Posted on 09/18/2008 9:29:14 AM PDT by bs9021
Duke to Parents: Please Save
by: Bethany Stotts, September 18, 2008
College tuitions have risen dramatically over the last two decades, with the average private four-year college costing parents $14,755 in 1991. Today that same four-year private college would cost $23,712 (2007 dollars), according to statistics released by the College Board.
As Accuracy in Academia has documented, some scholars attribute the rising costs to ever-available federal financial aid, and some to an unnecessary emphasis on higher education.
But Duke University’s former financial aid director, Jim Belvin, asserts that federal financial aid has “many positives,” including a “streamlining” effect and raising awareness about the availability of loans.
“The resources they’ve made available are, in some institutions, it would appear to be the only real source of assistance available to many of students. So that’s been important,” he told the Chronicle of Higher Education. Belvin currently serves as a consultant for Duke and will retire at the end of this year, having served 32 years at the University.
Belvin told the Chronicle that he worries that the federal streamlining process could go too far. “I worry, though, that the continual emphasis on streamlining and continual emphasis on simplification could end up overdoing the process, creating or taking away the opportunity to make rational and thoughtful decisions about eligibility for resources,” he said. “Unfortunately I don't see in the future a time where there will be ample resources to go around and that there’ll be no need to make the kind of fine distinctions in ‘ability to pay’ that I think in a limited-resource world are important.”
His most important advice to parents: save early....
(Excerpt) Read more at campusreportonline.net ...
Back in the 1920's, both my grandmothers got teaching certificates at age 19 after attending Normal school for a year. One eventually retired in 1975 and was considered one of the finest math teachers around. Now, because of "Big college", prospective teachers are forced to take classes that do nothing to help them teach a class (if anything, they're force-fed crap that keeps them from becoming good teachers).
Come to think of it, why do you have to go to "Big College" to become a good lawyer? Abe Lincoln never went to college, but he became a great lawyer. Dickie Scruggs, convicted felon and longtime Democrat Party contributor, was a Law School graduate.
If you want to control costs of "Big College", you have to introduce competition. Internet schools like the University of Phoenix is only a hint of how to bring down costs, to keep our kids from being indoctrinated by angry Socialists and their handlers in "Big college" Administration.
I agree with what you say about Big College. However, University of Phoenix is very expensive and is universally sneered at by those with “real” degrees.
I think most of this educational “racket” is pretty much a group of union “thugs” (I use the word because nothing else works)...that basically have said that you can’t teach unless you have your tickets punched.
Where I grew up...in Alabama....until the late 1950s...the majority of teachers had one or two years of teaching school...not even a real university...and they served out forty years as a teacher. It was in the 1950s when they had a number of new folks arrive with degrees. By the 1960s...almost all of the teachers had a degree of some sort. Today, you have to have the degree and a teaching certificate. The majority of the teachers can’t really teach, and you’ve got kids who simply aren’t prepared for university work...to replace the teachers eventually.
I don’t know how this system will work in twenty years.
U. Phoenix is just the beginning. I can see where someday some excellent professors getting together to form an Internet University that blows the doors off so-called “elite” institutions.
Yes, but how much will they charge? They will not work out of the kindness of their hearts. They will charge what the market will bear. In this case, that’s quite a bit. Have you ever done that math for how much a degree costs of U of P? We checked into it about 6 years ago and it was outrageous. They are very secretive with how much it will cost, too. They would not give me the numbers up front. They finally gave me a per credit price, then it took many more minutes of haggling to find out how many credits were needed for a degree. I forget the numbers now but it was comparable to a private school. There are many schools like U of P that are sued every year for making fraudulent claims and charging outrageous amounts for worthless degrees.
I got my teaching credential through a state program that cost $4000 total and allowed me to work while I got it. It is an excellent program and I got much better training than in a traditional setting. It was internet-based, but grounded in a state university.
You left out the money quote:
“The one thing if I were to sort of leave the profession with a wish...it would be that my college in the future and the institutions that support them focus on family financial planning—getting families to start planning for their college expenses early,” he said. “Money saved early is so, so more valuable than money saved late. Families can make a staggering difference if they will begin early.” He said that the “new systems” don’t penalize parents for saving, but encourage it.
He added that paying for college is a team game and “but the player that’s perhaps most important in the long run is the parent.”
“Everybody can save on a little something and a little something saved over time can really make important differences.”
In other words, the solution to soaring college and university tuition is for parents to make and save and invest more money so that they will be better able to support the institutions’ revenue streams when the kids reach age 18.
That is such helpful and encouraging advice. I can see now that my duty is to shut up and pay up, so that this carnival of unreality called college will welcome my own fine children in to see the sights, ride the rides and leave with a beautiful souvenir diploma.
Ok, I better get back to work so I can pay for this.
Okay. But here is the racket; there is no incentive for the schools to reduce their tuitions because they know that goverment financial aid will continue to cover the gap.
Also, look at the size of various endowments!?!?! I think that these big schools are over flowing with cash.
Statistics show that a college education results in higher earnings over one’s lifetime. I read a study recently that kind of flipped this idea on its head, arguing that college kids tend to be more motivated thus their higher incomes are based on motivation and willingness to work hard for delayed gratification, and not their college degree.
...logging on to a chat room online and describing himself as a “perv dad for fun.”
janet napolitano's looking for people who use the word "constitution" - her boys aren't looking for the gentle wonderful empathetic liberals who rape kids too young to be in kindergarten...
Your taxpayer dollars at work...
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