Posted on 12/09/2018 7:28:32 AM PST by Kaslin
I was reading about a wealthy alumni of the University of Chicago who gave $150 to its economics department.
I thought - well, its your money, not mine. But that has got to be the biggest waste of money ever.
>>If you want another one of these degrees or in the so-called social sciences where, when you can’t get a job anywhere else you become an IRS auditor, you can pay the tariff.
My wife had IRS auditors who were afraid of her, she would show them up so badly.
Nurses as well as doctors. And Plumbers, Electricians, and HVAC guys.
Far more Free-Market and less Marxist than most.
The trouble is the left-wing people who run the universities consider the global warming agenda and the queer agenda to be most the critical, not STEM studies.
This is already the model for a few STEM majors in graduate school. My tuition and a stipend were covered when I was in graduate school, while those getting PhDs in English or Sociology had to pay their own way. This has been the case for decades.
Personally, I think that universities should be required to make full disclosure to prospective students on the employment prospects of their selected major. When the "Occupy Wall Street" protests took place, it seemed that many of the protestors were complaining that they had college degrees but could not get hired anywhere. However, few of them complained that their college degree was in a useless subject, and it is likely that most of them still have not figured that out. Instead of blaming Wall Street for not hiring them, they should have turned that anger and frustration against the colleges and universities that charged them thousands of dollars on worthless degrees.
So, he’s asking for the re-instatement of the old Defense Scholarship that we used to have in the 50s and 60s.
You do that and along with hurting all of the various and sundry social justice degrees (which my school has and nobody is majoring in) you will also destroy English majors and the arts, because these degrees will end up paying higher tuition and housing to offset the much larger number of engineering and medical degree majors.
If you want to lower costs and get more STEM majors work toward standardizing STEM courses which will increase competition and transferability. Make Federal funding contingent upon that transferability. That will break the whole bottleneck apart (and probably wreck a lot of havoc). You will end up with more qualified graduates if you do this right and you will also introduce much-needed competition.
1) the AMA is a cartel that restricts entry (output) of MDs to keep their prices (salaries) high.
2) teaching staff at universities are unionized; that means the prices universities must pay for good STEM faculty are equal to "art" and "polisci" faculty's pay, which causes shortages of good STEM teachers who can command higher compensation in the research/private sector and so don't bother teaching. That means STEM students can't be trained well, and cannot competitively pay a bit more to obtain the high-income degrees wanted like chemical engineering in adequate quantities with excellent instructors.
I'd correct these things first before cheerleading for EVEN MORE government subsidies to specific education sectors.
Undergrad degrees even in STEM fields typically include a heavy dose of PC madness in the form of non-credit but mandatory diversity training as well as degree-credit offerings in liberal arts and social sciences. For that matter, even physics has now been invaded by the social justice warriors. DO NOT SUBSIDIZE ‘HIGHER’ ED ANYMORE! That’s the only way to break the current system.
This suggestion isn’t bad, but it is cou ter to the biggest problem in higher education in that it doesn’t do much to control costs.
If government is to be on the hook for all this higher education (which is a whole problem in itself), it should have a quota system on what it’s paying for. Each year, have some administrative body publish a list of what majors and how many bullets are authorized for funding across the nation. Mechanical engineering majors have x number, maybe 10,000... theatrical dance? Maybe one or two. Publish the list and make it a political football.
Also, make it competitive, students reapply each year and if the GPAs aren’t meeting a threshold, no more funding for that year, either pay for it yourself or work until you can afford the next semester of credits. It wouldn’t close off the pursuit of higher education, students with the financial means to pay themselves, or be funded by the college or private donors would be allowed to do so, but it would tighten up the spigot of subsidies to majors that contribute nothing to the public good, and reduce the overall student debt.
This suggestion, in my mind, also allows the universities a say in their fates, say if Harvard feels like it’s women’s studies program is so important, it can fund scholarships out of its massive endowment. If they don’t want to pay for them outright, they have the means of backing private loans that could (unlike student loans today) be dissolved in bankruptcy or written off as bad debt.
I would recommend to Trump to add 100% free federal certified virtual online degree programs to his list of accomplishments.
This would accomplish:
a)free college degree for all (virtually online)
b)pressure on existing uni’s to lower prices as students opt for free alternatives
c)higher levels of education in general as more associates and bachelor degrees would leave funds for more masters and phds
d)less room for progressive teachings and more for on topic
I’ve read that many liberals are demanding that the term “STEM” no longer be used as it discriminates against the liberal arts (seriously). They want STEM to be replaced by STEMS, with the final S standing for the Social Sciences.
So the proposal by the author would get watered down, sooner or later. And the cost would balloon.
This was the case which established that tests which have "disparate impact"(fewer minorities pass) are unlawfully discriminatory. Prior to this, many companies would just hire people straight out of high school, give them tests, and those with higher IQ would be put on management training tracks.
With one decision, we could undercut the entire rationale for needing a college degree. Companies could go by independently administered tests of literacy and math ability. If you got through four years of college without acquiring the ability to understand what written instructions say, or write a coherent paragraph, you would not get hired regardless of degree. Meanwhile, a home-schooled 18 year old with no degree (but with objectively demonstrated ability) could apply and be hired.
I would also mandate that colleges supply the government with a list of graduates, their majors, and social security numbers. The IRS could then publish post-graduation statistics, by college and major, of average income a year after, and five years after, graduation. It would become painfully obvious which colleges were not worth their tuition costs.
The United States spends an ungodly sum on colleges and universities, we as tax payers are funding social engineering, hatred for America and American values, insurrection, anarchy and moral decline. Remove funding and instruct those at the Universities to come before a newly formed American education commission with their track record and future curriculum for approval.
I know, but what will $150 million do exactly? Economics is philosophy.
If he wanted to make real change, give $1 million to 150 high schools to start technical and entrepreneurship programs. He would literally reach hundreds of thousands of students
A STEM degree takes real work and many students just are lazy.
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