Free community college for everyone? We can all be Aric Hall!

[Christopher]

Insanely true. I would say almost most of my classes even the theatre ones, we lost about 25%-50% by mid-term. Either the class is to advance for them, or they simply dont like the class, or they changed majors and don't need the class anymore. Our regular classes at our CC is 25 students. Some have 80 like the big Astronomy 101 type class that's in the forum. They fill up fast the 25 student classes. A few times I couldn't get in because class and waiting list were full. Ill pass by the class six weeks later and it'll be half empty. When I took Stagecrafts and our instructor (who was one of the most awesome guys you'd ever meet, he was like a local version of Jim Carrey type of personallity but serious about the class and class work and his own work getting the stage up) told us we actually will be working physically, hard work building the stage set the upcoming performance of "Guys and Dolls" (this was in 2000). Painting props, and running the light show. I swear we lost 85 percent of the class. That one class was like a 20 hour a week job. I remember spending hours hammering down the stage floor, and painting the sets, and I did the light show for one of the performances. Anyhow, only like five us in the class by second week which had like 25 at start. Which is also why we worked almost double time. He gave all of us that stayed to the end, and worked hard an automatic "A". I remember I had the flu and was working the floor set, and he told me to just go home because I looked like death, and take the rest of the week off and don't worry about it affecting my grade at all, because we were working so hard. It was an eighteen week course but with all the extra lab work because we lost so many students it was more like a 36 week course crammed into an 18 week course. Most thought it was a "read and test" class. Many newbies to college think it's H.S. where you just sit, listen, take notes, and take an easy test or write a one page term paper, and it you get an A or B.

Another issue we may face with this free CC is seat availability. For example at College of Southern Nevada, every semester there is a seat shortage as Nevada High School graduates tend to have early enrollment versus transfer students. A class may have 30 seats and it gets filled before the next round of students are allowed to enroll. After the first week of class you can see as many as 1/3 drop the course as they are not prepared enough to take these courses. In this instance many of the students who could not get in, wind up taking 100/200 level classes at UNLV which has much higher tuition ($191 a credit last time I checked). The more I think about this, this is a bad deal. Obama would be better off mandating a tuition cap on CC's such as $20-$25 a credit than subsidize (corporate welfare) tuition. This may force the CC's to eliminate some of the bloat in the administrative positions. Also in Nevada CC teachers make over $100,000 a year and I can tell you first hand, most just post assignments online and do not even read many of the them. I looked up one of my Professors and she teaches 3 classes per semester and makes $108,000 a year plus benefits...

My question is will the 5 million illegals who just received amnesty also be allowed to receive free CC? This is leaning more and more to a massive spike in tuition.

Many will not get into CC as it will be filled by lower and middle income, so attendance will increase at the 4 year level. CC's will be maxed out, so the supply will be low and the demand will be high. The higher the demand the higher the prices.