Posted on 01/18/2009 10:34:57 AM PST by Graybeard58
My issue is these jerks who think their parents should pay while they party and these parents who think that’s their job. When I was 5 my parents said to me and my six other siblings that they expect me and all of us to go to college and we had better get started finding a way to pay for it. I chose my school and applied for an ROTC scholarship and did my time as a Naval Officer to pay for it. For my first private graduate degree I applied for scholarships and student loans. When I paid them off, I went back for a second masters and a doctoral level degree. With grants, scholarships and student loans I graduated from Yale with these. I still am paying for them 10 years out.
Was it worth it? To me it was. Did anyone else step up for it? Nope. What’s the difference? It was my education and my job to pay for it if I thought it was worth it. Working your butt off to educate yourself makes your education truly your own. Doing it the other way makes you resent your parents and robs you of your grit, determination and self-respect. Incidentally, all six of my siblings did the same thing.
Enough whining. If you really want it, you will get it. If you are lazy, then dig ditches. Parents taking on that burden only forestalls the student’s confrontation of his/her own adequacy or inadequacy.
It creates a whole generation of stupid, lazy entitlement brats.
Same here. The only difference is I'm making him get loans for at least 5K of the cost each year. My deal is graduate I will pay them off. Go to the party and don't graduate you pay them.
My niece has put herself through college by going to a jr college for 2 yrs and then finishing the last 2 at a state school. I admire her commitment and focus. I think employers will too!
I am a college professor. We started our new semester last week. Here is a summary of an actual conversation I had with a student who asked to drop my class (after the 2nd day):
Student: Can you sign my drop card?
Me: Okay. Can I ask why you decided to drop?
Student: Yeah, I think you are unfairly putting your students on the spot.
Me: I don’t know if I agree with that. I’m just asking them questions about the reading I assigned on the first day.
Student: Well, in my other classes, the professors just lecture and let us take notes in peace.
Me: That’s fine, but that’s not how I run my class. I like to see if the students actually read the material, rather than assuming they did. Peppering them with questions also keeps them on their toes. Don’t you think?
Student: Whatever, can you just sign my card?
I sign his card. As he walks away, he turns around, grins and calls me an A$$shole.
I just hope this young man’s parents aren’t sacrificing too much to send him to college. But they probably are.
I’m very fortunate! The only cost of my squid’s education has been some higher taxes to pay on some of the grants she’s gotten. State school.
Am I correct that Charles Murray says on 15% of the population have the intelligence needed to complete a 4 year college education?
If Canada and Korea have 55 to 53% of their populations holding an associate’s degree or more, then:
1) Their citizens are a lot smarter than ours,
2) Their degrees aren't worth very much.
Is the writer suggesting that the govt ought to be doing something about her problem?
If she’d homeschool properly, her child would already have at least two years of college between his ears by the time he reached 18. Just a lot lower blood alcohol level and much less experience tolerating leftists in positions of unmerited authority.
My niece is going with 2 years of junior college to get the lower division items wrapped up. She has a "contract" with UC Davis to transfer into a program leading to veterinary school. Her brother is a junior at U.C. Davis right now. That takes the combined efforts of my sister (30 years as an RN) and her husband (a civil engineer) to do a "pay as you go".
My middle son decided to throw in his lot with the USMC. He graduated with a 4.33 GPA, scores of "5" on every AP placement exam and enough credits to be a college sophomore before he graduated from high school. After his tour in Iraq/Kuwait, he return to San Diego. He opted for a BS in Business Administration from University of Phoenix. That was financed by veterans benefits, working as a real estate agent and some student loans. He'll be paying those loans off for a while, but is well set up as a real estate broken in both California and Idaho.
No mention of auto executives salaries here. It's "doable" without that kind of nonsense if you make an effort. My wife is doing a "pay as you go" at Idaho State University. It costs about $2000/semester plus books. She manages about 10 units per semester on top of working full time.
As an aside, my son's high school girl went to Georgetown. She was attending when the plane hit the Pentagon on 9/11. Her parents mortgaged their home to cough up $38,000 per semester. She is now teach math in New York in exchange for a discounted tuition to get her master's at Columbia. That's over $300,000 to educate a math teacher for the public schools. Ouch.
I wouldn’t say it has ‘nothing’ to do with ‘liberal’ vs ‘conservative’, because black underperformance in particular is aided and abetted by liberal social and welfare policies that encourage single parent households.
I don't know if this is any help, but my older son was moving in that direction. I asked him if he ever wondered why I'm a conservative. He asked and I told him it's really simple everything comes down to one word, FREEDOM. I want it and am willing to live with the consequences of my decisions in order to have it. Liberalism accomplishes it's goals by taking freedom in order to equalize outcomes.
I think he's getting back on track.
I don't see that happening in an Obama adminstration that sucks up to the educational lobby wherever possible. Some of that free money from the sky (that future generations will bear the burden of) will surely fill the higher education trough to overflowing, and will continue the spiraling costs of post-secondary education.
And we won't get too many nurses, doctors and engineers out of it, all we'll have is a bunch of burger flippers who can quote a bit of poetry.
It's standard procedure to have "placement exams" for entering freshman to decide which math and English courses they are prepared to take. In many cases, they end up in remedial courses to qualify for classes that are required for their degree. The remedial credits cost the same as any other classes and consume time to complete. It's sad to see a college freshman assigned to a math course that covers algebra as taught in 6th grade elementary school.
At UCSD, the first freshman physics course in simple Newtonian physics required being able to do basic differentiation and integration. By the 2nd course (electricity and magnetism) you had to derive the equation for the magnetic flux of a solenoid (integrated over the length of the wire and accounting for the geometry). That's hardly in the realm of reality for someone who needs remedial math.
In my last round of hiring employees, I was VASTLY underwhelmed with the unimportance of a degree to the quality of the applicant.
degrees have become useless for determining individual qualification.
just as a note consider how much of a comodity a law school degree has become. ANYBODY, and I do mean ANYBODY, with a four year degree can go to a law school somewhere in the USA. Accredited not an unaccredited joke. There are more first year spaces than applicants on a national level. It has become a true joke.
And with the early Baby Boom generation now reaching their 60's, health care specialists are going to be HIGH demand over the next 35 years.
I'd recommend An Education for Our Time by Josiah Bunting to all and I'd hasten to say that I would not be able, intellectually or physically, to attend and graduate from his hypothetical college.
http://www.amazon.com/Education-Our-Time-Josiah-Bunting/dp/0895263696
That's what my daughter is doing.
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