College Presidents Say $10,000 Degrees Available Now
Speaking today on a SXSWEdu panel in Austin, officials from a few Texas community colleges and universities said that $10,000 bachelor's degrees are available now — and more will be within the year.
Gov. Rick Perry famously called on the development of a $10,000 degree in his State of the State address in 2011. The proposal met with criticism at the time, but Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board Chairman Fred Heldenfels said it was misunderstood. "It’s not intended to be a bargain degree," he said, offering the metaphor of a no-frills, rapid-rail route rather than an ocean-going ...
Comments (7)
Laura Roberts via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Is this a 4-year degree, or have they also halved the number of years required?
David Huang via Texas Tribune on Facebook
But are they any good?
Cris Sleightholm
Again, the middle class will pick up the tab.....higher tuition fees for their kids. higher taxes for state funded colleges, etc.....it certainly pays to be poor now-a-days.
Lynn Burlbaw
I would like to see the degree plan - or the requirements for lived experience credit - without a degree plan or something to show the competency mark-off I don't see how they are going to get it done.
Russell Slocum via Texas Tribune on Facebook
What is a degree in organizational leadership? Is that like management? Even still, the books are like another 15k.
James Ellsworth
I am a person from a well-to-do family (my father didn't approve of college educations) who benefited from another state's (at the time) visionary practices. That was then, when tuitions were $2500. To me, the $10,000 idea, two generations later, is about right. We paid a lot more for our sons' private college tuition and that was 15 years ago. I never needed to earn a large income but I did have a good idea of 'economic value' for my college expenditure (since I had to pay for it). I taught at a major university (U of A Fayetteville) for three years and I pursued a 'low wage' public career as a 'pay back' for the earned grants that supplanted the money my father did not want to spend for me.
My view of higher education is that relatively few people should pursue this type of degree. Even when I was in highschool, I felt a lot could be said for apprenticeship programs--we find them touted today in economic analyes about reunited Germany--and I was beginning to see the results of 'pass through' college education where students only wanted the 'paper' and thought that it validated their economic aspirations. My sons, both doctoral candidates--one now an admistrator with the Naval War College, noted the same change in the teaching assingments that went with their fellowships.
I made a (modest) fortune from a Liberal Arts education (and an analytical mind.) I benefitted from public financing of education when my father preferred racing cars and flying airplanes to supporting the aspirations and abiltities of his children.
I strongly believe that financing public education can produce benefits for Texas if its standards for acheivement remain high
Audrey Fisher via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Read the details - it leaves a whole of questions up in the air.