you also need to close the visa loop hole that makes a phd chemist have a lower salary than a GM of a Mcdonalds that didn't even graduate highschool. Many students don't choose science because it is too expensive, too unrewarding and too competitive. Why spend 90k on a degree that will only get you 45k a year if you are lucky? Oh, an maybe work for a company that will make you train a replacement that is designed to make you accept a salary that will barely feed you so your wife has to work as many hours as you do in order to just barely afford a studio/efficiency. Also you need to tarriff foriegn developers that don't create a postivie wage environment. I mean positive for the people not the elites.

My experience as a scientist has been that a career in science is a lot like a career in acting. There are the superstars who are doing extremely well financially and there are those who have transitioned to management who are also doing quite well financially. For the majority who are trying to make a career of pure science/acting, though, it's a struggle to earn enough to live on. Just talk to a few post-docs if you don't believe me. I'm not opposed to educating more scientists  but I'd also like to see some thought about how they are going to be able to earn enough to live on once they've devoted over a decade of their life to getting the necessary education.

I'm not sure I go with the "free" part quite. But we definitely need to provide some incentive--maybe committed placements in good-paying jobs upon graduation-- that will help attract good minds to those fields.

Where were you before I graduated!

I think we need to make higher education cheap, or free, or with programs that will make a degree within every American's reach, period!

Many other countries have free higher education - how can we compete in a world where other countries have scores of college grads,  and we only have a select few?

I see us not only being "cought up to" but quickly passed by these other countries today.

It seems like the importance of education has been given a backseat for too many years.......I agree with President Elect Obama: Better pay for better teachers, from the first grade up!  (And I'm not a teacher, BTW)

With respect to cost, the current situation is that PhD programs in the sciences are not only free but they actually pay a small stipend. Of course, the stipend is not generally enough to pay off student loans accumulated as an undergraduate. Not to sound like a broken record, but the more serious problem is that a significant fraction of people who already have science PhDs are stuggling to find work that pays enough to live on.

I don't really agree with the idea of free education for a select group. I don't think completely free education is practical but affordable education with a better system of providing aid to students and better interest rates/policies for student loans as well as tax credits for students are all ways to make education available to more people. I have to agree with a lot of the above posts that when it comes to the sciences specifically it is the employment sector that really needs to be addressed. II believe i jobs in the sciences were better paying we would see more students. The problem is that a guy with a little mechanical knowledge can come out of high school and get a job paying $25/hr+ with no further education whatsoever and many who attend college struggle to find a job that pays half that. We really need to get our priorities straight when it comes to pay scale and improve the wages for college grads, that is why people go to college isn't it?

You had me until I saw the government making it free part.  Government should act to make it affordable and demanded but subsidising it isn't the answer.

No free PhD's...  at least not on tax payers money.  Less expensive PhD's perhaps...  government backed student loans that can be repaid by working directly for the government perhaps..  but no "free" education beyond high school.  If you're worth it there are plenty of merit based grants and scholarships to enable you to continue your studies.