Education Reform Act (Passed)

[Associate Justice PiT]

     This would benefit from defining its terms. What constitutes high/middle/low-income? What does a GPA of 60 or 90 mean? I am only familiar with the four-point scale. What qualifies a strong interest in STEM fields, and what grades must be maintained to maintain this scholarship? Does the scholarship include living expenses, or only tuition? Should we be treating all STEM fields equally here? Unlike Senator Truman, I strongly doubt the value of the sciences. How much funding must be allocated to vocational education and school vouchers? Not everything needs to be covered, but this bill is far too vague as is. Not to mention the issue of funding all of this.

     Putting all of that aside, this is corporate welfare for institutions that have grown bloated off of decades of corporate welfare. I proposed and got passed bills in both the South and in the Atlasian Senate that helped close the spigot of federal dollars and forced universities to lower their outrageous costs of attendance. This would write them a blank check and throw countless billions down a hole where it will never be seen again.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     I think we should probably strike that section ultimately, since the GI Bill is a thing. The amendment made no difference. I am going to propose an amendment to the text of Section 1.
Replace Section 1 with:

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     All subsequent sections are renumbered accordingly.


     This takes the focus off of STEM (which is both arbitrary and broad; we truly do not need more math majors, unless we want such to be a qualification to work the register at McDonald's) and puts it on the nation's actual labor needs. The scholarships are limited so as to avoid glutting fields, and students can either take them to public institutions and enjoy a full ride, or take a smaller discount at a private institution if they so choose.

     Sorry if it's a little rough; I haven't done an amendment on this large a scale in a while.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     So now, this is our Section 3:

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     I would like to propose the following amendment to replace Section 3:

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     I was inspired by the original text there. This is a small thing to reduce the cost of college, but it is a reward for students who excel in their classes, whether they are majoring in engineering or philosophy.

     As a side note, part of the plan here is to curtail grade inflation. At UC Berkeley, there are 18 majors (mostly languages) where the GPA is too high for qualification to be possible here. There are 63 more majors where the average is above a B+, requiring the student to do better than an A-. There are other, prestigious institutions where high grades are even more common. Grade inflation is an issue that we face in our universities, and this creates incentive to curtail it.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Alright, now time for the former Section 4, current Section 5:

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     I propose an amendment to replace the current text of the section with:

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[Associate Justice PiT]

     For the former Section 5, current Section 6, I am borrowing on a law that passed in my region about two years ago. I propose as an amendment replacing Section 6:

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[Associate Justice PiT]

I support PiT's amendment, but I am interested in knowing how much mileage that can be obtained with regards the $5 billion?

     It's meant to be startup capital to encourage regions to develop and run their own programs. Running a nationwide program on $5 billion would indeed be rather unproductive.

[Associate Justice PiT]

I see, very well then.



What is "a relevant authority"?

     Authorities that accredit schools. What those authorities are exactly depends on the type of school. It's usually regional, but if I said that it could be understood to imply regional governments. I am open to defining it more clearly, if people believe it is important.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Good point, Kingpoleon. I propose the following amendment to Sections 1.a and 3:

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[Associate Justice PiT]

     We may want to put in an amendment for the cost of this bill in the budget thread...or handle it in this thread. Either way, really.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     This bill has changed quite a bit.

[Associate Justice PiT]

Why do we need to encourage students to enter professions that are already growing?

     These are deemed as growing based on jobs created. We're encouraging them to enter these fields, to ensure that we do not end up suffering from shortages down the line. The Bureau of Labor Statistics frequently publishes projections on future growth in different industries. This takes advantage of those projections to guide policy.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     What better suggestion do you have here? We can just sit on our hands and be left with a populace that is largely unprepared to meet our labor needs, holding large numbers of degrees in shrinking, glutted fields. This is a point where we're talking about doing something. The projections may not be accurate for 10 years later, but they can at least be accurate for next year.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     What better suggestion do you have here? We can just sit on our hands and be left with a populace that is largely unprepared to meet our labor needs, holding large numbers of degrees in shrinking, glutted fields. This is a point where we're talking about doing something. The projections may not be accurate for 10 years later, but they can at least be accurate for next year.

I agree with your point entirely, PiT, my point is try and quantify at some level, the degree of improvement in this regard.

     Eh, it's difficult to do. The important thing to realize is that college isn't always the answer; there are some rapidly growing fields now that require only vocational or technical education.

[Associate Justice PiT]

Does everyone in this body honestly agree that the federal government should be in the position to write direct, legislative funding prescriptions for degrees in certain types of fields? I believe that we should establish mechanisms to allow funding to flow toward in-demand degrees and programs. Income share agreements, expanded tax benefits for corporate scholarship/training programs, etc. If we're trying to advocate for workforce development, let's not pass a law that is meaningless in three or four years.

Preferably, no. However, as I see it, the purpose of this bill is two fold and aims to avoid flooding over crowed fields while at the same time ensuring an appropriate level of skilled professionals.

I will be honest, a lot of this whining about lack of skills is a cover for labor expense minimization. Companies want to outsource all the training and educating to tax payers and acquire employees as cheap as possible. It is fundamentally impossible for us to train someone 100% for a specific job like these employeers want these days, and especially if that company plans to dispose of them within two or three years.

I would not oppose tax benefits as you say, but to me, it seems like an incentive too small to reverse a corporate trend thirty years in the making.

     Indeed, it would be ideal for companies to take on the challenge of training employees themselves and take on the costs. Unless that happens, and there is little indication that it will, there's only so much we can do about it. A degree that's in demand today may be worthless in four years and someone going to school for that field will be screwed. That's an issue we've been facing for at least 15 years, and I'm not sure that leaving education alone will produce anything better.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Abstain

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Aye