The Big Education Racket

RUSH: Rasmussen went out and asked people what they thought of the whole notion of forgiving student loans. Sixty-six percent oppose forgiveness of student loans. One of the loudest demands of the Occupy Wall Street protesters is forgiveness of the nearly $1 trillion worth of student loans, but Rasmussen, as I say, went out and surveyed and they found that 66% of Americans opposed the whole thing. You know, it really is a racket. It's an interesting loop or circle for generation after generation. We've all been pressured. I've told the story numbers of times.

My father, up until the last five years of his life thought he was a failure because he was unable to convince me to go to college. Formative experience, two of them in his life, the Great Depression and World War II. Great Depression, it was true, if you were without a college degree in and around that period of time, you really did face long odds in getting a job. Of course when I was growing up there was no Great Depression; there was nothing like it. But it was such a formative experience for people that lived through it that it became a value system. It was a huge thing and it always has been a huge thing: got to go to college. My problem with it has always been, college to me never equaled education. Learning equaled education. And I always had a problem learning in forced, mass circumstances like schools where everybody had to conform and everybody was taught the same thing, and what you were interested in was of secondary importance.

College. If I could have audited classes, meaning if I coulda gone and just picked the courses I wanted to go to, things I really cared about, go in there, learn what was being lectured or taught, not take a test, don't get any credit for it, just go in, leave, whatever, it would have been far more preferable to me. But, no, no, no, no, that wouldn't work because you didn't have any proof. You didn't have a degree. So there was social status attached with a degree, all the things wrapped up into it. While this is going on, every generation is under -- well, it was pressure, but it was almost a cultural requirement, systemic norm that you had to go to college. If you didn't go to college, you were hopeless. Your prospects were dimmed. You weren't going to learn anything. I can't tell you the things I was warned were gonna happen to me if I didn't get a college degree.

The pressure was intense and I continued to resist it because I wasn't interested in it. I knew way before college what I wanted to do, and all I wanted to do was things oriented toward advancing what I had already found out that I loved, and there wasn't one thing -- well, not true. There were maybe two or three areas of college that were interesting to me, and I did excel in 'em. But it wasn't enough to overshadow the F's I got in all the other classes. I just never equated it with learning. I still love learning to this day. It's one of the most exhilarating things. And I think learning is key, keeping your mind active, to remaining young at heart, rather than stagnating, and if you like learning you're gonna have a much easier time of it if you have the time, the freedom, the ability to focus on what it is you want to learn. It's impossible to know everything. (interruption) What do you mean, too much truth? I'm not saying that.

Snerdley's afraid that I'm hitting you people with too much truth, that I am setting a bad example for the young skulls full of mush listening to this program. They're now gonna walk into their parents' house, "See, see? Look at Rush, he doesn't like college, he didn't go to the college, I don't want to go." And you're gonna get mad at me for undue, improper influence of your young children. Well, that's not my intention here. I'm merely sharing my passions with you. I'm sharing my own experiences, and as I always do, my own opinions. (interruption) No, I was never scared that I didn't finish college. The one thing when I left home, I looked at it as a challenge.

I left home at age 20, after two basically worthless semesters of college. The story is now legion. I flunked speech class twice. I, El Rushbo, el primo communicator in America, flunked speech class. You know why? Because it wasn't a speech class. This is exactly my point. It was an outline class. I showed up. I gave every speech. But I didn't outline 'em. I had already developed another technique for giving speeches. I ad-libbed 'em. I gave speeches on subjects I knew about. I didn't need notes. Well, I flunked 'cause I didn't follow the course. This is the kind of stuff, I said, "This is a waste of my time." But I understood, the educators gotta have systems for dealing with large groups and masses of people. They can't tailor education to individuals when you got 200 of them in the classroom.

Okay. So I just figured it wasn't for me. But what happened to me, when I finally left home at age 20, after one year of accomplishing nothing, essentially, in college, I realized, sort of like a slap to the face, I realized at that point that I was going to have to be able to demonstrate my education. I wasn't gonna have a diploma that said, "This is an educated person." I was gonna have to demonstrate it. So I became an omnivorous, voluminous reader, and that worked well with my career because show prep has always been show prep, and I've always had a never-ending quest to keep learning, to know things. So it was a challenge. Demonstrating what I knew meant being able to use the language properly. Read it, write it, spell it, all of these things. And it became a personal challenge to me.

My whole life has been show prep, essentially, being prepared to have to demonstrate what I know because I don't have this magical piece of paper which says so. I also knew that I was not gonna be able to seek careers in places that required that piece of paper. Okay, fine. That limits. I didn't want to do it anyway. Cool. If I wanted to do it I'd have stayed in college. Now, I'm not suggesting that everybody punt college. 'Cause I realize for most people, college is a weigh station. It's the next thing you do when you don't know what you want to do. You go there, society says that's where you go, and this is what happens when you go there. You come out, you're educated; you're well-rounded; you're informed; you learn social skills, all that rot, and you are prepared, and, you know, all of these things that are attached to it that equal social status.

So people go to these colleges, universities as a weigh station, hoping that while they're there they find out their passion, they discover it, what they want to do. Some people know it when they go there. Again, not everybody's the same. But I just look at it now, the student loan business run by Obama, and I think I see the racket that this is. Now, I am fully aware that there are great institutions for education in this country. There are plenty of good universities and colleges. It's not all a racket. But I just find it fascinating that while the price of gasoline goes up we target a whole industry, Big Oil.

The subprime loan business happens, so what do we do? We protest on the lawns of executives at Wall Street firms that people have been made to believe had a role in the subprime mortgage thing. If the price of anything goes up, we protest that industry. The Democrat Party and the American left have their enemies list, and it's basically any private sector industry that is a success. The one institution in this country that is immune from such attack is education. Those people can charge whatever they want! Tuition could go up 200% and there's never one peep about it. The Democrat Party and the American left never make Big Education justify what they're doing. They never try to drum up hate for them. They never demonize them. They never try to get you to despise 'em.

They never try to get you to distrust 'em. They want people paying these exorbitant fees when it comes to college tuition, and what's the system to make it possible? Student loans! It's like the subprime mortgage business. "You can't afford a house? That's not fair. We're gonna see to it that you can get into one anyway." "You can't afford to go to college? That's not fair. You don't have a chance if you don't go to college. We're gonna make sure you can go there. Here's a student loan. You're gonna go for four years. We're gonna teach you nothing that's worthwhile. We're gonna teach you nothing useful. You're gonna be indebted to us $200,000 when it's all over. The rest of your working life is gonna be spent paying us off. You owe us," meaning the Democrat Party.

"All of our friends are in higher education: The teachers, the teachers' assistants, the professors. They are the ones who benefit from this never-ending tuition price increase, fee increases, what have you. It's the one American industry that is never demonized. No matter what it does. Price goes up? It would be the equivalent of if the Democrat Party and the American left had an incestuous relationship with Big Oil: The price of gasoline jumps up one day a buck a gallon let's say, and everybody in the country's whining and moaning. "How can this be?" and instead of the Democrat Party joining that chorus and bringing the Big Oil execs up and grilling 'em and accusing them of raping people and ripping 'em off, the government comes up with gasoline insurance, or gas loans.

"Here, we'll loan you money to buy the gasoline -- and after 20 years, if you can't pay it off, we'll forgive it and we'll make the other taxpayers pay it off for you," and I'm just saying that the racket (and it is one) works well because for all of these generations it is axiomatic: "Our children must go to college. Must." Almost as axiomatic now as: "Everyone must have health care. Must! It's a constitutional right, just like the right to a lawyer." If going to college equaled education, I'd have a lot fewer problems with it. But it doesn't. Too often it's an indoctrination or a propagandization or what have you. I'm not trying to get anybody irritated here, and I'm not trying to be too honest. It's just... Folks, I understand liberals. I know how they try to control. I know how they try to limit people's freedom. I know how they try to dumb down people in order to get them compliant and dependent. Gosh, the damage they've done to this country and the people of this country is just incalculable. It breaks my heart and ticks me off at the same time.

RUSH: You know, for many people -- and I mean this -- a student loan itself is one of the biggest education events in their lives. A student loan is, "Welcome to the real world, kid." Getting that big a loan, being responsible for it, having to pay it off. You know, another industry that's not demonized is Hollywood. Hollywood can charge you whatever they want at the box office, for DVDs. I don't care what they do. They are not even demonized for content. They used to be a couple of groups now and then have congressional hearings on some of the content. Very, very, very rarely. They also are immune. They are approved. I think in way too many places college, higher education, is just a branch office to the Democrat National Committee.

We know that the Ivy League is used to train people to live and work in government as a career from the Big Government perspective, that government's the center of the universe, that government's the center of the world, that government's the center of everybody's life. That's the purpose of the Ivy League education. What do you think the purpose of the Kennedy School is at Harvard, the Kennedy School of Government? It's to train you where to go to buy the right shoes if you work in the State Department; where to go to buy the right suit; on what occasion do you wear the tails. All the social, finer points and s, all the language, all the techniques.

They find you for the CIA there, they find you for the State Department there, they find you for any number of places there. (chuckles) Yes, yeah. At Yale you can join the Skulls. Well, the Skulls find you. Skull and Bones. It's a racket. It's a racket. Now, obviously there's a benefit to it for a lot of people. I'm not universally panning it. I'm just trying to make a point here that you check the Democrat Party and every industry they demonize the minute the price of their product goes up a penny or the minute they get a tax break, and then you look at how silent they are when the price of an education quadruples every year and their solution to it is for you to go into more debt to be able to have access to it. That's all I'm saying. Nothing more, nothing less.

RUSH: My personal slogan when it came to going to college: "Resist We Much!" Even before I knew that was my slogan, that I was my slogan.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Yeah, I think that's true. There are other reasons why college tuitions are so expensive. A, you have all those scholarships out there. However, a football scholarship probably pays for itself how many times over. You have the college scholarships, and then you have the mandatory student aid that's out there. I don't know. I'm still amazed, folks. With all the money, still the universities are there soliciting donations and contributions and (sigh) I marvel at the amount of money circulating throughout every area of our society, and no matter what area we're talking about, they're all "underfunded." I don't care if it's education, if it's medicine, it's pensions, everything's underfunded! In other words, we're spending more than anybody is taking in -- and it contributes to this whole notion that nothing is real. It's all been built on dreams, loans, debt, what have you -- I mean, exorbitantly so. Don't forget, look, a lot of these institutions of higher learning have these endowments. Harvard, Columbia. Sometimes earning 20, 22% on their endowment investments. And they don't pay any taxes on their Wall Street profits. I'm telling you, folks, it's an ingenious racket.

Faculty Lounge - A tale of Sherpas and superstars [Perry's Higher Education Reform] ….”What Governor Perry actually proposed was this: 1) Students’ evaluations and some other information about faculty performance should be made public; 2) The best teachers should receive bonuses, based in part on students’ ratings; 3) The research and academic budgets should be separated, with teachers paid according to their teaching duties and researchers paid in proportion to the funding they attract; 4) Faculty should have to show that they can in fact teach before they are granted tenure; 5) Students should receive a personalized “learning contract” upon enrollment, along with information about the graduation rates and average starting salaries for students with the same major and comparable SAT scores; 6) Legislative appropriations should go to students directly rather than to the universities; 7) The universities should support an effort to develop a new national accreditation program that would evaluate institutions on measurable student progress.

You’d think that No. 6 would be the deal-breaker — it would have voucherized higher education, forcing the universities to compete for students and the dollars they bring with them, rather than treating students like not-entirely-welcome guests who are privileged to be at the party. But the reformers didn’t even make it that far down the list: No. 1 sent academia into fits.”……

Ya know what bugs me? I have 2 kids in their second & third year and it’s costing us about $3000-4000/ month, no loans, no aid, just payments & tuition management bills that come out of my account on the 10th of every month; and I don’t even feel like I’m a member of the middle class anymore, ha ha. Now they are talking about forgiving student loans? We could have taken loans out too, they would have given each kid over 10 thou/year; but I said no way. I remember too many friends still paying off student loans when they were in their late 30’s. Something ain’t right, but I still would fight the payments rather than take loans out all over again just the same. Just means no new toys and driving old vehicles forever it seems; I guess it could be worse, ha.

What a fresh way of looking at higher education!

It is big business - sadly, many students compare the purchase to membership in a fitness club for the brain. Some take it seriously and others show up when convenient.

I liked the idea from a caller: Parents should be responsible for the college loans taken out to educate their ‘minor’ kids. Single tax-payers (many of whom don’t have degrees) should not be subsidizing training for strangers.

Perhaps no-one should qualify for a student loan until he/she has held a job in the private sector of their chosen career (i.e. nurses’ aide for medical students. Construction laborer for architects. Collection agent for economics/accountants)

Let’s repeat: College education is a purchase and the buyer should pay for it IN FULL. They should’t even get a refund if they are duped into taking useless courses - just learn from their mistakes.

Items of interest from another article:

The program will be in effect for only six months, from January until the end of June.

Most significantly, the benefit is available only to current students. Those jobless college graduates who are protesting on Wall Street and at similar events elsewhere won’t qualify.

But the good will that Mr. Obama earned with his announcement could be relatively short-lived. Next July, just four months before the presidential election, interest rates on student loans are scheduled to double. For the average borrower with $24,000 in debt, that would mean nearly $5,000 more in interest over a 10-year loan-repayment term, according to the American Council on Education

http://chronicle.com/article/Loan-Plan-Scores-Political/129551/

We could have taken loans out too, they would have given each kid over 10 thou/year; but I said no way.

Are your kids eligible for a subsidized or non subsidized loan? The subsidized loans provide the generous terms, low interest rates, interest payments during school, income contingent repayment, and limited payment periods. The unsubsidized loans have none of these features although it is still easy to qualify for a non subsidized loan.

Great Depression, it was true, if you were without a college degree in and around that period of time, you really did face long odds in getting a job. Of course when I was growing up there was no Great Depression; there was nothing like it. But it was such a formative experience for people that lived through it that it became a value system. It was a huge thing and it always has been a huge thing: got to go to college. My problem with it has always been, college to me never equaled education. Learning equaled education. And I always had a problem learning in forced, mass circumstances like schools where everybody had to conform and everybody was taught the same thing, and what you were interested in was of secondary importance.
khanacademy.org is a not-for-profit which intends to provide a free education from 1+1 thru college. The site has 2600 (and counting) short, thorough lecture videos covering all of arithmetic and HS math, and covering undergraduate math as well. That plus the computer-generated math examples also on the site makes it possible for the self-motivated to learn or brush up, but the system is also designed to facilitate classroom education. The advantage being that the teacher is freed from the need for lecturing, the students are freed to learn at their own pace, and it is practical for the teacher to give more attention, and more focus, on the individual students' issues.

A different educational paradigm is certainly needed. This is one such. Any teacher could, in principle, do this for his/her own specialization - but then, that would be "for the children." Whereas the current system is for the educators.

I don’t understand why Rick Perry is not all over this. Not long ago he gave a speech proposing that Students get a college education for $10,000. That’s because even in Texas the cost is going through the roof. When I went to college in the ‘50s, I paid about $1000 a school year. That was everything. You could easily work your way through with what you earned during the summer with a little help from the folks.

Ya, I hate debt and sure wish the govt got the bug from me too.

We live rural in Alaska, about 2 miles from a traditional Indian Village on the Yukon. In the 60's the govt brought a money based economy to nativeland and with it all the welfare & grants. The Indians now figure that's just how the govt does business. They are dying out as a people, in 60's over 200 of them here, now less than 30. I always remind them about teaching a man to fish and they know it's true deep inside.

They can only get non-subsidized loans but we didn't take any out. My wife did all the fafsa paperwork and then we didn't even take it and ya know; we feel better about it. Driving a 20 year old truck, but better for it, no joke.

Crazy thing is we only make 100K, get our income down to 60 and no free money for us, ha; not that I really expected any, ha ha. So anybody who thinks 2 kids in school, they'll get aid like when I went to school, has another thing coming.

Only way we can do it is because we live out in the sticks in Alaska, house is paid for, no prop or state or local taxes, our cost of living is way low. We got 3 moose, 5 caribou, and a few bear this year, big garden and we set nets for kings every July; set for couple years. Wife is maxed out in her steps as teacher and I'm retired. I couldn't afford keeping them in school if we lived in an urban area, no joke.

Actually, I feel happy enough being able to keep them in school the way we do it, life is good.

The local Indians can go to school for free, but none do. Of course most are FAS from birth and have a hard living anyway.

2) The best teachers should receive bonuses, based in part on students’ ratings;

This won't work. My kids both rated one math teacher as "He's evil, but you learn a lot." The rest of the kids just said 'evil'. Evil meant that if he gave a deadline, he stuck to it, among other high standards of behavior.

Demanding teachers don't tend to get rated well, even if they are effective in getting the kids to learn.

The students will tend to reward the easier teachers, not the best.

Just kill public education, then it will all be based on the parents ratings. The teachers will be rated by those who pay the bill.

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