Posted on 03/14/2015 5:18:15 AM PDT by maggief
President Obama on Saturday urged Americans to sign his new “Student Aid Bill of Rights” and collectively work towards reducing the cost of higher education.
“In an economy increasingly built on innovation, the most important skill you can sell is your knowledge,” Obama said in his weekly address Saturday. “That’s why higher education is, more than ever, the surest ticket to the middle class.”
“But just when it’s never been more important, it’s also never been more expensive,” he added. “The average undergrad who borrows to pay for college ends up graduating with about $28,000 in student loan debt.”
The president touted several of his initiatives aimed at lowering that price tag. He cited expanding tax credits, giving more Pell Grants, reforming student loan programs and pushing for free community college as examples of progress. Despite these, Obama said, such measures were not enough.
“But all of us — elected officials, universities, business leaders — everybody needs to do more to bring down college costs,” he said. “Which is why this week, I unveiled another way that we can help more Americans afford college. It doesn’t involve any new spending or bureaucracy. It’s a simple declaration of values — what I call a ‘Student Aid Bill of Rights.’ ”
Obama said the document lists four principles. It starts by saying every student deserves access to a “quality, affordable education.”
From there, it states students who take out loans should have access to “resources to pay for college” and an “affordable repayment plan.”
Finally, it said borrowers deserve “quality customer service,” “reliable information” and “fair treatment” during the repayment process.
The president asked Americans to sign his new declaration and then share it with as many friends, family members and students as possible.
“In America, a higher education cannot be a privilege reserved for only the few,” Obama said. “It has to be available to everybody who’s willing to work for it.”
The “Student Aid Bill of Rights” is available at WhiteHouse.gov/CollegeOpportunity.
College is overly expensive and useless because they have libtards like Zer0 teaching Marx.
It seems to me that in years gone by one aspired to upper class. This regime has lowered expectations to middle class or even worse full dependency on govt. With proggs in charge we are quickly becoming a third world nation with low expectations or no expectations.
How about putting it this way? Without the knowledge and skills of the “mere” tradesmen, the educated “know nothings” of this world would be sitting in the dark, working in buildings no taller than 3 stories, huddling in the cold, walking to their so-called jobs, and scrabbling in the fields trying to grow enough food to feed their families.
And horror of horrors, there would be no more whales, as the last one would have killed for its lamp oil and lubricating oils.
Such is the world of the pure “intellect”.
I worked for the Army at Fort Knox for most of the first 3.5 years I’ve been here in KY and I had an epiphany for the most sure way to the middle class for poor black (or any other color) kids:
Join ROTC and join the army. And the rest is up to you. You can work HARD and change the future for you and your progeny or you can just “show up” and never budge an inch, culturally and financially.
If this could be drilled into the brains of poor black children from age 5 they could be almost anything they want. But it would take hard work. However, if they do the work, the bright outcome is almost guaranteed.
It is almost the perfect “do this, and that will happen” formula. If only THIS was the message of Sharpton, et-al.
The college market is about to collapse.
For a project at work, I needed to increase my knowledge of statistical methods. I studied that stuff in college, but that was a long time ago. I could have shelled out a few thousand for a course. Instead, I found a ton of videos on youtube explaining statistical methods from professors.
At some point, it’s going to come down to something like this:
Employer: “Why do think you’re qualified to join our staff as a market researcher?”
Applicant 1: “I have a four-year degree in transgender studies with a B+ average and I like working with people.”
Applicant 2: “I’ve used Youtube, web searches, learning CDs, and the public library to learn your industry inside and out. Please feel free to ask me anything on your industry. Also, I’ve been waiting tables to pay my own way while I was learning, and my current boss can vouch that I work hard.”
Right now, most big companies would still give the edge to applicant #1 because of the misguided belief that any job that requires brains requires a college degree, but that dam is going to burst soon.
This is where the personal tools for innovation begin. From practical experience and problem solving.
“Surest method...get married before you have kids. Have parents who did the same.”
Exactly right. I would only add work hard and live within your means.
“Surest method...get married before you have kids. Have parents who did the same.”
Bears repeating (so I have!). Nowadays, college is the surest ticket to something, but that would be 6 figure debt. There are kids who will benefit from college, but there are a whole lot who end up spending four years (or more) partying, hooking up, and taking useless classes just to maintain their grades, all the while spending tons of money they don’t have.
What’s most amusing is hearing this advice from some poser whose main talent was gaming the system - somebody who bounced from one college to another, who apparently has no record of participation in anything substantive, whose grades have been hidden with serious intent, and whose financial arrangements are still a mystery (at least to me). Occidental and Columbia ain’t cheap - how the heck did he pay for them, and for his living expenses in two of the most expensive locations in the US?
But going back to your point, if he really wanted to help kids in the underclass, the best thing he could do is work on the 70% illegitimacy rate among blacks, the 50% illegitimacy rate among Hispanics, and even the 30% illegitimacy rate among whites. (Don’t know the numbers for Asians, but that in itself says something).
PS When some idiot tells me I’ve benefited from “white privilege”, I’ll agree - but I’ll point out it’s “white veil privilege” - my mom got married before she had kids, as did my grandmothers, as did their grandmothers, etc. And my wife and I have passed that down to our kids. The nice thing about “white veil privilege” is that it’s available to all races.
I had always wanted to visit The Citidel, and finally got to yesterday, arriving just in time for afternoon parade.
Twenty-two companies of Cadets decked out in their Dress Whites.
Talking with some of them gives one a new perspective on what young people are truly capable of given the Corps perspective.
I spent plenty of money in their gift shop alright, but still feel I came away the richer.
Anyone notice the leftist push to get the young into college - communist indoctrination centers. Do you really believe 0bummer is concerned about youth welfare when he is bankrupting the country. The only thing he is concerned about is mind control and he knows the communist professors will guarantee that the Marxist/Communist doctrine is inculcated in the minds of our youth. My advice: go to trade school, get certified as a mechanic, electrician, plumber, heat/air-conditioning expert, truck driver, steel worker, carpenter, etc., and you will make a good honest living for yourself and your family. No one wants to get their hands dirty anymore but there always be money to be made in the trades.
Want to lower the cost of education
End guaranteed student loans
The free market works best when there is a risk in raising prices. Guaranteed student loans back by the knowledge that the debt can not be cleared by bankruptcy removes risk from the loaning institution and the schools. They can raise prices with no check or balance.
There was a time when a student could work and pay for their college without a loan.
And why would anyone want to go to college just so they could pay the bulk of your taxes which are handed over o the likes of people who voted you into office and kept you there?
And why would anyone want to go to college just so they could pay the bulk of your taxes which are handed over to the likes of people who voted you into office and kept you there?
“Student Aid Bill of Rights”?
You have the right not to get one. If you do, pay it back, you idiot.
1. Foreign student help:Did he get financial aid as a foreign student or what?
2. Transferred to Columbia: Was it easy for him to get his Occidental student loans transferred to Columbia in New York?
3. Occidental scholarship money? If he received special Occidental scholarship money that Occidental gave him to go along with his government student loans, how was he able to make up for that Occidental scholarship money at Columbia?
4. He obviously lost his Occidental scholarship money when he unexpectedly transferred to Columbia at the beginning of what would have been his 3rd year at Occidental.
5. If Occidental did give Obama some type of scholarship when he enrolled as a freshman from Hawaii, I would like to know why and how Obama was eligible for such scholarship money.
6. That is, why and how did Hawaiian Obama qualify for any scholarship at Occidental, when, as I understand it, his grades at his expensive Hawaiian high school were just average. Did he receive a scholarship reserved for "foreign" students?
7. Columbia scholarship money? Did Columbia simply increase Obama's student loans when he transferred from Occidental, and/or did it simply give Obama a new scholarship to make up for the Occidental scholarship that he obviously lost because he unexpectedly left Occidental at the end of his sophomore year?
8. Again, did Obama receive student loans and scholarship money at Occidental and Columbia because he registered as a foreign student, say, from Indonesia?
I think the people he’s talking to largely don’t care to be in the middle class. They want to either shoot to the top as a drug kingpin, a rapper or an NBA star. Failing that, I think they are cool with being bottom dwellers living as wards of the state.
..educationalim is a religion of the left——————the latest evangelistic movement is called Common Core.
Surest ticket to debt slavery, marxist indoctrination and hangovers for too many.
I’ve got a better idea...
We do away with tenure and unions on college campuses, and require Profs to teach full time, not just a class or two a week.
Then we open up public universities to retired business professionals that want to teach, in fact that should be the preferred 1st choice option of filling the openings.
Trim out the deadwood and communist doctrinaires’, and college tuition can be reduced to a reasonable amount, say $7K -$10K a year.
All government funding for everything but STEM degrees should be ended. If you want a degree in anything that ends with “Studies” you can pursue that in a private institution, or a drum circle.
We’ll start there and refine it as we go.
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