Posted on 04/06/2011 8:28:57 AM PDT by Oberon
Higher education is in a bubble situation—its price has risen sharply, fueled by cheap federal loan and grant money (sound familiar?) while the return on the investment has fallen. More and more college students are either not graduating or are taking jobs that do not require college-level skills and often pay mediocre amounts. In investor parlance, the price-earnings ratio on investing in higher education seems to be rising sharply. Where markets operate without external interference, there would be a correction. Sensing lower returns on their investment, the demand for higher education would fall and, with that, enrollments. Declining demand would lead to falling tuition fees, etc. Colleges would layoff lots of workers.
Yet market forces in this sector are grossly distorted by governmental and, to a much smaller extent, private philanthropic payments. Subsidies are propping up a situation that is unsustainable in the long run...
(remainder of article at link).
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.forbes.com ...
Or move to NY or Ca , get your residence and go to college there for cheap.
Another option, go in the airforce. Learn to be an aircraft mechanic or air traffic controller. My best friends kid started out at 75K as a controller at Miami Intl. airport.
Third option , become a plumbing/heating or an electrian journeyman.
In this sense Europe has a better system in place. Direct entrance after high school is very difficult to manage. Many take an apprenticeship as they wait the required semesters to be granted entrance. Some decide that they are happy with their new career path. Only the top students get in upon graduation to the public universities, particularly if they want to study in a popular field. There are however private Universities for those who want to pay the fees. I can’t imagine they have any system for affirmative action...since the criteria is based on your BAC, Abitur or A level grades. No one unqualified would even have managed to get as far as to sit for those tests.
On a side note, my youngest has decided to apply to go to school in Europe. Considering the tuition is literally 580 euros per semester, we are pretty thrilled. Now it is up to her to manage all of her AP classes necessary to qualify.
If any of my kids want to do this it's their call, but I would not advise it... first, because I don't believe in socialism and therefore don't want to take advantage of the fruits of it, and second, because I don't think I could stand to live in either state.
“Subsidies are propping up a situation that is unsustainable in the long run...”
Sounds like a description of the U.S. health care system. Both health care and education suffer from too much government involvement in the form of subsidies and regulation. Not surprisingly, it’s often difficult to find good value for the money in such a distorted market.
I think the real problem isn’t so much collegiate education as much as it is getting into the graduate level. Plenty of people in my current graduating class aren’t going immediately into graduate school, and plenty more have had a really hard time with the application process for now, these aren’t just students who barely passed either, plenty of them.
In our state, tuition free college for those using Dual Credit during high school. Many, many homeschoolers, and public schoolers we know are getting their AA’s from community college and receiving it at the same time they get their High School diploma (dual credit = counts for HS and AA.)
Our son did that, then got a merit based scholarship to a State U and lived at home. Then got his Grad degree tuition at a private University paid for by being a T.A. while still living at home. So no tuition was every paid, his expenses were gas and books.
Due to using Dual Credit, all this was accomplished by the time he was 21. (We are fortunate to have State U and private colleges within 35 miles of home, so he was able to commute.)
I’m not sure all states have Dual Credit, but if they do, it sure makes sense to check it out.
Eldest Daughter is doing dual enrollment now. As a homeschooled 11th-grader she's eligible to take her pre-calculus at the county community college. Her lady professor, not long out of grad school herself, loves Eldest Daughter because E.D.'s performance in the class is just smoking the college-age guys who are attending full-time.
It's amazing what simply paying attention and working hard can accomplish.
That's what I did. One of the best decisions of my life.
We homeschooled through 9th grade, then he took all classes at Community College, and I was glad because my head would have exploded if I had had to teach higher maths. We made it through Saxon Alg II, but my eyes were crossing at that point, LOL. In our state, with dual credit you have to test into College Alg. level, and evidently, by the time they’ve finished Saxon Alg II, they’re ready because he didn’t have a problem getting into the program.
ping for later
Hey, y’all... I didn’t think of it when I posted this, but it’s probably worth pinging the Homeschool list. Your call, metmom.
In the long run conservatives should promote Charles Murray's ideas: Qualifying exams!
The following is a post from another thread that I posted today:
Charles Murray is right! We should move to qualifying exams to test the mastery of individual subjects. The process could start as early a kindergarten.
Nearly all content could be placed on the Internet and be available to the student for free. Financially, the makers of the course content could do very well if they included some advertising on their sites.
When the child mastered a level they would immediately move to the next level.
Testing would be done by private businesses or organizations and the identity of the child could be assured in the same way identities are checked with MCAT or LSAT exams are done now, or by means of retinal or fingerprint scans.
Yes, there are some professions that require attendance on a college or university campus, but even in fields such as medicine, dentistry, engineering, and nursing a great deal of content could be done through the Internet with testing done by qualifying exam.
Benefits:
** Bright children could move through the system faster.
My own homeschooled children entered college at the ages of 13, 12, and 13. All finished all general courses and Calculus III by the age of 15. Two earned B.S. degrees in math by the age of 18. One earned a masters in math by 20. The oldest was equally successful by attending college at night, and working on his full-time interest during the day.
** Slower or normal intelligence children would not be able to move on to the next level until they had mastered the lower level basics.
** A small cottage industry would spring up to provide tutoring services.
** Our nation's parents and children would regain the confidence that our early citizens took for granted. It **is** possible to teach your own children. It is possible to be an autodidact.
** The cost of educating a child could be greatly greatly reduced!
** My own children entered the workforce years earlier than is typical. This amounts to more than a quarter of a million dollars to a million dollars in earnings over what their contemporaries will earn in a lifetime.
** Our young people will be in the workforce sooner and will have less debt. This will increase the likelihood that they will marry and start families earlier. This will decrease the amount of out of wedlock sex, “sleeping around”, “living-together”, and “hanging-out”.
** The extra wealth that these young people generate by entering the workforce earlier will increase our GDP.
** Employers will not feel as much need to use college degrees as a means to screen applicants for aptitude and persistence.
** The heavy burden of property taxes would be greatly reduced. This would benefit citizens of all ages, but it would especially make home ownership much more likely for young adults.
** If young adults can move into the workforce , make progress in their careers, own a home, and build wealth sooner, and have a reduced tax and school debt burden, they will be less likely to prolong their adolescence into their late twenties and early thirties. They will be more likely to marry, own homes, and raise families.
Yes, there are some areas that do not work well with testing. English composition is one area that comes to mind. There are also some laboratory experiences and mentoring that likely are best done in a “school-like” setting, but much of a child's education could and should be done outside of our prison-like K-12 schools, and Marxist infected colleges and universities.
In our state (Iowa) if the “equivalent” course is offerred at the public school, then the course is not paid for at the college.
Since we have a full slate of AP courses, this means very few college courses come under the state funded option.
Unfortunately our own state universities will not recognize the AP credit for various degrees (such as engineering), but will recognize the equivalent community college credit.
Also you really want the course and not the AP credit on your transcript for consideration to medical school. Might not be as big a deal for something like Chemistry since you will be taking Organic as well, but for Math and Physics - I am leery of the AP option.
What is the purpose of the university? What is the purpose of a university education? What is the benefit to the individual of a university education? What is the benefit to our society of someone with a university education?
It appears that its primary function is to separate the general populace its tuition money, honestly. If one wants to become truly educated (as opposed to pursuing a credential), one can do that at the local library and online. Sadly, however, for many the credential is indispensable.
My son made a point not to mention to his fellow students that he was a fifteen year old dual enrollment student when he was setting the curve in his math classes. ;-) He's in grad school at Stanford now, not my favorite choice politically, but we are very proud of his success.
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