IS EDUCATION A RIGHT OR A PRIVILEGE?
While education may not be a "fundamental right" under the Constitution, the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment requires that when a state establishes a public school system, no child living in that sate may be denied equal access to schooling. So what about college? Well from the movie "The Ivory Tower" and our discussion it seems like making college free wouldn't be the best option due to the surplus in workers and decrease in workers' positions. I believe that education can still be a right if you pay for it but it doesn't have to cost as much as it does today. The cost for luxury in the facilities must be dropped and students should only have to pay for their education and livable or mediocre living conditions. We also need to strengthen public elementary to high school education so everyone has a shot to get into college. the gap between education in for example South Carolina compared to Virginia is huge. Kids will be left behind in that case when they get to college. The solution is to give everyone equal opportunity to high school and see what they do with the opportunity in college.
I definitely agree that there are reforms that need to be made to how we finance colleges, but you don't really address your own question. You talk a lot about improvements we can make on our system of education, but less about how we think about education. Is it necessary in today's world (as it was not hundreds of years ago)? How is education a right? How is it a privilege? How do we defend those views? I think, addressing your proposed policies, we would need to look at issues of state sovereignty. Yes, "No Child Left Behind"/the 14th amendment guarantee schooling K-12, but the methods by which a state conducts this is relative to their own governments. The improvements made to the college system would be difficult to conduct while avoiding an overreach of federal power.
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