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Nothing the Government subidizes decreases in cost as far as I’ve seen.
UW Madistan just bumped up their tuition 5.5%...blamed our new Governor Scott Walker (R, WI) for cutting funding, don’t ya know! ;)
This...is a bubble I could get behind 100% - pop it, bring the cost of education back down to reality and limit the degrees to x number of graduates per field per year based on future job availability actuarial estimates. Now we’re talkin...
Employers need to stop worshipping the diploma.
I hope so.
My daughter is going to be college age very soon.
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Ronald Reagan:
“The government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”
I have a BS in engineering and an MBA, (Old joke, we all know what bs means, MS means more of it, and phd is piled higher and deeper) from days long ago. Today, I’d tell the kids to NOT go to college. What’s the point of liberal indoctrination after HS indoctrination, for a 100K bill that gets you NOTHING. They’ll learn more life lessons from roofing from the construction owner than from the prof. The only college worthy is Hillsdale. If kids can make admissions, poorly taught students don’t have a chance. My kids are looking at home school and other options other than government run indoctrination centers.
This is something that has stuck in my mind for years, even though I'm not a college person (a few classes here and there).
Our local newsies did a worthwhile report, years ago, on escalating college costs. While the inflation rate was 2-3%, University of Arizona was tacking 8% onto college costs, year after year.
The newsies concluded it was because of cheap loans.
And then, along came Her Highness, Queen Pelosi, election night 2008, and I remember one of the first things out of her mouth, was that they were going to make it easier for students to attend college.
Whenever a slimy pol says "make it easier", watch out for your wallet.
I knew instinctively that she meant that they would further cheapen college loans, but didn't know there would be, essentially, a government takeover of loans.
Cheaper loans meant that a student could go even further into debt, and become even more a government slave to that debt.
At the same time, our Leftist government makes it harder and harder for that student to find a decent job, in order to relieve themselves of that increased debt.
Waiting for the next shoe to drop, in my conspiratorial mind. Want to get out from underneath that debt? Well maybe you could join the Civilian National Conspiracy Corps, uh I mean the Civilian National Security Corps, and have that debt forgiven!
Naaah, wouldn't happen...our President wouldn't think like that.
Another case of easy credit with minimal standards. Will have the same effect as the housing bubble - the dupes (in this case, marginal students who get a boat load of debt) will pay lots of penalties and then default. One may not be able to discharge these loans in bankruptcy, but one cannot get money they don’t have, so after paying lots of penalties, they will default and the originators will have to write off the loans. Since these are federally guaranteed, we taxpayers will get the bill..
There are a LOT of unemployed / grossly underemployed 20-something college grads with huge student loans.
It’s even possible they won’t vote for Baraq next time.
No, no - I think 2000 dollars to crowd in to a class of 100 people taught by a tired Grad Student so that some college professor can work on their book and live in a beach house is a steal.
/sarc
It is about time they go after this artifical maket. Make the colleges use all that tax exempt endowment money they have been sitting on and stashing away for years. Get all the political castoffs off of the college payrolls for doing next to nothing... Make professors actually teach classes again.
Beware the Government-Education Complex.
It’s basic math:
In the old days, university degrees used to be calibrated so that they were attainable by someone with what was then considered to be “elementary school teacher’s” academic ability - an IQ of 115 points.
Of course, IQ doesn’t correlate perfectly with real-world ability, but if it’s a proxy for anything, it’s for academic ability.
IQ is normally distributed.
An IQ of 115 points is 1 standard deviation above the average (which is, by definition, 100).
30% of any normally distributed population is 1 standard deviation or more above the average.
Hence, only 30% of the general population could potentially have gained a degree under the old standard. (Of course, far fewer had the chance of a college education in the “bad old days”.)
Last year, 70% of US High School grads enrolled in 4 year college.
The least academically gifted of those 70% will have an IQ one standard deviation (15 points) below the average - 85 points.
In less politically correct days, an IQ of 85 was considered “educationally sub-normal”.
Bottom line: what is the value of a qualification that is calibrated to be within reach of 70% of the population?
I’m guessing the value is materially below the current cost of a four year degree.
Sorry to be a party-pooper: of course it would be “nice” if everyone could get a college degree, but a degree that anyone can get is worthless.
Time to end the shameful scam that loads kids up with debt for inappropriate and useless “qualifications”.
Eventually students are going to stop paying highly inflated tuition costs and once enrollment begins to drop, the bubble will pop and colleges will start going bankrupt in droves. Like most government programs meant to make something more affordable, our government’s meddling in education has done the exact opposite and has completely stifled any good innovation or progress (health care is another classic example). Technology, on the other hand, will fill the void when colleges are exposed as poor investments. For a fraction of the cost, online virtual courses can teach students just as effectively as physical classrooms. They can offer lessons by world class professors and let the students learn at their own pace. This is the future of learning, and one that is much different than the stale model that’s currently our educational system.
The economics of colleges are quite interesting. Costs always rise and productivity never increases. Not very sustainable. One can only subsidize a limited amount of philosophers and anthropologists.
How about taxing the Billions in the University Endowments that are at the Moment TAX FREE!!!!
The cost of higher education has risen much faster than inflation since 1965 when federal grants and loans for higher education were passed by the far left. Now known as Pell Grants and Stafford Loans, the tax money dumped into these schemes has constantly increased and the prices charged by schools has chased those increases.
As tax dollars were thrown at both government colleges and private colleges the schools raised the prices they charged the students. In short order the schools raised prices even faster than the federal government threw money at them. The states also threw money at both government colleges and private colleges causing even more inflation and causing ever larger numbers of people to join those feeding at the government trough.
In 1965 Harvard’s tuition was $1750.00 a year. Their tuition hadn’t gone up since 1963. Had their tuition gone up just at the rate of inflation it would have been $11,823.00 in 2008. Instead it was $32,577.00. Harvard ‘s product was not better in 2008 than in 1965. The increase over inflation was just a matter of sucking up the tax dollars being thrown at schools.
The saddest part of this is the average person has not benefitted from these schemes. Students and their parents pay a larger percentage of their income to attend school today than they did in 1965 even after taking the government handouts because the price the schools are charging has gone up more than double inflation.
In 1965 the average income was $6,469.00 the minimum wage was $1.25 an hour. In 2008 the average income was $40,712.00, minimum wage was $5.15 an hour.
It took 27% of the average family’s annual income to pay for a year at Harvard in 1965. In 2008 it took 80% of a family’s annual income. In 1965 it took a student working for minimum wage 35 weeks to earn enough for a year at Harvard. In 2008 a student working for minimum wage would have to work 158 weeks to earn the cost of one year’s tuition at Harvard.
The solution is to eliminate all tax funded subsidizes of schools and for the states to sell off their government schools. The price of a college education would drop to an affordable level over night.
