The Great American College Tuition Rip-Off < Funding the New Professoriate Elites >

Magic City News ^ | Mar 3, 2005, 17:56 | By Paul Streitz

[Helms]

It seems that the Managerial Class in Business and Industry is being challenged by the Con Game which is current higher education. College costs are absurd.

There is currently a huge amount of wealth in endowments and their power has grown.

[dennisw]

bttt

[bubbleb]

Eureka College (President Reagan's alma mater) reduced tuition last year from $19,000 to $13,000 a year. Big news and was reported on Fox News. With an academic scholarship my daughter is able to attend.

[randog]

Very insightful article.

A friend of my wife has a daughter that just graduated from high school last year. The girl wants to go to cosmetology school, which is OK by mom, but dad insists that she go to college. I told my wife the girl had a much better chance of making more money and living a better life if she learned to cut hair than if she got a worthless degree from an Ivory Tower.

[cyborg]

How were they able to reduce tuition? BTW, I think the federal funding of education is partially responsible for the inflation of school tuition.

[firebrand]

Harvard and some other colleges have started letting any accepted student whose family makes $40,000 or less a year go there for free. This is the right way to go, or part of the right way, because for a family making $40,000 or less, even the small part of the tuition that they usually have to pay, or the payback of the loans, is a hardship.

[CaptainK]

The guy who tiled my bathroom last week just moved into a four bedroom, four bathroom house on the water in Suffolk county. That's his main residence. He also owns two investment properties.

[dakine]

$10k a year at state college....what a deal!

[bubbleb]

This is from Eureka's website and reveals much about their integrity:
Eureka College is pleased to announce The Eureka Idea, a new initiative that lowers tuition to $13,000, a 30% reduction, beginning in the fall of 2004.

Why are we doing this?
The pricing of college tuition is out of control and so is the way it is presented to prospective students and their parents. We care about our students and their families and are trying to make it easier for them to understand exactly what they are being asked to pay and the value that they will receive for that tuition. Ask a number of students on most college campuses and you will find that no two people pay the same tuition. This is because the final amount paid is arrived at through an incredibly complex set of forms, meetings and bargaining sessions. Most students and their families pay different amounts of money to get the same basic educational value. This shell game of tuition pricing is one of the key factors in the increasing cost of education. Eureka College is determined to eliminate the pain surrounding tuition and financial aid. We make it easier to know the real bottom line.

[Crackingham]

Professor salaries are certainly not going through the roof. If anything, academic salaries are mediocre. Where colleges are spending major money is on huge building programs to expand campus facilities and in sinking enormous dollars into the expansion of various kinds of research.

[penowa]

Just proves there's a sucker born every minute willing to pay big bucks to these clowns to complete the brainwashing of their kids, NOT educate them. Hire some lunatic cultist to finish your kid's "education" at home; it will be cheaper, quicker, and just as effective.

[Tacis]

Sounds like the [B]arbra [S]treisand that you might expect from some one who claims to be a Republican from Connecticut!!

The prime reason for the increase in college tuition is that the feds keep subsidizing tuition! Every time the feds raise the grants and loans, the tuition floor goes up!

The elitist academics live in a fantasy world! Colleges pay them big bucks to work for themselves. Once a college instructor becomes tenured, he stops teaching (almost) and takes up research, conferences and committes and the school has to hire some one to teach the students. It is the same as the comapny who employs you, assigning every manager with more than 7 years service as a "loaned executive" to the Red Cross, United Way or some public good campaign and hiring managers off the street to actually manage the company.

If colleges, Williams included, were run like a Walmart, for example, tuitions would drop by 80%.

[Capriole]

Professor salaries are certainly not going through the roof. If anything, academic salaries are mediocre.

Well, sort of. The salaries for some superstar professors are pretty fancy, and a lot of tuition payments go into those salaries.

[SamAdams76]

For many parents, college tuition is money just flushed down the toilet. After the four years (of keg parties) is over, most kids go back home to live with their parents and "look" for a job. Even worse, many of them get married and never even get a job.

A co-worker of mine spent over $100,000 sending his two daughters to college. Both of them got married and then he got stuck paying for their weddings! Then one of them got divorced and moved back in with him with her two screaming kids. Neither of his two daughters ever got a fulltime job.

"Hell on Earth" is how he describes it.

[randog]

Once a college instructor becomes tenured, he stops teaching (almost) and takes up research, conferences and committes and the school has to hire some one to teach the students.

Yeah, usually a grad student that (a) doesn't know how to teach, and (b) doesn't know a thing about the English language.

Basically you end up paying big bucks to get a teacher that makes less than the kid that cooks your burger and fries for lunch.

[randog]

Not true--many college grads get jobs out of college. Just ask my grocery store clerk (journalism) and my Home Depot clerk (history).

;^)

[somniferum]

I think the country would benefit greatly by adding more trade-school/vo-tech programs in High school. People who dont want to go to college could graduate high school already skilled/semi-skilled in a trade such as carpentry, masonry, plumbing, auto-repair, etc., etc.

I believe Britain has such as program, and based on test scores, students are placed into either the trade-school or college prep track somewhere around middle school.

There are far too many students in college right now who simply can't handle college level work.

[foolscap]

Professor salaries are certainly not going through the roof. If anything, academic salaries are mediocre

Ward Churchill seems to have been doing ok. I think I could get by on his $96 thousand a year salary but maybe my needs are just simple. I wonder what he makes with all his speaking engagements thrown in.

[nicollo]

Fact is, wealthy is as wealthy does.

If folks don't want a branch or sub-branch of Ivy, they don't have to take it. The question is, is the investment worth it? Clearly, given the prices being paid, the answer is yes. People wouldn't pay it if the returns, in whatever form they may come (pride, results, whatever) didn't come.

Government subsidies, scholarships, and tuition grants don't change the fact that most Lib Arts students pay full retail. That very small rest are subsidized by them. Same goes with our tax code. As with taxes, when does that point of diminishing returns hit? I'm guessing we're near it.

Nicollo unmasked: Bromleyisms here

[Kevin OMalley]

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