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do you think education should be free?

education should be free  

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do you think education should be free? bearing in mind education includes not only the transfer of knowledge but also tuition and material resources. i'll kick it off, knowledge should, and quite often is, free. but education needs to be provided and paid for by someone.

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I vote yes.

I don't like how money plays a part in education, for the learner or for the teacher.

I'd prefer someone to teach for the sake of teaching than teach to get paid.

I think universities are very cult-like.

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Think it should be free, or at least cheaper.

Education is getting more as more crucial IMO, especially higher education. You don't go into tens of thousands of dollars of debt to your parents for them teaching you how to talk and walk lol.

But we do get it better then the US loan wise so I guess it could always be worse

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I'd prefer someone to teach for the sake of teaching than teach to get paid.

 

Do you provide education for free? I don't mean helping someone every now and then, but the hours per week required to really educate a group of people in a structured way.

If I didn't earn money from teaching, I would need to earn it elsewhere and would not have time to teach as well. Obviously, education is costly, but that cost should not be borne by the the user. That sets up a system where the educated can afford to educate their children, and the uneducated cannot. That results in a caste type system and doesn't allow people to rise above the situation they were born into.

I think the Australian system is good, but unfortunately you have to accept the very rigid form of public education that exists if you do not have the money to pay for an alternative school. The tertiary education system is good. We expect people to show that they have applied themselves in high-school, and then cover the costs until they can afford to pay it back. I think that is fair.

We could also have an entirely funded system, but then we would be less likely to fund people who fail units or drop out of courses, and this would make it harder for people who are trying to work out what they want to do at the young age of 18.

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i voted yes, and i think it should be free for people on the middle and lower ends of the social wealth scale, but as people's wealth increases, they should have to pay, and depending on wealth, pay a lot, like taxes, tax the rich a fuck load, give the poor rebates.

that pertains to the current world we live in, but in another world i think everything should be free.

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Nah balzac I don't.

I don't like the system we have in place but I can appreciate it's a lot better than some others. Really i'm just complaining about 'first world problems'.

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so if teachers are to teach for free, how are they to feed clothe and house themselves? if you're talking they should be provided from the public purse, then that money obviously needs to be taken from somewhere, and the most obvious means to doing that is through taxes. almost everyone pays taxes. i.e. users pay.

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I spoke to a guy once who prided himself on having failed and reattended the highest number of courses in the history of the university. They eventualy told the guy that he either had to pass or piss off as the bill gets so high and his chances of earning enough to ever pay it off gets lower over time. He never did get a degree but has somehow bullshited his way into a job as relationship councelor. If education was free this gymp would still be at uni now milking the lifestyle and taking up a valuble place for someone that is accually keen to work hard and put their new found knowlege into action. This is unless they made a rule that if you fail to a certain degree you must withdraw from studies for a given length of time.

Paying for your degree gives people more insentive to get out and work hard to pay off their studies once completed and also encourages the people who don't really care to move aside so the serious folks can have a shot at it.

But having said all that I wish I didn't have to pay for my degree. I worked and saved up money to pay for half my degree up front and my mum payed the other half. Its cheaper up front too.

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without money being spent on war and especially the war on drugs, there's plenty for the gov to give for education. ending prisons will save money too, there's plenty of ways, but not in this current shit hole world we live in.

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I spoke to a guy once who prided himself on having failed and reattended the highest number of courses in the history of the university. They eventualy told the guy that he either had to pass or piss off as the bill gets so high and his chances of earning enough to ever pay it off gets lower over time. He never did get a degree but has somehow bullshited his way into a job as relationship councelor. If education was free this gymp would still be at uni now milking the lifestyle and taking up a valuble place for someone that is accually keen to work hard and put their new found knowlege into action. This is unless they made a rule that if you fail to a certain degree you must withdraw from studies for a given length of time.

hmm, the current system is if you fail a course you have another chance to pass it paid on hex but other than that you have to pay for it. depending on what degree you do there are core courses which you have to pass in order to progress to later years, so i don't know if you can keep attending and failing courses indefinitely, as a matter of fact i'm quite sure you can't.

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I'm really brain dead at the moment, so without justification: Yes.

I didn't think about it very much though.

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hmm, the current system is if you fail a course you have another chance to pass it paid on hex but other than that you have to pay for it. depending on what degree you do there are core courses which you have to pass in order to progress to later years, so i don't know if you can keep attending and failing courses indefinitely, as a matter of fact i'm quite sure you can't.

 

That just proves that this guy is even more full of shit then I first suspected.

Thanks for clearing this up.

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i voted 'other'.

private primary and secondary education is good, teachers who are truely skilled at teaching deserve a slightly higher wage and so people paying specifically for their children to be educated by them is healthy (although children from less advantaged families who genuinely want to go to university or some sort of further acedaemia should be offered a discounted rate reimbursed by the government). public schools though should be FULLY payed for by the government (including excursions etc) so that all people have at least some education. i think completion of VCE/HSC/whatever should be made manditory though and more trade related stuff in schools so that those who choose the trade path can make a swift transition from secondary education to the workforce without needing worry about trade school further down the track.

similarly, TAFEs should have a wider range of academic courses available and TAFE courses be offered free to those who choose and universities to have less option for courses and a bit mroe specialty (things like bio-med engineering and pharmacology) stay in universities which would require people to pay a fee for as the sort of knowledge being gained can only be taught by few and the students will ultimately get top jobs in their respective fields and thus earn far more than their money back anyway.

this would require, though, that subsets of information be prioritized by need and ease of teaching so that the most needed and easiest to teach are the ones offered for free. also children would need to be somewhat monitored for their intellectual capability and recomended to private schools or universitys or what have you to ensure the most able of any socio-economic class have access to the paid options, perhaps via a standardized IQ test in schools.

i certainly not expert, but this is the conclusion i have come to since reading your question. i hope i articulated my ideas well enough to be understood by others.

dio

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i think completion of VCE/HSC/whatever should be made manditory

I left school after a few weeks of year 11. I wasted a fair bit of time because of the public perception that it is important to stay in school. I ended up working on and off for a few years, and I eventually matured a bit and decided to go back to school. I am now working on my PhD in theoretical physics.

At one stage I was asked to have a word to a young man who had decided to leave high-school, because the person asking expected me to feel that staying in school was important due to the fact that I had gone back to it after a few years. I refused. If I had have been coerced or forced into staying in school as a youngster, I would have done poorly and never had the opportunity to achieve what I have now achieved. The time was not right for me to complete school, and doing so would have been a detriment. Going back and completing it when I did was the right thing at the right time, and it worked out perfectly for me.

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@ballzac, i left school in year 9. i had a job in a fish and chip shop for a while, but during the work choices years was sacked for a younger/less pay taking individual. since, i have not been able to find work and remain unemployed. i do study again now, a diploma of visual art, but mainly so that i have some sort of credentials to gain employment better than 'year 8'. i feel that your story would be familiar only to the minority of drop outs, as i know many people in a similar situation to myself (as a tafe student one meets all sorts). i don't mean to say you are incorrect, but that i have had a very different experience.

also, perhaps if their was significant restructuring of the secondary education system as i suggested i am for then perhaps people like you and myself would find school helpful at that time, after all, you did end up returning to school (suggesting that what schooling had to offer was still valid for you to learn).

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i feel that your story would be familiar only to the minority of drop outs

 

This is most likely true. I guess what I'm saying is that the education system needs to be flexible enough to deal with the differences between individuals, and that making VCE level education compulsory for every student would be a disservice to those who are not, at that time, suited to it.

also, perhaps if their was significant restructuring of the secondary education system as i suggested i am for then perhaps people like you and myself would find school helpful at that time, after all, you did end up returning to school (suggesting that what schooling had to offer was still valid for you to learn).

 

This I agree with. I think there were a couple of major factors in why school wasn't working for me at the time. The first problem was that, in primary and early secondary school, I was ahead of the other students in a lot of areas. An example of this was that I could read pretty fluently when I started in prep, while most other students were only just learning the alphabet at that time. This caused me to become disinterested in school, and by about year 8 I had become so bored with school that I didn't pay attention at all, and probably did a lot to hinder others by distracting them in classes. By the time I got to yr 11, I was actually behind in my understanding, particularly in maths which actually requires attention, and this was a large part of me dropping out.

The first problem was perhaps a factor in causing the second problem. At about the same time that I lost all interest in school (circa yr 8) I started becoming interested in drugs. I think that drugs offered me some interest and insight that I was not finding in school. This caused me to withdraw even more from school and by the time VCE started, I was far more interested in trying a new drug than learning a new equation. I feel that if my interest in drugs at that age had been harnessed and perhaps partially redirected, I could have perhaps been shown that school was worth investing my energy in, but instead I was told by the powers that be that drug use is wrong, and more time was spent trying to make me feel guilty about it than trying to harness the fascination for the world that caused me to use drugs in the first place.

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The concept of 'free education' seems to be getting confused with 'people teaching for free'. Nobody is expecting academic profewssionals to work for nothing !

Some younger members may be shocked to know that there was a time when public schools were 'free', and as recently as 20-25 years ago, University was 'free' for Australian citizens. Teachers/Lecturers/Professors certainly didn't work for nothing, but the government footed the bill. This could be seen as an investment in the country's future. Fast forward to modern times, and we seek professionals from overseas (for example Indian Immigration for IT - who happen to have world-class facilities), and the fact that Universities now accept 'paid up' students from other Asian countries who can foot the bill without going on a 'pay when you earn' system.

Some might argue that the onus should not be on the taxpayer to provide tertiary eductation to Australians. Yet it appears to be OK in the eyes of many for the government to spend $3billion for Australia's participation in the Iraq invasion, and $1.5 billion on the Afghan conflict.

In 2010, there were 1.2 million people enrolled at Higher education providers, 850,000 of which were domestic students. If we assume that 30% were under fully paid tuition, then surely the $4.5 billion in war-money could ave been better spent towards 'free' education. Or, at the very least, half of the domestic students who come from middle class families might reap a $10,000.00 grant to get them started.

Apparantly war is more important than educating our citizens.

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because people with more education are less likely to go to war for their country...

war is GOOD

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I was quite humoured by my typo of "professionals".

SEE WHAT A LACK OF FREE EDUCATION DOES ?! I'LL NEVER GET A JOB IN THE TYPING POOL.

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our education does fare pretty well, but the system could be heading in a bad direction even at the level of primary schools, just watch the NAPLAN tests and see how they've completely turned schooling into a market styled competition, where people can see each school's results, critical thing being money is allocated by bums on seats, less kids less Government money, poor schools lose money and the more funding gets given to the big schools like Kings in Sydney. I can remember when i was in college 3 French students would lecture everyone about how we're being persecuted for wanting education, and if they tried to make the French students pay the equivalent of what we pay, they would just destroy and burn everything, and i reckon they would

our uni's just this year introduced the trimester system, 3 semesters instead of 2 in a year. possibly because foreign students pay double and we get lots of them through doing masters and postgraduate work, meaning they can get students through 1/3 of time faster, 3 year degree is now 2 yrs, ie an openly economic move, substituting duration of learning for more money. for sure foreign education is a big $ earner for Australia, it does = more money, but does something as sacred as the process of education have to have even its length determined by some strategy in a game to get the most money? its a shit go, education shouldn't have to be a business

Edited by bulls on parade

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Trimester systems I think are the way to go. It shouldn't be compulsory but the option should be there. The idea of doing 9 subects over 3 trimesters is a much better way to learn than 8 over 2 semesters.

Education for children should be free to those who don't want\can't afford private schools (which are crazily over-rated in terms of academia). Universities should cost money because the government sure as hell can't afford to give hundreds of millions of dollars into labs for science and massive IT infrastructure per university...

I believe however the government should subsidize more of the cost for Australian citizens - a lecturer from Belgium told me how over there he did a masters and a PhD because a degree costs about 1 semesters worth of Australia's fees due to government subsidization.

I also believe that there should not be different ATAR cut-offs for the same degree favoring those who's daddy is rich enough to pay fees upright.

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