AS LONG AS OBAMA BROUGHT UP THE COST OF COLLEGE ...

Ann Coulter ^ | 1-14-2015 | Ann Coulter

[smoothsailing]

AS LONG AS OBAMA BROUGHT UP THE COST OF COLLEGE

January 14, 2015

I gather from Obama's "free" community college proposal that his plan for dealing with the Republican Congress over the next two years is to throw out ridiculously expensive ideas no one has ever heard of before, and then denounce Republicans for being naysayers.


Community college is already incredibly inexpensive. The only thing that will jack up the price is making it "free." How about a big federal program to provide every American with free toilet paper? Coincidentally, that's about all most college degrees are good for these days.


Obama's moronic proposal has presented the GOP with a fantastic opportunity. Since he brought it up, how about Republicans get to the bottom of why college is so expensive?


The cost of a college education has increased by more than 1,000 percent only since 1978. Nothing else has gone up that much -- not health care, consumer goods or home prices. The explosion in college tuition bears no relation to anything happening in the economy.


Would anyone argue that colleges are providing a better education today than in 1978? I promise you: People coming out of college in the '50s knew more than any recent Yale graduate -- unless we're only counting knowledge of sexual practices once considered verboten.


They're teaching gender studies, ethnic studies, moral equivalence and hatred of America. Did the Japanese Really Start World War II or Did We? It's worse than not reading Shakespeare. They're reading Shakespeare for homosexual imagery. As Yale professor Daniel Gelernter says, colleges are "threatening to become an elaborate, extremely expensive practical joke."


The fact that 80 percent of Weathermen -- the violent '60s radicals -- are full college professors tells you all you need to know about the state of higher education today.


The cost of college spirals continuously upward not because the product has gotten better -- it's gotten much, much worse -- but because college loans are backed by the taxpayer.

The government is chasing its tail every time it increases student financial aid. If the government hiked college loans and subsidies by $1 million per student, colleges would promptly raise tuition to: [current tuition] plus $1 million.


Americans are being bamboozled into paying any price for a college degree because they are relentlessly told that if they don't go to college, their lives will be hell. And they're told this not only by the colleges, but by the government.


The sales pitch is manifestly false. According to an article by Adam Davidson in The New York Times magazine last June,
"(m)ore than half of recent college graduates are unemployed or underemployed, meaning they make substandard wages in jobs that don't require a college degree." Evidently, most jobs don't depend on a degree in women's studies.


More than a third of college graduates, Davidson says, will never make enough money to repay their student loans.


If any other business made such false claims about a product, there would be massive congressional hearings, media denunciations and prison sentences for the CEOs. A college degree is the most expensive purchase most families will ever make, other than their home.


Right before our eyes, Democrats are colluding with colleges to create a market bubble for an increasingly worthless product, and they're doing it by making the exact same promise that banks made about home mortgages before the housing market crash: Sure it's a lot, but it's an investment in your future!


Instead of hauling college administrators to court, Democrats are active participants in the fraud, acting as Big Education's carnival barkers. It's as if the government is telling people: "If you don't smoke, you'll never be cool."


Why is the left not willing to admit that education is an industry, just like Lockheed Martin, Enron or Philip Morris? Democrats love to rail about the high costs of everything else -- pharmaceuticals, health care, mortgages, missile systems, contraception and so on. College is a business, too -- a cartel that fixes prices, preys on teenagers and lies to consumers.


But liberals won't make a peep about the College Industrial Complex because college professors are brainwashing students into leftist politics. Every year, another 10 million graduates emerge, hating God, their parents, America and Republicans. For this, parents are spending $50,000 a year.


The education industry is how leftists make capitalists pay for socialism. It was a smart move for cultural Marxists to capture the country's education establishment. GOOD THINKING, CULTURAL MARXISTS!


It's not the fault of the students that they're getting a crappy product at inflated prices. They've been lied to by shady education peddlers, including the Democratic Party.


Let's see if the middle class is more interested in the cost of college tuition or the Democrats' endless global warming initiatives.


COPYRIGHT 2014 ANN COULTER

DISTRIBUTED BY UNIVERSAL UCLICK

[plain talk]

A good question I have been asking for years — why has college tuition costs gone up so much each year? Inquiring minds want to know

[Bullish]

What a poltroon. She's her own worst enemy.

So you're calling her a coward? That's one thing Ann has never been.

[smoothsailing]

LOL, you reminded me of one of my favorite Ronald Reagan stories!

.....

The Pony Joke.

“Over lunch today I asked Ed Meese about one of Reagan’s favorite jokes. ‘The pony joke?’ Meese replied. ‘Sure I remember it. If I heard him tell it once, I heard him tell it a thousand times.’”

“The joke concerns twin boys of five or six. Worried that the boys had developed extreme personalities – one was a total pessimist, the other a total optimist – their parents took them to a psychiatrist.”

“First the psychiatrist treated the pessimist. Trying to brighten his outlook, the psychiatrist took him to a room piled to the ceiling with brand-new toys. But instead of yelping with delight, the little boy burst into tears. ‘What’s the matter?’ the psychiatrist asked, baffled. ‘Don’t you want to play with any of the toys?’ ‘Yes,’ the little boy bawled, ‘but if I did I’d only break them.’”

“Next the psychiatrist treated the optimist. Trying to dampen his out look, the psychiatrist took him to a room piled to the ceiling with horse manure. But instead of wrinkling his nose in disgust, the optimist emitted just the yelp of delight the psychiatrist had been hoping to hear from his brother, the pessimist. Then he clambered to the top of the pile, dropped to his knees, and began gleefully digging out scoop after scoop with his bare hands. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ the psychiatrist asked, just as baffled by the optimist as he had been by the pessimist. ‘With all this manure,’ the little boy replied, beaming, ‘there must be a pony in here somewhere!’”

– excerpted from How Ronald Reagan Changed My Life by Peter Robinson

[smoothsailing]

Coulter answers your question in her commentary.

[Octar]

In spite of all the garbage, the STEM programs have a lot of worth.

[CorporateStepsister]

Amen!

As for learning about arts and literature, you can go to libraries or museums. For a few thousand you can spend money on a bus ticket, hotel, enjoy a nice trip to the various museums or other places or save and buy books on the subject and read them.

Not spend time wasting money on lectures. If you are too lazy to learn about art in your own time, you’re obviously unmotivated to make something of that degree you’ll be buying.

[CorporateStepsister]

To me those are the only types of courses that should be taught.

[Colinsky]

Every year, another 10 million graduates emerge, hating God, their parents, America and Republicans.

Where is Coulter getting this number? From what I can piece together, it's more like 2 million college graduates per year.

[smoothsailing]

You’re right. 2-3 million tops. Coulter is way off, probably knows it, but did it anyway to see who’s paying attention.

[generally]

Amen to that.

College, IMO, should be for teaching you things that are difficult to learn on your own. I don’t want my brain surgeon to learn via how-to books. Similarly for the person who designs the bridges I drive over.

OTOH, I see no need for actors to have any sort of degree. And if you want some appreciation for the arts, 99% of it can be acquired, as you say, through libraries and museums. The only exception I might make is that I suspect some music education could be relevant. But I think that is better taught at a conservatory than a university. (I’m willing to hear other arguments by those more knowledgeable.)

I have a heavy duty tech education, with virtually no liberal arts. Yet I know more about the arts than most people with an arts degree. I’d be willing to take on most of our liberal arts educated congress critters in a liberal arts competition. I bet I could beat 0vomit, the “constitutional scholar” in a test on the Constitution. (And history is one of my weakest subject, having never taken a history class after completing the mandatory minimum in high school.)

[Safetgiver]

She is absolutely correct. I know ‘lawyers’ who can’t pass the bar because of the non-education they have received. When they do pass, they have to take PD jobs or do office work.

[TurboZamboni]

The Erosion of American Higher Education

Enrollment at America’s leading universities has been increasing dramatically, rising nearly 15 percent between 1993 and 2007. But unlike almost every other growing industry, higher education has not become more efficient. Instead, universities now have more administrative employees and spend more on administration to educate each student. In short, universities are suffering from “administrative bloat,” expanding the resources devoted to administration significantly faster than spending on instruction, research and service.

Between 1993 and 2007, the number of full-time administrators per 100 students at America’s leading universities grew by 39 percent, while the number of employees engaged in teaching, research or service only grew by 18 percent. Inflation-adjusted spending on administration per student increased by 61 percent during the same period, while instructional spending per student rose 39 percent. Arizona State University, for example, increased the number of administrators per 100 students by 94 percent during this period while actually reducing the number of employees engaged in instruction, research and service by 2 percent. Nearly half of all full-time employees at Arizona State University are administrators

A significant reason for the administrative bloat is that students pay only a small portion of administrative costs. The lion’s share of university resources comes from the federal and state governments, as well as private gifts and fees for non-educational services. The large and increasing rate of government subsidy for higher education facilitates administrative bloat by insulating students from the costs. Reducing government subsidies would do much to make universities more efficient.

For public universities the administrative bloat is much worse than at private colleges - administrative positions grew by 39% between 1993 and 2007, almost four times the 9.8% increase for instructional positions. At private universities, without access to the public largess, administrative and instructional positions increased at about the same rate.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2010/10/the_erosion_of_american_higher_1.html

[plain talk]

Thanks but what you posted says admin costs are skyrocketing but students do not pay a large portion and that government pays most of it. My question regards tuition costs. My simple answer is (could be wrong) is most parents feel they have to send their kids to college thus college is a captive market with high demand. Sure there is competition but it is like a cartel and all of them keep raising tuition in lockstep. Not sure this is full reason though.

Back to what you posted — I would have thought admin costs were to blame but your post says no so it confused me.

[Theodore R.]

The American people, including the Republican Party, will in time always fall for some crazy “free” program. They have no knowledge of simple economics.

[CorporateStepsister]

I’m self taught in a lot of areas, but really, I intend to go to trade school and earn some certificates and enjoy a long stretch of university for hands on experience in medicine.

The one thing I do appreciate is knowing enough before you plunge in. Business and other non-technical/medical stuff should be something pursued via a certificate program, not taught by someone who only understands theories.