies, amongst just a few.

The matter at hand, specifically, is one about how our ability to verify is overwhelmed by our ability to generate content.

This is playing out with recruitment, bug reports, complaint forms - and going all the way up to sophisticated fraud.

[philipallstar]

It's not cheap education. What is the point in deliberately changing the topic? It's about paying people to consume free education.

[patcon]

No. It's a Sybil attack on subsidy to help ppl of different means equally make room for education in their lives. No one is "making money" unless they are committing fraud. They are being put on an equal playing field -- the subsidies are seemingly directed at the individual, but are terraforming [of the field] in nature, not for enrichment of the individual.

I was able to get educated with full focus on that task, because my family prioritised saving for my education. I want others, without such privilege, to have access to such opportunity.

If you choose to frame it also that "your parents paid you to consume free education", then so be it. But let's not pretend the state is doing something strange or against its core mission here

[spwa4]

Read the article. The students complained about aren't after the opportunity.

[InDubioProRubio]

The third order effect of handing out money for nothing, is the chicks coming home to roost as anti-education movements tear down the nation.

[lores]

Europe as a whole manages to hand over money for nothing to would-be students in need without any anti-education backlash. An anti-education stance is the cause of protesting education subsidies, not their consequence.

[spwa4]

Yeah right. Now go visit East Germany, no shortage of anti-education anti-intellectual attitudes.

[intended]

As someone else pointed out, yeah - anti education movements are a third order effect of how succesful education is at not making people vote for religious causes and non scientific positions.

The threat of its efficacy, is why, since 1960 onwards, a large chunk of the western world has been figuring out how to bend psychology, rhetoric, and media forces to undermine "Ivory tower" intellectuals.

Yes, a succesful movement has been undermined because it posed a threat to people with the money to spend to fight their battles.

This is old news.

[_DeadFred_]

This. People didn't agree on immigration levels yet they thought people fleeing horror should have shelter from the horror and be given asylum. The Democrats seemed to let the asylum process be abused as a general immigration process and now the US is having a huge pullback/backlash on asylum seekers.

[mcphage]

> The third order effect of handing out money for nothing, is the chicks coming home to roost as anti-education movements

Anti-education movements may be a third order effect for this, but it's a first order effect for other groups who are deliberately pushing anti-education efforts.

[gosub100]

No one's "anti education", except universities bloated with administration and professors who publish false data for the gov bux.

[FrustratedMonky]

"Giving out student aid for online classes is just ridiculous."

This is also a sales pitch, playing to the far-right. (virtue signaling)

[philipallstar]

You think virtue signalling is playing to the far right? Care to define... any of your terms?

[Octoth0rpe]

The concept of virtue signaling does not imply a particular group that the signal is intended for, and absolutely can be for the far right.

[red-iron-pine]

hell, the concept comes out of signaling Christian Virtue and taking steps to look holier than thou

[dbspin]

One can virtue signal on either political spectrum, obviously. Phatic, performative language and gestures to indicate allegiance and supplication are possible for any given philosophy. Bumper stickers are literally virtue signalling.

[FrustratedMonky]

As others pointed out.

"Virtue Signaling" is often a term of derision placed from the right onto the left. But is often done just as much on the other side. It's part of the 'right's vocabulary of labels for the left.

I just like to point out all the times when the 'right' take part in "virtue signaling".

Right wing , political or religious, often take part in "virtue signaling". Yet, seem unconscious of it, un-ware of their own biases, because to them they are not 'signaling' they are just speaking 'truth'.

But of course, they are not. "God is real, hence I'm not just 'signaling' when I say it to my fellow believers".

[9283409232]

The fact you think the "libs" are the only ones who can virtue signal says a lot about you. The far-right have an entire playbook of dog whistles just for virtue signaling.

[stikit]

Please avoid labels. It’s not unique to the ‘far’ right to want to manage accountability to limited resources like quality education. it’s generally accepted that requiring some level of skin in the game from those that benefit does a decent job of doing this.

[floor2]

> it’s generally accepted that requiring some level of skin in the game from those that benefit does a decent job of doing this

"Generally accepted" by who? Based on what?

Sometimes the reactions on this site are silly. We're talking about community college here. The people going to community college are trying to transition their life from minimum wage retail job to useful careers as things like dental hygienists, nurses, IT workers and daycare workers.

Their own increased future earnings will offset the subsidies through higher taxes and reduced burden on social services, and everyone in society benefits by having people in the types of jobs that community colleges prepare students for.

Community colleges are just a massive benefit to society at large, regardless of whether you're leftwing, rightwing, rich, poor, young or old. Literally everyone is benefiting here.

[stikit]

>>>"Generally accepted" by who? Based on what?

Off the top of my head, so may not align exactly with formal definitions, but economics is the study of allocation of resources and how incentives play a large role in how human behavior is influenced by those incentives. I prefer Sowell for a primer but if he’s not to your liking try google, keywords economic incentives and resource allocation.

i have plenty of personal experience with community colleges and those close to me have gone from penniless immigrant to making more than the average tech bro because they attended one while working full time, and paying full tuition without aid. what kept them going was a reasonable roi . the i was their investment of hard earned dollars that they used to pay for their tuition and gave them the incentive to stay in. they had skin in the game so they endured. getting something for free doesn’t instill any obligation, and that’s a common lived experience.

[brainwad]

Well, the problem is obvious in hindsight, and perhaps even in foresight. Giving out free money attracts these scammers, who crowd real students out of not only the aid money, but also the actual class. So the net effect is to make it harder to access community college, not easier.

Perhaps I'm naive, but it seems like it would be a lot easier to avoid the scammers if they limited first time students to in-person classes.

[olalonde]

It's not about whether money frees up time-that's obvious. That argument could be used to justify handing out money to literally anyone. The issue is this aid is easily gamed, as the article shows, and strong incentives to pursue education already exist, like better job prospects. Not to mention that it's hard to justify asking less-educated workers to subsidize the upward mobility of those who may soon out-earn them.

[palmotea]

>> If attending these classes was even just free, this wouldn't be a problem. Giving out student aid for online classes is just ridiculous.

> Giving student aid beyond just free classes enables students who would otherwise need to spend time working to support themselves to instead attend school to get a better life. Generally that's considered a good thing, not worthy of the disdain you're displaying.

I think the idea would be if someone's getting paid to go to school so they don't have to work, then they should go to in-person classes. Online classes probably shouldn't be an option.

If there's profit available and no personal cost (in either time or money), scammers will exploit the program as described ("fake students bent on stealing financial aid funds").

[ethagknight]

You present hypothetical scenario of up against the reality they getting paid to “attend” online class is a total farce, diluting the value of a diploma or degree from that community college system well also stealing away resources.

[9283409232]

This is your opinion and it is not a hypothetical scenario. Many people including myself received grant aid to attend classes both in person and virtual. If it wasn't for that flexibility I likely wouldn't have be able to go.

[ethagknight]

I’m glad it worked for you, however this is not an opinion, it’s a worldview, and it is unethical and unscrupulous to use government funding to pay people to remotely attend a community college course. This is several steps beyond the intent of a community college, which is simply to provide free education for working people in the community.

[9283409232]

It is an opinion and one I disagree with.

[ethagknight]

And your position is a demand for someone else to pay you to attend class?

[SecretDreams]

I'm mixed. If we lived in a utopian world where money isn't real, I'd agree. Reality is California has major budget issues. Offering the classes for free is already enough in the current climate.

Working while going to school is not uncommon or isolated to California. Full time work while going to school is excessive - but that is also a California COL issue that the state needs to actually tackle. But it gets worse the more they don't address their deficits. Debt begets debt and it always drives up COL.

[bell-cot]

> Full time work while going to school is excessive ...

For a healthy, driven person, without other major responsibilities (or a time-sucking internet addiction)? No, it really is not excessive.

And that's assuming that "going to school" is also full time. Taking just one or two classes per term is an old tradition at community colleges.

[archievillain]

If you completely ignore the section of the population that needs aid, then yes, there's no need for aid. Might as well stop building wheelchair ramps, because for a healthy person with no locomotory issues the stairs are just fine.

[9283409232]

> Taking just one or two classes per term is an old tradition at community colleges.

Not for people fresh out of high school. You are usually trying to graduate with a Bachelor's in 4 years so you do full-time at community college for 2 years to get your AA-T and then transfer to a university for your last 2 years. California in particular has a program that lets you transfer get a guaranteed transfer to any state university or participating private university once you get your AA-T.

[SecretDreams]

I mean, I worked 20ish hours a week while doing engineering and I did well relative to my peers, but I can still recognize it was a lot. Full time in that world for 4-5 years would have been miserable.

Just because I can do something doesn't mean it's something I would want or would suggest for the rest of the population.

[bell-cot]

Yes, it is fairly miserable to do both full-time.

OTOH, life in America is very unfairly miserable for tens of millions of people who are not going to school. And trying to tell all the taxpayers that they have to provide nice quality-of-life upgrades, for people who are already enjoying taxpayer-supported free classes? NO - in our non-utopian world, where money is real, that is a very bad idea.

[SecretDreams]

Yeah, I agree in our real world that it's a tall ask. I'd like to see us not burden all tax payers with such requests, though. Rather, I'd focus on the very top to be contributing substantially more into the systems that they've pillaged for their present wealth.

[stogot]

Not really. I worked various jobs in community college to support myself. Community college is designed around that fact with early morning and late night classes, but these are ONLINE classes. You can’t say that they have to work at that time because there is no time slot

[danaris]

"Online" doesn't mean "on-demand."

My wife got her Masters from Harvard recently through online classes, and every class had...I want to say about 4 hours a week of actual scheduled, synchronous class sessions over Zoom, in addition to the coursework required.

[stogot]

I’ve done years of online coursework and I’ve never had that nor heard of that at a community college. Harvard must be doing their own thing. I guess if you pay tens of thousands for a degree you’re stuck with onerous practices.

Community college is explicitly to help local students who are generally working jobs, so these onerous scheduled sessions are not reasonable

[MisterTea]

This is the hard part of society. We want nice things but propose anything that can be gamed/scammed for free money and it's instantly shot-down before it even gets off the ground. That, or if by a miracle it launches, is constantly attacked and smeared by politicians using it to get votes from selfish assholes who dont want to share (I learned about sharing in preschool and kindergarten).

Until you solve the primitive animalistic problems of selfishness, greed, and energy conserving laziness, were not going to have nice things. Someone asshole is going to be mad they have to share. Some asshole is going to lie and scam to get as much free shit as they can.

Solving this is a very hard problem.

[arp242]

This type of fraud is not entirely a new thing, e.g. from 2014: https://leb.fbi.gov/articles/featured-articles/pell-grant-fr...

But the numbers mentioned there seem tiny for a federal programme like the Pell Grant. A lot of times it's a matter of scale: a bit of fraud isn't ideal, but entirely manageable, so whatever.

Since then the scale expanded greatly. This is often a problem when you move things online: you're instantly connected with everyone on the world, which also means you're instantly connected with every asshole in the world. And with AI a single asshole can now pretend to be 200 assholes.

The solution is to do less things online and more in person. There are some advantages for some people in doing things online, but it also negatively affects everyone, and in general it just doesn't seem worth it to do everything online. It's not binary: you can do many things online while still requiring some bits in-person (e.g. registration, exams, occasional events).

[MisterTea]

> which also means you're instantly connected with every asshole in the world. And with AI a single asshole can now pretend to be 200 assholes.

Technology always seems to be the solution until the tables are turned.

> The solution is to do less things online and more in person.

And then we go right back to these programs being attacked for being inaccessible by e.g. poor people and the disabled. Obviously the solution is to hire people to go out and bring these services to those who need it but once you see how much effort is required to do that it rapidly requires a lot of funding and looks inefficient.

A cultural shift is required to fix all this and I am not sure how that will happen. Even given that the major religion in the west is Christianity which preaches that being selfish is not cool has been appropriated by selfish assholes who vote selfishly. I dunno what to say anymore. I am 100% for these programs which will be massively beneficial for humanity and all these fucks can think of is "muh tax munney."

[tschoesi]

Right below the title "fake students bent on stealing financial aid funds". Where's the dancing?

[astura]

On one hand, students need to pay for food and rent, so it makes sense. I used loans, grants, scholarships, and financial aid to pay for these expenses myself when I was in school.

On the other hand, maybe the barrier to entry is just waaayyy too low for online community college classes for this to make any sense. Students should have some skin in the game. Maybe students should be required to take a couple in person classes before financial aid can be used for online classes?

I don't think the article was dancing around it though.

[insane_dreamer]

> apparently paying students to attend online community college

No, they provide student aid that covers some (it's not much) of low income students' living expenses so that they can actually study and get through college, instead of working fulltime and it taking 2-3 times as long.

It's the same type of financial aid scholarships 4-year universities give out too, and in most/all States.

[foxyv]

It is important to not deny people what they need in order to prevent fraudsters from profiting. This fraud is roughly 0.3% of total student aide in California.

[YeahThisIsMe]

Just as ridiculous as paying people for remote work.

It's just not reasonable when they're not even traveling to the office.

[stikit]

No such thing as free education. Just subsidized education. Costs would be pushed entirely to tax payers, many of whom have never attended college themselves. Demand, costs, taxes and state deficits would increase. The incentive for fraud would be pushed up one level to the administration.

[UncleMeat]

Yeah thats why free K-12 education is bad! /s

We all understand the context of words here. Believe it or not, many people think that the government providing things for its citizens via taxation is a good thing.

[stikit]

If you want to refute any of my points, please do so. Sarcasm isn’t helpful. Managing scarce resources like education is a hard problem. Giving it away for free isn’t a solution.

[UncleMeat]

I think it is a solution.

What points? You just insist that this is bad and that's the end of it.

[stikit]

hm. let’s start with how free isn’t free. you can then move on to incentives for fraud.

[danaris]

How about we start with knowing that it's not "free" as in "costs nothing to anybody", as UncleMeat has already acknowledged that it's being provided by the government through taxation, and actually address why you thin that it's bad, rather than just repeating "it's not free! it's not freeeeee!!!!" over and over again, as if we're idiots who don't understand how taxes and public funding work?