Posted on 08/16/2023 9:45:28 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
It's August. Many young people head off to college.
This year, fortunately, fewer will go.
I say "fortunately" because college is now an overpriced scam.
Overpriced, because normal incentives to be frugal and make smart judgements about who should go to college were thrown out when the federal government took over granting student loans.
Why?
Because our government basically vomits money at everyone who applies.
If private lenders gave out the loans, they'd look at whether they were likely to be paid back. They'd ask questions like: "What will you study? You really think majoring in dance will lead to a job that will pay you enough to allow you to pay us back?"
Government rarely asks these questions. Bureaucrats throw money at students. Many don't benefit. Many shouldn't even be going to college. Today, nearly half of the students given loans don't graduate even after six years.
Many feel like failures.
College is good for people who want to be college professors or who major in fields like engineering and computer science that might lead to good jobs. But that's not most people. Government loans encourage everyone to go to college, even if they're not very interested in academics.
Government's handouts also invite colleges to keep raising tuition. Over the past 50 years, college cost rose at four times the rate of inflation. Four times!
Years ago, I reported how colleges were suddenly wasting money on luxuries like fancy gyms and even day spas. Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that it's gotten worse: The University of Oklahoma bought a monastery in Italy for study abroad students! The University of Kentucky built a theater where students play video games.
"Why not raise tuition?" asks the typical college president. "Uncle Sam pays the bill!"
When I went to Princeton, tuition was $2,000. Now its $60,000.
Colleges have little incentive to cut costs or innovate. Princeton still "teaches" by having professors lecture. Super boring. I slept through many.
Although today, I guess I should thank Princeton because its tedious lectures inspired me to try to find better ways to present information. That made me successful on TV.
Today, student loan borrowers owe tens of thousands of dollars. Last year, the president announced he would cancel up to $20,000 of that debt per person.
Indebted students loved that! A group named the Student Debt Crisis Center called that "a major win for many."
But it would be a major loss for many more! Canceling debt is unfair to the people who work hard and pay off their debts.
Fortunately, Biden's plan was struck down by the Supreme Court, which said only Congress has the right to cancel student debt. Congress didn't.
Now Biden's trying again. The administration announced they will forgive debt for anyone who's been making payments for more than 20 years. That's better, but still bad. Maybe courts will stop this handout, too.
College students take on loans and spend decades in debt because they believe they must get a degree to be hired. But that's no longer true. IBM, Accenture, Dell, Bank of America, Google and other big companies, recognizing the uselessness of many undergraduate degrees, recently dropped college-degree requirements. So have state governments in Maryland, Utah, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Alaska, North Carolina, New Jersey and Virginia.
Good jobs in the trades, like welding and plumbing, don't require a college degree. Trade school programs often take less than two years and cost much less than college.
To have a good life or get a good job, you don't need fancy dining halls, video game auditoriums or a college degree.
College has become a government-subsidized rip-off. It's good that fewer people go.
My daughter’s friend is in her last year of medical school - she’s studying to be an oncologist.
She told me she is looking at $500,000 in student loans that she will be mandated to pay off.
Even with a doctor’s salary, how does one get out from under that.
Meanwhile, the deadbeats who Biden got off the hook will be able to apply for another “student loan” to go to Arizona State University who is offering the new “Psychology of Taylor Swift” course. Better hurry. Seats are going fast.
Student loans were never intended to benefit the students. They are designed to subsidize your be schools.
“she’s studying to be an oncologist.”
She better hope they keep “slow walking” the cures for cancers...
It would be a pity if there was a pill that cured it....
:-(
Check out the freshman prerequisite class schedule they are designed to lock you in for 5+ years.
Not every professor’s lectures are boring! (I mainly know the field of molecular and cellular biology.) My humanities professors’ lectures at MIT were not boring either!
College is good for every student who is serious about learning, and who majors in a serious, non-ideological subject. NOT “ethnic studies”!!!!
Now Harvard (my graduate alma mater) has chosen (with the help of the Pritzkers) an “ethnic studies” “professor” as her president! By the help of God, may she soon depart!!!!
Arizona State, however, has an Honors College, too!!
Student loans were never intended to benefit the students. They are designed to subsidize your be schools.
******************
Yep,
The education sector has been a gold mine during the Boomer Era, for so many.
However, I have doubts because of demographics(low reproductive rates) whether the status quo can be maintained.
Great article from John Stossel. College degrees are a ripoff. Last time I checked, the husband is expected to be the major breadwinner in MOST American families — by far.
But if that’s true, why is it that 58% of University of Georgia undergraduate degrees go to women?
Where did all the men go? You can only conclude that young males (and their parents) concluded that other options (trade schools, work apprentice programs) are a much better guarantee of long term job success — at a helluva lot less financial risk.
This says to me: attendance at colleges and universities are going to see major declines in the next decade.
Frank Zappa & The Mothers
Dummy Up (Live)
Sunrise
Get up in the mornin’
You know, I dig this mornin’
The sun is shinin’ bright
I’m gonna get outside
Gonna wash my face
Grab my hat
Put it on my head
I take a walk downtown
Yeah... Because I feel so-oh good
I think I’m gonna take a walk downtown
Hey! Sunrise!
Wo!
Somethin’ I never seen before
Been walkin’ down the street every day
Nobody like you ever passed my way
Maybe it must be too much sun
Couldn’t be my hat, must be too much...
Wait a minute! Is that you?
What’s that?...What, what’s that?...
What, what’s that?...What?...
Dummy Up
What is that?...
I know what that is, I know what that is...
I bet you that’s a restaurant menu...
Let me see!...Let me see!
Not only do you get the Desenex burger
What?
Not only...the Desenex burger
Well you are in for a real treat, Jim
Wait a minute...I think I like that dance better than...
What are you talkin’ about, creep?
What I’m talkin’ about is you’ve been in this killer fog down here too long
What?
You need somethin’ to get up and go to school with
Wait a minute, you’re not talkin’ to an old fool now
You know I wasn’t born yesterday!
Heh heh heh!
Wait a minute...
I like that little dance you were doin’ there...
(Jeff Simmons tries to corrupt Napoleon Murphy Brock by showing him a lewd dance and suggesting that he’d smoke a high-school diploma...)
Hey! Wait a minute!
Hey this, this stuff...
I never seen one of these before...that’s not a menu...
This stuff is expensive
What is that?
You shoot it, you’ll conserve all winter
I do what?
It lasts longer
(Not only do you get the Desenex burger)
Now come on, try it
No, no
It’s really good
No. Smoke THAT?!
Have I ever lied to you?
Have I ever seen you before?
I don’t, I don’t even know you!
Look...
I don’t even know what that is!
And you’re drivin’ me to smoke it?!...
Just before, we smoked the tapes that you made
Smoked the tapes?
Smoked the tapes of your group
I think I’m with the damned
You can really get off
Let’s try a joint of this
A what?
A joint
You mean this kinda joint?
No man!
Where you been in livin’?...Reseda?
No, San Jose
(The evil dope pusher is cutting up a white gym sock, Formerly owned by Carl Zappa and still damp. The shredded sock will be placed inside of a high-school diploma And ignited with a sulphur-preparation... His first taste of big city life!...)
That’s okay, wait...
Hey! The roach of this is really gonna be good, so I’ll...
Have mercy!
What do you do with that thing?
WHAT DO YOU DO WITH THAT THING? YEAH!
Wait a minute!
Wait a minute!
Wait a minute!
What do you do with that thing?
I wanna know!
Wait a minute!
(Now the next step of this operation: The evil corrupter of youth is going to take him from Step One, Which is a mere high-school diploma stuffed with a gym sock, To Step Two, Which is a college-degree stuffed with absolutely nothing at all. Smoke that and it’ll really get you out there!...)
I still don’t feel as good as I felt this mornin’...yeah yeah...
(You’ll grow out of it...)
DUMMY UP!
I heard it again, somebody said...
You see this?
Wait a minute!...
College!
College!
That’s college-rhythm
You mean if I smoke that, it’s the same as this
As if I was at college?
Roll it on up!
Roll it on up!
Roll it on up!
Give me that!...
No no, the college degree is stuffed with absolutely nothing at all
You get, you get nothing with your college-degree...
But that’s what I want!
I forgot, I’m sorry...
Well, if you get nothin’, well that’s what I want
(A true Zen saying: Nothing is what I want. The results of a higher education...)
“It would be a pity if there was a pill that cured it....”
Best not to tell her about Ivermectin or the Keto diet...she’ll want to find a new career if she here’s about them.
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