No; absolutely not. The idea that kids will always do what's best for them is only they were more educated is totally and utterly ridiculous, in saying it would benefit certain individual cases.
Also I'm not comfortable with the whole Social engineering aspect of this idea - though I suppose it's better than Christian home schooling.
Wixted pretty much summed up the other points I was going to make. In Ireland just over 50% of people aged 17-25 attend college and get a degree, partially as we have free third education. But what has happened here is that:
1) Middle class families (like mine - yay!) then are free to spend more money on their child's secondary education (High school to you Americans) in private or semi-private schools. (And on Tutorials, Extra lessons, etc. This money would have previously been saved up for college. Since the 90s when the FG\Lab govt. introduced 'free' fees, the semi-private "fee paying" schools like what I went to have seen their numbers rocket. While many free (and some quite old) schools in middle class areas have closed down.)
2) Meaning that such Middle class kids still better grades than those who go to second rate national schools.
3) Meaning that such Middle class kids then get into better college places meaning they get better careers and so on than those that aren't.
4) Meaning that the level needed to get a really high job is now in many cases a masters degree or PhD, which isn't free. And guess who can afford those..
5) Also meaning that it's politically impossible to bring fees back because of the potential suburban mum backlash at the polls.
In other words free third level education has only really benefitted the top bracket.. I'm grateful for it, because it will put less financial pain on myself and my parents when I start college, but it's a complete idealism to imagine that it will greatly improve the standards of the bottom 25% social class students. Their problems begin in the education system even before pre-school, actually pretty much the day their out of the womb in many cases...
* (Note: The above is generalization. Of course there are individual exceptions that contradict what I've just said.)
Actually, to defend the Irish system - I have benefitted enormously from it and I'm not a middle class kid who went to a private second level school. Nor am I alone - a great many of my friends would also not have been able to get the education we did without this system.
Three years of subsequent study beyond one's primary degree are also fundable on a mean's tested basis - something I have also been very grateful to benefit from. Something which I think weakens you're 4th point.
All of which is not to say that the system is perfect - certainly a level of 'academic inflation' has occured and certainly the ability of the middle class to send their kids to private second level schools gives them advantages - but I think the benefits to myself and others outway the cons.
As to the 5th point, this is propbably true. Former Minister for Education Noel Dempsey wanted to alter the system to make the fees system more means-tested, which I would have supported had it gone through. I think that would have helped level the playing field at second level.
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