Free tuition (Assign)

Free tuition

Harris

February 16, 2020



Tuition can be expensive, take the DIPR program for an example, the tuition can reach up to about 10k for the whole two-term course. With costs that can reach a lot more than just the DIPR programs, it can get troublesome for people financially.

Will Free tuition help those who can’t afford to attend college?

I believe free tuition can help those who financially cannot attend a college course they desire to take. Completely free school tuition, however, could cause issues. William Watson wrote a blog on free tuition stating it would be better if the cost of tuition was raised.

He brought up articles referring to the implementation of Free tuition in 1970’s England.

The articles stated that enrollment steadily increased while the budget for the University did not. This could result in the university stretching itself thin as more and more students joined and a lot of the extracurricular activities would be cut due to the budget being less than they could afford.

While that was the case for the Universities in England, there is an example of another approach to free tuition. Nash McQuarters gave a speech on TedxTulsaCC about free tuition.

The Tulsa Achieves program allows students who excelled in high school to get free tuition into the college. The main worry about a system like this is sustainability and Tulsa college has thought about that. There are three main components that help keep the Tulsa achieves program running as well as manageable so there isn’t too much of an overflow for students and the college itself:


Funding

The program is funded through a portion of appropriated Property Taxes, which also requires the student to be from Tulsa County.


Education

If you graduate high school with a 2.0 point average you’re eligible for this program,


Community

The community supports and invests in its youth and aims to create a better future for them

implementing something like that in Victoria could work for our youth and young adults alike. Not all Universities or Colleges need to implement this program, but it would open the door for those who are good students willing to learn and further their education.

McQuarters shares statistics showing that Tulsa Achieve students had a higher rate of success compared to those who had paid for the same program.

With the barrier of educational success, the program can allow those students who want to excel to do so without too much worry on financial support. With the main tuition cost still in place, universities and colleges can maintain their budgets, and provide extracurricular activities and events that would otherwise be lost if tuition was dropped.




In conclusion, tuition is necessary to maintain many facilities and services colleges and universities require. But, if there was a program like the Tulsa program it could help many students succeed where they wouldn’t have otherwise with the price blocking the way.




Link to TedTalk with Nash McQaurters “Can Tuition-Free college change a community?” https://youtu.be/fy7Pw9-J4Lo




Link to William Watson’s Blog “Forget what you learned in the maple spring higher tuition would be fairer tuition” https://www.fraserinstitute.org/blogs/forget-what-you-learned-in-the-maple-spring-higher-tuition-would-be-fairer-tuition

Blog Analysis (Assign)

Blog Analysis

Harris

January 15, 2020

The way the blog is written makes it feel like the article was written for a general audience based around teens and young adults. The more laid back terms and phrases make the article sound more directed toward a high school graduate level.

The writer starts the blog by talking about numbers that represent how many posts a user has made. Then goes into his first point, about how showing the number of posts someone has made encourages more talking than listening.

This question brought me in because it started an idea, giving me some food for thought if you will.

His main idea is about how listening is better than talking, and he believes the internet should encourage reading rather than typing.

Attwood brings up to experiments done by bloggers, one is called the ‘Ars Banana Experiment’ and the other is called ‘The Slate Experiment’

The Ars Banana experiment tests to see how many people comment before reading through the whole article.

The Slate Experiment is analytics on Farhad Manjoo’s article. The analytics showed that most people only read half of his article.

These two examples are good ideas and prove a point by showing a small number of people read through the article.

Attwood gives four different solutions to these reading issues he has brought up.


He proposes to have the pages load automatically.


He proposes a timer for registered users so the site runners or other users could see how long someone has spent on reading an article.


Attwood suggests giving rewards to people who read through all of the articles.


Make reading the articles, comments, and likes all updated live.

These are his four main points of improvement.

There are a few issues I have picked up with the blog itself. For starters, Attwood starts off by talking about an issue with the numbers representing the number of posts someone has made. Attwood states that the numbers encourage more talking than listening/reading. The two examples he gives are based more on articles than other social media like Twitter or Instagram which both show the number of posts someone has made.

The two articles Attwood uses don’t discuss his main point and question, “the more you talk, the better the conversation, Is this the right message to send to everyone in a discussion? More fundamentally, is it even true?”

While focusing more on the “listening is a better” aspect, Attwood doesn’t answer the question proposed at the beginning.

The articles do not prove that listening is better, nor do they prove that “the more you talk, the better the conversation.”. The two experiments provided only prove that retention rates on articles are low.

The first three points he uses toward the end focus on fixing the issues with retention rates on articles rather than answering the question.



The fourth is more general in turn and could work to improve the quality of discussion.

National Widget Company News Release (Assign)

National Widget Company

News Release


NWC Gets Back on Their Feet


January 17, 2020, 9:00 AM




Today the National Widget Company is rehiring it’s 200 workers laid off 6 months ago due to a forced reconstruction. As of today, the Widget company will be sending out calls when employees are needed. The 50 workers who were laid off in the head office and main plant will be joining back.

“We have sent recall notices to all employees who were laid off in June. As a family-owned company, it was heartbreaking to lay off so many loyal people so we are thrilled to be offering employment to people we consider part of the family.”




With the flood of widgets in the oil widget industry, The National Widget Company had to differ from the traditional markets. The NWC has found new markets within the residential side of China which will open up a whole new world for widget sales.“The increase in sales has been unprecedented. We think this opportunity opens up enormous markets which will last for years.”




The National Widget Company is one of the oldest family-run companies in Canada. The NWC was founded in 1888 by the great grandfather of the current president Andrew Bryce.

Back in June 2019, the National Widget Company ran into trouble when the Middle East market for widgets was flooded with an overstock, leading the company to restructure and retire some of its workers until things smoothed out.











For more information, contact John Doe at 250-555-0327