Posted on 04/19/2016 4:24:17 PM PDT by Kaslin
When I worked my way through college in the 1940s, tuition was $200 to $250 a year. My children’s tuition was $2,000 to $2,500 a year, and my grandchildren’s college education each cost $20,000 to $40,000 a year for tuition alone.
College is so expensive that only about half of today’s college graduates think their degree was worth the cost, according to a survey by Gallup-Purdue. The more debt the student incurs, the more likely he is to doubt that he received his money’s worth.
The total amount of student debt in the United States is a staggering $1.2 trillion, which exceeds even the annual discretionary spending of the entire United States government, including military spending. College debt burdens more than 40 million Americans, of whom more than 4 million are in default on their student loans.
Student loan debt is now more than 50% higher than total credit card debt held by American consumers. Many students are saddled with more than $50,000 in obligations upon graduation, without any good job prospects that would enable them to pay down that debt.
While college costs have skyrocketed, the value of the experience has declined. For example, free speech has become an endangered species at most colleges, and conservative commencement speakers are almost unheard of at public universities.
Liberal Hollywood actors and Democratic politicians are perennial picks as speakers on Commencement Day, and this spring’s ceremonies are no exception. A study last year found that liberal speakers outnumbered conservatives by a six-to-one margin for commencement addresses at the top 100 universities, and if the study had compared liberal to social conservative speakers the imbalance would have been even greater.
New terminology is needed to justify the rampant censorship that is imposed by liberals on college campuses today. A “safe space” is an area on campus where conservatives are not allowed to speak freely, and a “trigger warning” is an alert that something politically incorrect is about to follow.
The Obama Administration, through the federal Department of Education, is partly responsible for the vanishing amount of free speech on campus. Under the George W. Bush Administration, a federal standard had protected free speech by proclaiming that “the mere expression of views, words, symbols or thoughts that some person finds offensive” could not alone constitute harassment.
But in 2013 Obama changed that standard to expand the concept of sexual harassment to include words that are merely “unwelcome.” Liberal colleges then widened this further to include as prohibited “unwelcome” speech anything that might offend with respect to any of these vast categories: gender, race, veteran status, and religion.
The test of what constitutes harassment is no longer objective, but is subjective based on how the listener views the words spoken. If a professor or even another student says something that is unwelcome, then it could constitute harassment under the Obama rule.
The result has been a paralysis in discussion and debate at many colleges. Far from being a dynamic environment encouraging independent thinking, colleges have become mental straight-jackets that suffocate the minds of the students.
Choice of a major can make a big difference as to whether the college experience is a waste of time, or something that might lead to a good job. Anthropology, Film, and Fine Arts are rated by Forbes magazine as three of the worst college majors, and to those I would add Women’s and Gender Studies, which not only fail to teach an employable skill but also mislead students into disastrous ideologies.
Good majors can be pursued in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), but even there the future is not as rosy as it should be. Employers tap into foreign labor in those fields, exploiting the H-1B visa and other programs to hire workers who are bound to employers like indentured servants, and more profitable than American college graduates.
In medicine, large health systems such as the Mayo Clinic are bringing in foreigners to practice medicine in the United States. Minnesota reportedly has more than 400 immigrant physicians who are not licensed to practice medicine yet, but plan to be.
There’s a shortage of good residency programs for Americans who graduate from medical school, who are then unable to obtain the training necessary to start their careers. Yet employers are bringing in foreigners to fill some of those residency positions, which is bad policy for American physicians and patients alike.
The big majority of students in college today are women rather than men, in contrast with a generation ago. But many of those women will want to choose careers of homemaking rather than 9-to-5 jobs in the workforce, raising the question of whether it was worth it for them to incur debt of $50,000 or more in going to college, debt that they cannot get rid of even by declaring bankruptcy.
Thanks Captain Obvious!
Technically, they don’t get their parent’s money’s worth.
My son got his BSEE from Western Carolina University two years ago....
His cost was about $8K/year plus living expenses....
His current job started him at $93K plus a company truck....a fully loaded F-150 crew cab with leather air-conditioned seats....
He could have gone to Georgia Tech....but why?
The solution is to simply get the federal government out of education entirely. Our tax dollars are paying for leftist professors to bloviate about "big business."
The solution is to simply get the federal government out of education entirely. Our tax dollars are paying for leftist professors to bloviate about "big business."
Many colleges are practically free, especially in Canada and Europe. Then there’s apprenticeships, OJT, the military, non-traditional schooling, shadowing, start-ups, etc., etc...
S.F STATE-Late 70’s. $100 per semester for tuition. Then came Prop 103. Now the place has posters all over having to do with political correctness.
Depends on what you get your degree in. An English literature or history or “women’s studies” major isn’t going to land you a high paying job. While a nursing or engineering or medical degree will pay pretty well.
It’s not 1940 anymore, Phyllis.
The worth of a college education depends upon the degree earned, the institution, and the diligence of the student.
Pick well, and it works out dandy, well worth the cost.
Speaking from experience, my own and my kids’.
From Michigan State University:
Every job I have had (except Army) has required a college degree. I have never said on my resume, interview or anywhere that I have a degree. It has never come up in an interview or employer related discussion.
As with most job Requirements, it is a bogus requirement that is only used to be a way to reject an applicant when the employer does not want to state the real reason for the rejection. (person is ugly, body odor, etc).
In the 1940s, the number of people with a college degree was quite low compared to the general population, hence, a college degree was a pretty good step toward a better income. Today, everybody and their brother has a sheet from Point-And-Click University and the economic worth is much lower.
$100 per semester!
That price was for only those with White Privilege.....it’s a micro-aggression!
Running for my safe space now....
Federal aid to education was “supposed” to reduce student debt. The opposite happened, but I don’t think the American people will ever figure it out. In fact, I suspect that tens of millions would say more federal aid to education is the answer!
Doesn’t this always happen when the government sticks it’s nose in?
My second son, a National Merit Scholarship finalist, plans to take the Industrial Equipment Mechanic course at our local community college next year. He wants to be financially independent sooner rather than later.
Not everyone needs to go to to a college or university.
Colleges and universities have become a money-making scam industry. It’s sad. Meanwhile, people who go to a trade school are often looked down upon by their peers and our nation has lost its manufacturing sector. Why? Personally I think it’s because the left wants as many kids on campus as possible for their indoctrination purposes.
“Not everyone needs to go to to a college or university.”
Agree 100%
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