College Promise Proposal

Words: 800
Pages: 4

In January, the White House unveiled President Obama’s “America’s College Promise Proposal”. This proposal’s main feature is two years of tuition, for students who maintain a 2.5 grade point average, at no cost to them. It will also help build high quality community colleges and share budget responsibilities with the states. Additionally, it will expand technical training for middle class jobs through the “American Technical Training Fund” which is included in the proposal. Also, it promises to build on state and local programs that are already in place. Although there are many strong points to this proposal, I believe it is flawed in many ways. The arguments opposing the program outweigh those that support it. Therefore, I am opposed to this …show more content…
That does sound great, but according to a 2015 article in The New York Times “The problem is that getting students to enroll is neither hard nor important. The important task is to help students graduate. Community college drop out rates now hover somewhere between 66 percent and 80 percent” (Brooks). Based on this information it seems as though these dropout rates would increase with the influx of higher enrollment. This undoubtedly would be throwing away money at the taxpayer’s expense. Additionally, there isn’t any programs or specific ideas within the proposal that attempt to reduce the dropout rate. I also believe there should be more accountability for people who accept the free tuition and then proceed to drop out without fulfilling their …show more content…
Perhaps some of these people may not be the best at course work, but may benefit greater from on the job training within the trades or another vocational program. This proposal will pressure folks into attending college instead of one of many trades that they may be very talented at and excel in. This proposal degrades the value and importance that these well respected vocational careers have to offer. Many of the classmates I graduated from high school with have received college degrees from four year institutions and have jobs that are completely unrelated. This is due to the fact that there is no job market in their field of choice or they can make higher wages doing something else. It amazes me how many of them could have saved money from not attending