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.
My daughter goes to U.C. Berkeley, I am currently paying about $30,000 dollars a year for her UC education including tuition, books and housing.
While I am very proud of her, and consider Berkeley a great “institution”, I can tell you I am NOT getting my money’s worth. I follow her curriculim carefully, the returns in terms of jobs against value for the expense just doesn’t add up. Luckily because of her focus of study, she is not under the thumb of a lot of PC leftwing agendas, but there is a lot of discrimination against both whites as well as Asians in favor of blacks and Hispanics. I am paying huge amounts of money, which many cannot afford, that is more due to the greed of the Administrators and Professors who preach socialism and communism but live in the Berkeley hills and have lavish lifestyles and elite venues and are total hypocrites and who are largely responsible for such high tuitions. Money grabbing is their main interest thus they favor foreign students who pay double or even triple the already expensive costs to a UC education.
I have been very lucky in my investments so I can afford her education. But many cannot. Student loans are out of control and only perpetuate higher tuitions. These costs are much worse than the costs for healthcare and I hold the leftwing entirely responsible for such costs which inflate far out of purportion to actual living costs and actual inflation.
I would like to see a dramatic increase in internet based e-education and internet collaboration of faculty and students, accreditation of such schooling which should increase dramatically in available alternatives to UC type systems, the educators who teach at such schools could be global in nature, more options for technical, industrial and job specific education and not just universal education, etc.. Yes, the ability to cheat will be more obvious - but I don’t care about that as much as opening up many venues to be educated. In addition, education in this day and age of constant change is a life long process. Yot cannot just “sit on your laurels” anymore, you have to constantly educate yourself - and I don’t mean in terms of being over stressed and over tested, nor wish to see the competitive demand to be more difficult in rigor. We do not need to make things more difficult, in fact we probably need to make it less so but a constant part of life’s agenda to continually learn during one’s life. Thus, not to “cram” everything into a couple of years, but a more comprehensive approach spread out over decades.
For what it’s worth, IMO.
She may be pretty smart when it comes to getting her rants published but imho we'd be stupid to go along with this garbage. DOE.gov says this year the total cost average cost of a 4-year degree is just under $70K. Census.gov says the average grad makes $60k/yr, --double the average $30k a highschool grad makes.
College is a really good deal but it takes a little bit of math to see it.
HOORAY Phyllis Schlafly. Debt U. - where intellectual, philosophical and economic bankruptcy meet.
Those numbers work for some degrees that are useful.
But getting one in women’s studies and manning the register at Forever 21 is not one of them.
How do you post more than 300 words???
I’m not sure?
He will have a good paying job for the rest of his life. Kudos for him!
They get 4 years of daycare w/sex and alcohol. What could be better?
I hope so. My friend who manages solid waste for the State of South Carolina says they have a dreadful time getting heavy equipment mechanics, because they can’t pass the drug test. Sounds like an opportunity for a young man who doesn’t use drugs!
Solution:
Make the college or university endowment funds
co-sign the student loans.
As it now stands there is no cost control but
subtle pressure to increase the fees.
(Sounds like pricing in medical care as Gumment
got involved).
You do know that he can go to college for half price because of the National Merit designation? Many colleges offer major scholarships for finalists.
He should make the most of it. My sons did. Good pay upon graduation, now making six figures with the four-year degrees in high tech. Only debt any of them have is mortgage. Even paid cash for their autos. Those degrees paid off.
It's a math thing so "average" has to mean all degrees evened out. While some are worse, some are better and the bottom line is most are pretty good. The thing is that contrary to what this threads article suggests, Americans are not idiots and most finish college with useful degrees:
There are no unemployed heavy equipment mechanics that can pass a drug test. Even in the struggling oil patches of North Dakota and Texas.
Not really. I am a pharmacist and did not get it by point and click on line. It only took six years of chemistry, math, physics, biology, physiology, and pharmacy courses. I had a prior degree in geology and spent a lot of time at University that I paid for by working in the oilfield. It took another year working with experienced pharmacists for my skills to be truly adequate.
I am paid well and deserve it. Most kids that try it flunk out in the first two years. That is why they pay us well.
I have zero sympathy with those that pursue a job path that is a dead end and then whine about their debt.
However one must realize that the above is an average of all majors. The hard sciences and engineering majors are paid much more and thus make college look like a good deal on the average. In reality the non professional courses are a bad deal.
Given the choice of being an electrician, women's studies, anthropology, liberation studies, black studies, gay studies etc. I would rather have a job that pays well. Hello Mr. Electrician, and it only would take me one year plus an apprentice ship and a hell of a lot less money for training.
Unfortunately I decided to be a Pharmacist. My electrician makes more money per hour than me.
How do you post more than 300 words???
*******************************************************
In a reply you may post as many words as you want. If you’re talking about posting an article, you still man post as many words as are in the article, unless the article is from a source that requires that you post an excerpt only, in which case the maximum is 300 words.
If the entire article is 300 words or less, you may not post the whole thing and call it an excerpt.
Hope this answers your question.
I like reading Kaslin’s posts because she posts the entire article, when it’s permissible.
Not as many as you'd think, but we can pay cash for a 1-year trade problem with no problem.
Drug use, especially marijuana, is getting to be a big problem. If the scheduling works out, he can also work as an overnight delivery driver for Krispy Kreme (for a friend's son-in-law): they can't get drivers because so many are using drugs.
That is why job postings will state, "Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience".
Get the feds out of education AND employment, and there would be no more need for these backdoor qualification methods.
Agreed, the Feds should not tell any private employer whom they can and cannot employ.
States can tell individuals what jobs in the private sector they can and cannot do based on age of a minor and based on part of a sentence after conviction for violation of a law.
That’s about it for employment.
Education is a separate topic. It would seem sometime of transition period is needed that makes getting to the goal complicated. Employment is not complicated.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.