Posted on 09/11/2011 3:00:07 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
My oldest child, Olivia, will be heading to college in two years. So it’s already become college-saving crunch time in our household. As we’ve been putting money away, I’ve become even more passionate about helping other people find ways to cut college expenses. So I’m intrigued by Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s proposal to come up with an affordable college degree program. Perry, who’s running for president, has created quite a buzz for a bold — some say unrealistic — higher-education plan.
“I’m challenging our institutions of higher education to develop bachelor’s degrees that cost no more than $10,000, including textbooks,” Perry said during his State of the State remarks this year.
And just how does he propose that schools offer degrees at a such a discount?
“Let’s leverage Web-based instruction, innovative teaching techniques and aggressive efficiency measures to reach that goal,” Perry said. “Imagine the potential impact on affordability and graduation rates — and the number of skilled workers it would send into our economy.”
Yes, just imagine.
Imagine the financial stress lifted off so many families if they could send their children to school for $2,500 a year, not including room and board.
.....Aside from an unfair slap to community colleges, I’m more than perturbed that Perry’s idea is being so quickly dismissed by the education establishment. It’s long past time that professionals in higher education — from college presidents to professors — work harder to figure out how to reduce college costs. They can no longer smugly claim that just having a degree is a fast track to high-paying jobs.
And let’s remove the politics from Perry’s challenge. True, he’s now a presidential candidate, and candidates will promise anything, but Perry’s proposal has merit, and it’s something all the candidates should embrace, including President Obama.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
....."Perry continued on the intellect theme, explaining why he thinks it’s a problem that many of Obama’s advisers come from academia.
"They have gone to some great schools and they are intellectually smart, but he does not have wise people around him ... He has listened to smart people but nobody who has real wisdom," Perry said." Rick Perry deals with the ‘dumb’ question
.....”Perry continued on the intellect theme, explaining why he thinks it’s a problem that many of Obama’s advisers come from academia.
“They have gone to some great schools and they are intellectually smart, but he does not have wise people around him ... He has listened to smart people but nobody who has real wisdom,” Perry said.” Rick Perry deals with the ‘dumb’ question”
A few years ago my department hired a young business student from a local public university to be a summer intern. I asked him about his classes. He told me without exception his best courses were the ones taught by the adjunct lecturers who were retired business people. They punctuated their lectures and class discussions with real life experiences from the business world. The student said he retained and often thought about many of those examples while he couldn’t remember most of what the PhD full professors said once he left their classroom.
Imagine if a state university restructured its business school program, firing all of the academics, and staffing the program with experience businesspeople and real entrepreneurs. The level of education would rise dramatically and the cost of the program would decline as the instructors would be focused on teaching, not publishing. No doubt the accrediting agency would immediately revoke the school’s accreditation.
Bull, neither damn plan is worth spit, companies import college degree people everyday, while they claim there is no one available.,This stinking pile is nothing more than a rush to the bottom.
Good old common sense, always wins.
Web based instruction is great (when done right) - I’ve done it myself...but there is still the challenge of many larger employers only considering “brick and mortar” degrees to have any value (I’ve also had THIS problem).
It's funny -- socialization (the same argument given to homeschoolers re: public schools) is often given as a reason to keep the status quo.
By putting more & more of the basic courses online, & keeping a ‘student’ at home, with no communting or dorm costs, the expense of getting a college education could be brought down sharply.
Basic courses surely don’t need an annual change of textbooks, either. The textbook I have for my Accounting 101-both semesters- is certainly just as viable today as it was in 1976 or so. Used textbooks in such cases would be another way to cut costs. I just don’t understand changing textbooks every year—even in elementary school.
I see local ads for ‘E-school” which advertises that they have 24/7/365 phones lines for questions & that someone is always manning those lines.
Seems far cheaper than huge expenditures on buildings, land, utilities & ‘professors’. It would allow the schools to root out the usless, bored, boring & keep only the best teachers.
Call ir higher education home school style or whatever.
It could be done.
He tells the smart ass from Harvard that someday he will wake up and realize he spent $250,000 for an educaiton he could have gotten at the Public Library for the cost of a Library card...Priceless!”””
Sure explains Barry the Imposter to me.
I meant to say ‘waste of time’. I’m posting from an iPhone, with it’s hyper-active spellcheck.
We already have Khan Academy on the Internet. The one thing lacking with Khan are a private system of credentialing exams, so that the student can **prove** to others that he has mastered the material.”””
No matter what school you get your accounting degree or law degree from, you must show up in a central location for the Bar exam or the CPA exam each state adheres to.
There is no reason why final exams every semester done online could not also be done the same way.
IF you are not commuting 5-6 days a week to a ‘facility’ or paying to live in a dorm, you can afford to travel 2 times a year to take an exam at a central location & prove that you are ready to advance to the next classes.
Perry signed into law giving in-state tuition to illegal aliens.
We the People, as taxpayers, are paying for illegal aliens to go to college in Texas!
Perry is a pro illegal alien RINO!
It isn’t helping the USA one little bit that most high schools today don’t even have ANY vocational classes anymore.
It seems they can come up with many creative reasons why, but I suspect it is more than a little elitist of the school boards to be removing such classes.
Not every student is college material.
“There is credit to go around.” And that’s the problem - especially federal credit.
“Colleges are able to raise their prices because it’s not the consumers paying that cost,” said Neal McCluskey, associate director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the libertarian Cato Institute, in a presentation called “Student Aid Explains the Pain.” Average tuition rates have gone up hundreds of dollars every year, he said, but the actual price students pay after grants and loans are subtracted has barely increased in the past decade.
The solution, he said, is to phase out federal student aid, including subsidized loans and grants, to “make colleges reliant on people who are paying with their own money.” Prices would drop as a result, he said, so college would not become a privilege of only the rich.
Leave it to the engineer to be the real accountant. The system was gamed! When politicians promised low cost education via financial aid and subsidies, the adminstrators drooled and then...wait for it...raised tuition costs steeply rather then maintain reasonable adjustments. Ta-da! It was essentially a money laudering scheme. When you hear Obama and his ilk talk about helping/improving schools, that is code words for "keep the system going".
Govmint gives more money to student. School raises prices and takes the money. And don't get me started on immunity, ah, I mean tenure.
We already have the Khan Academy but lack a system of certifiable examinations. If there were Sylvan Center testing, these tests could be taken any time. Once passed the child would **immediately **move from first grade arithmetic to second grade math. The third grader who mastered her history program would immediately move to the fourth grade level in history. The 16 year old who mastered college level Algebra would immediately move to Calculus I.
Having to wait 6 months to travel to take an exam in a fixed place would greatly delay the child or adult’s educational progress.
Why not have credentialing exams that were completely and totally unaffiliated with any university, college, or government or private K-12 school?
As a former employer and owner of a health clinic, I finally got to the point that I would only interview people with some community college or some university courses. Why? Because it was the only way I was somewhat certain that they were intelligent and literate enough to do the job. This was a job that any 8th grade graduate from my mother and father's day could have easily done!
If a person could have come into my office with passing grades on certifiable exams showing fundamental literacy and numeracy I would have hired them. I won't have cared if they never darkened the door of a institutional school or had any affiliation with a formal school.
It’s for the children.
$10,000 is at least 10x too much. $1,000! Or less!
Take a test, get a BA. Or BSc. For thesis level degrees, that need a formal review — maybe then $10,000 is acceptable. Maybe.
There is too much government at every level, not just the federal level. I don’t want a battle over who gets to be the prime nanny, I want the position of nanny to be eliminated.
“They can no longer smugly claim that just having a degree is a fast track to high-paying jobs.”
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Except for certain degrees that are in demand many college degrees are a fast track to the kind of job that used to be done by someone with an eighth grade education because in many cases a “college education” represents no more of a real education than an eighth grader was expected to have fifty or sixty years ago. Rush Limbaugh calls them “instant unemployment degrees”. What we need more than cheap college degrees is a real K-12 education system at least equal to what we had back in the fifties. A young person with a REAL high school education as opposed to simply having a high school diploma might have a future even now.
- The Wizard reminds the "brainy" Scarecrow about the universality of brains and then presents him with a rolled up parchment/diploma:
"Why, anybody can have a brain. That's a very mediocre commodity. Every pusillanimous creature that crawls on the Earth or slinks through slimy seas has a brain. Back where I come from, we have universities, seats of great learning, where men go to become great thinkers. And when they come out, they think deep thoughts and with no more brains than you have! But they have one thing you haven't got - a diploma. Therefore, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Universitatus Committeatum E Pluribus Unum, I hereby confer upon you the honorary degree of Th. D...that's Doctor of Thinkology.
A diploma can tell the world you have a brain. Right! Ha!
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