Posted on 05/20/2015 2:26:13 AM PDT by nathanbedford
Nathan Bedford's Maxim:
The remedy for failed socialism is invariably more socialism
I am a father who has two children attending universities in Europe, tuition free, and one child attending university in America in which the tuition costs about $40,000 per year. I have had personal experience with both sides of this debate so I feel I can comment from that experience.
Obviously, free is nicer. But why does education in America cost so much? For much the same reason that health care costs have run out of control, because third-party payers are held responsible rather than the consumer so there is simply no effective check on raising prices or increasing capital expenditures. Since World War II, the federal government has been increasingly subsidizing higher education with the result that higher education has become a profitable growth industry which farms the federal government and exists virtually free of control by the consumer or by the federal government. State governments, for the record, are equally culpable.
The consumer lost interest in controlling prices for a long period of time because the government was providing scholarships and loans which obscured the real costs and further obscured the need to determine whether the degree was worth the cost in economic terms. For generations since World War II it was accepted simply as an article of faith by the American middle class that the way up the economic ladder was to climb the academic ladder.
This is no longer true. Not just because socialist policies have inflated the costs associated with ascending the academic ladder but because there are too few jobs available and that brings us to the next failed socialist program. Socialists want open borders and they want to subsidize uncontrolled hordes of immigrants with education and with healthcare. These immigrants whether legal or illegal, whether educated in America or abroad, are taking Americans' jobs. Big business has engaged in crony capitalism eagerly provided by socialists in the Democrat party and opportunists in the Republican Party by which these politicians open the floodgates to immigrants of high station as well as low to take American jobs. Worse, those jobs which remain in America are likely not to remain here long because these same politicians are rubber stamping trade treaties guaranteed to further hollow out the American economy just as previous treaties have hollowed out our manufacturing sector. The middle-class is providing politicians with campaign contributions at the cost of their jobs.
The jobs going abroad now include doctors jobs, your x-ray might well be read in India, accountants jobs, these functions might well be done in India and the goods you buy might well be designed as well as manufactured in China, a country producing engineers while we produce angry women studying lesbianism. Our competitors are educating based on merit and directing the education toward useful knowledge and they are succeeding in taking American jobs which we previously had considered secure.
My two sons attending university in Europe tuition free were admitted without competitive exam but that is a deceptive fact. They were admitted because they had graduated from an elitist gymnasium which had already in effect triaged students and identified the capable and earmarked them for University. The socialists' proposal for free tuition certainly would not be tied to merit rather it would in effect open the floodgates to mediocrity and thoroughly degrade the educational experience-or what is left of it.
What is left of the educational experience is a residue after the bulk of the arts curriculum is devoted to indoctrination rather than education. So long as a government entity is funding higher education it will remain a battleground over who controls the indoctrination.
The European version works better, there are fewer frills, no multimillion dollar football teams, no imposing facility, etc. In Germany, education for medical degree is more competitive requiring almost perfect grades in gymnasium but otherwise the system is reasonably open to gymnasium graduates. Invariably, the system is geared not so much to produce a Renaissance man as to produce competent practitioners of one discipline or another.
The remedy for the crushing burden pressing down on the middle-class? More…
So, you look at the European university operation. No NCAA sports. There’s fairly good odds that if you start out on day one...the vast majority of students (probably over seventy percent) will be there to wrap it up at the end of four to five years (yeah, shocker that some bachelor programs run five years in Germany). Support staff within univeristy programs? Yeah....but they basically get paid around 30k Euro a year and not the tidy $70,000 to $90,000 that you see at major universities in the states. New buildings appearing on campus every year? Well...no, they’ve got some buildings that easily date back to the 1800s.
Take the template which a typical German university would operate and force a US university to operate within the same perimeters (pay, staff, operations, sports). The US student would be paying a max of eight thousand dollars a year.
That assumes U. S. higher education is in place to actually educate young adults, instead of the reality that it is a jobs program for Marxists who can find employment nowhere else...
One major problem we have in the USA is the fact that schools even have things like the “Gender and Sexuality Resource Center” which is OK with murals of cop killers.
That crap isn’t free.
These days we’re trying to turn every local community college into a 4 year university and every kid should attend. Education is becoming a self perpetuating funding machine for socialists.
If they trained doctors, scientists, lawyers, and business professionals....I’d agree.
When you walk into a car rental shop at some airport, and the chief of the shop is some 25-year-old guy who just wrapped up a four-year degree....you just shake your head. Twenty years ago, it was a 45-year-old high school graduate who headed up the operation. We’ve now created fake positions for the college graduates because there’s simply not enough real jobs for them.
Hillary will soon be rolling this out, along with single-payer medical insurance.
Today’s youth and minorities are not able to see the tyranny in this.
This too.
I’m a high school dropout who ended up as a paint room foreman who could run, maintain and repair all air and fluid systems in the department including a bank of robots. I learned it all on the job and if any new systems came into the department I was there learning about it direct from the manufacturer as it was installed.
Colleges are worried.
With the technology we have today and what is promised for tomorrow, your child will not have to go to college except for hands-on experience. Today you can get education on the internet about every subject known to man.
With discipline your student can learn everything they need to know on the internet and new technology will change how our children learn.
At home .
In Europe the students are sitting in lecture halls typing notes into their laptops but professors in my son's American university prohibit the use of computers in class.
One sentence?
I hope all is well and you are in good health.
The free education is provided for free by unpaid staff .... Is he proposing the professors donate their time?
NOT free, of course.
Merely billed to those who have a bit of ready cash.
On that, it sounds like the American way is better. Who knows what those students are doing with those laptops? Youtube, Facebook, Icanhas.cheezburger? OTOH, writing notes by hand helps fix the information in the brain. I carry a notebook around all the time, and take notes during meetings and important conversations. I rarely look back at the notes, but I remember the important stuff because I wrote it down. You can't always carry a laptop, but you can *always* have a notebook.
I think he is... LOL
That ought to be GOP response. “So Mr Sanders, we can support your idea of free college by removing the salary and compensation from all university employees. Nice job.”
It wouldn’t be long before the pointed headed commie professors revolt.
Yes! Let’s raise the standard of performance of higher education to that of the post office!!! Oh...Wait...
I love this “free” stuff. Will utilities be expected to donate their goods and services...gas, water, electric, etc.? Will the entire staff, from maintenance to dean, be expected to donate their time? Property tax-free? Outside contractors will work for no pay on campus projects? Don’t think so.
My problem is that for lecture courses there should not even be a classroom, it should be done online and the professor should have his salary cut way back and collect royalties for the audio/video lecture viewed by the students on the Internet. If you are studying a liberal arts course it seems to me that memory is not the primary objective but reasoning is and I do not understand how memorizing a professor's lecture advantages the student over absorbing the material in written form. I can read faster than I can listen and I can re-read what I don't understand. In any event, I can replay that portion of the lecture that I think is important or that which I do not understand.
I have to cut this reply short, or I might lose my reputation for brevity.
Our history proves that once institutions are commandeered by the Left, they will be perverted from their intended purposes.
Beginning a hundred years ago, America pretty well ceased to maintain, let alone improve republican supporting institutions.
In view of our corrupted K-12 and higher Ed systems alone, it is amazing there are any conservatives at all.
Wow, it’s so nice of him to offer to pay for it himself!
Or are the professors offering to teach without pay?
The administrators work without pay?
The facilities people working without pay?
Utility companies, food prep/supply, all offering free stuff?
How nice of them.
I suppose we’ll just “ask” them as Obama says.
I'm an amateur genealogist and whenever I think of the way my ancestors lived (Western PA) back in the late 1700s/early 1800s, I think "now THAT was freedom!"
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