Posted on 01/18/2009 10:34:57 AM PST by Graybeard58
Ever since my son was a tot, I have squirreled away as much as I could muster for his college education.
Education is a priority in our family, but every year that goes by, it becomes clearer that nothing I could ever amass will dent what it will cost to send him to college. Despite his desire, college may be out of the question for him — and for anybody else earning less than an auto executive's salary.
The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education reported recently that the rising cost of education has put it virtually out-of-reach for most Americans. By the time my son, 7, is college age, he may take his place among the first American generation to be less educated than its parents.
Indeed, that has already happened. We have fewer college-age kids enrolled in college than six other industrialized countries and even fewer American kids complete their degree. The kids in Japan, Ireland, Korea and France far outrank us in college completion rates. Why? Did you ever talk to an American high school graduate and compare it to the conversation you have with a European? It's like the difference between David Frost and Maury Povich.
Today's 25- to 34-year-olds are actually less educated than their Baby Boomer elders. Only 39 percent of adults 25 to 34 hold an associate's degree or higher in the U.S. Compare that to Canada, where the figure is 55 percent, or Korea, where the figure is 53 percent.
That's because while median family income has risen 147 percent from 1982 to 2007 in the U.S., the cost of college tuition and fees has soared 439 percent. How can anyone possibly afford that? They can't. Student borrowing has doubled in the last 10 years and the percent of a family's income it eats up is bigger than ever. A private, four-year institution will devour 76 percent of the income of a median American family.
"The middle class has been financing [college education] through debt," Patrick M.Callahan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, told The New York Times. "The scenario has been that families that have a history of sending kids to college will do whatever it takes, even if that means a huge amount of debt."
In Connecticut, for instance, we do a great job at preparing our kids for college — as long as they're rich. This state has the ignoble distinction of having the widest achievement gaps between rich and poor than any other state in the country, according to the U.S. Department of Education. So we get an "A" for preparing kids for school and an "F" for making it affordable, which is a bit like teaching a kid to ride a bike, and then not giving him one to ride on.
This might be merely onerous if the whole value of a college degree hadn't become so dubious.
Sure, all kinds of reports will tell you how much difference a college degree makes in terms of how much salary its recipients command, but, again, talk to some of these students and they'll make your eyebrows curl.
One study reported that less than half of college seniors knew that Yorktown was the battle that ended the American Revolution. A similar number could name the reason NATO was formed.
Not long ago, a college professor friend of mine wrote me about trying to prepare his students for a mid-term exam, which would rely heavily on the readings he assigned. "I've never really liked reading," one of his students sniffed. "I don't see the point in it." She added that she didn't think it was "fair" that, at the college level, her professor placed such an emphasis on reading.
Yes, the world is a cruel place.
Nobody who's visited a college dorm lately can deny that the place has been spruced up. In my day, the places looked like Soviet-era gymnasiums. Now they look like suites at the Doubletree. And the potentates presiding over these glittering dominions receive a king's ransom.
In November, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported that presidents at 12 private universities pulled down more than $1 million last year. (So embarrassed were several college presidents over their income that they actually gave back some of their salaries after the report came out.)
If this country believes, as Thomas Jefferson did, that education is the great equalizer, it needs to pull the plug on fripperies and sinecures and start doing a better job at teaching its kids.
Because at this price, it just isn't worth it.
Reach Tracey O'Shaughnessy at tosh@rep-am.com.
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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