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How Higher Education Became an Obscenely Profitable Racket That Enriches the Few (trunc)
OfTwoMinds.com ^ | May 10, 2017 | Charles Hugh Smith

Posted on 05/11/2017 7:13:15 AM PDT by all the best

Student loan lenders are skimming tens of billions in profits guaranteed by the taxpayers. "Legal" rackets have two essential components: a public-relations "cover" that obscures the racket and the mechanism that extracts the wealth from the "marks." The Higher Education Racket qualifies on both counts: 1. The PR cover is "you all need a college diploma, and we're here to make that happen." Yea for more education! 2. The extraction mechanism is student loans. Here's a chart that shows what happened relatively recently: your federal government began guaranteeing obscene profits to student-loan lenders and debt-serfdom for tens of millions of "marks" i.e. students.

(Excerpt) Read more at oftwominds.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: blog; college; education; studentdebt
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To: The_Media_never_lie

One thing you left out, your engineering courses took real effort and the subject matter required problem solving and math. So we see how simple it is to select a major that will lead to employment.

Become a problem solver, understand the math to the level that you future employment uses. Where do I teach? Dept of engineering and technology.


21 posted on 05/11/2017 8:31:44 AM PDT by KC_for_Freedom (California engineer (ret) and ex-teacher (ret) now part time Professor (what do you know?))
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To: cpdiii
My plumber makes more money than my pay as a pharmacist.

Yeah, but plumbers can't bite their fingernails. ;-)

Not only will they make more money, but they'll make it more quickly, as well. Nothing at all with knowing a trade.

Locally, I've seen a number of ads for welders / sheet metal workers / machinists. An entire generation of them are retiring, and not being replaced, or so I hear.

22 posted on 05/11/2017 8:33:09 AM PDT by wbill
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To: Opinionated Blowhard

UC President Janet Napolitano is living in a 3,400 sq/ft “apartment”
The cost over 4 years has been about $860,000 <—
She stashed away $175 million from public view while raising tuition.
Private jets, free cars, medical cost covered. She has 1,600 people in her office making 100, 200, 300, 400,000 a year plus all the other perks.
No expense to great for the people of California to support this corrupt person.

1 person at the top of a school, now times this by all the other schools in the nation. They are rewarded while the students are dropping out or graduate without being able to do the basics.

Get rid of the federal gov’t involvement. State is bad enough.


23 posted on 05/11/2017 8:38:07 AM PDT by minnesota_bound
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To: dhs12345
They were lied to

Nothing new there. When I was in school, shortly after the last ice age, the college told me for years that my engineering degree would confer all sorts of magic upon me. Ridiculously high starting salary, my pick of job offers, companies prostrating themselves at my feet, begging to be blessed by my mere presence.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! After more than a year of working part time retail and working my butt off on the engineering job hunt, I gave up. Went into computers, took a lousy entry level job at a salary of about half of what I was "promised". Of course, things quickly improved as I got experience - but everything that everyone at the university (and HS, via the administration and guidance office) told me was a total lie.

What the heck, I've done fine by IT. But it was all based on my smarts and hard work, and not at all based on anything that the college "provided".

24 posted on 05/11/2017 8:41:13 AM PDT by wbill
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To: KC_for_Freedom

Obviously, you should feel good, and do feel good about what you are doing to help young people to become employable and in helping them to develop and start a career.

Imagine how the fake department professors must feel after bamboozling their young students into thinking they are studying something that will help them later in life!


25 posted on 05/11/2017 10:49:48 AM PDT by The_Media_never_lie (Parroting fake news is highly profitable for some.)
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To: all the best

Yes, the Left builds nothing; it can only corrupt and soil noble institutions built by good men.


26 posted on 05/11/2017 3:38:44 PM PDT by Jacquerie (ArticleVBlog.com)
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