This tearful question was raised by a beautiful young college grad on arecent Fox News special on the high cost of college.
She had just graduated from an expensive four year college and was face to face with the harsh reality of being 80K in debt. “It’s so hard to go shopping with my friends, and have to shop from the clearance rack for a special dress.”
This young woman knew her parents couldn’t help pay for her college education. She consulted financial aid people, got grants, worked hard, and made loans to attend this school. She said she chose this one because a guidance counselor thought it would be a “good fit” for her.
It would be so easy to judge this young woman as self involved, shallow and not too bright, no matter how high her GPA. It would be easy to blame her parents for not teaching her the value of a dollar, or the basic economics of debt.
Yet I’d bet her pain was as real to her, as that of a poor single mother who wonders if she will EVER be able to get her teeth fixed.
So, who IS to blame for the ever growing numbers of our young people coming out of college in debt up past their eyebrows, many of whom, like this young woman?
Easy answer? Everyone who profits the most from it.
Do our kids REALLY need to be at campuses with ballrooms, giant Jacuzzis, nightclubs, and climbing walls 50 kids can climb at once, on beautifully landscaped, billion dollar campuses, where many classes are taught by TA’s while professors are off “doing research?” (Often tenured professors who can’t ever be fired no matter how little actual quality “teaching” they provide?)
This young woman was a raised in a culture that did anything BUT prepare her for life as a responsible, balanced adult. She was raised in a culture that programmed her, from birth on, to value appearances, material status, personal comfort, and enjoyment of the moment, over all else.
She is the embodiment of a child raised to adulthood wrapped in a sense of entitlement and exceptionalism.
She will pay very dearly for this, far, far beyond her current pain of having to shop at the clearance rack while her friends buy “brand names.”
All the while the fat cats elites at the top of the Education Pyramid, like the fat cats at the top of the Health Care Pyramid, and all the other Corporate/Political Pyramids, make obscene, ever increasing profits from exploiting every single human need that can possible be exploited.
Young students like this are a cash crop, carefully planted, and well tended till ripe for harvest by corporate overseers, who have managed to drug the parents into a necessary state of compliance.
So, here we have a young woman who unthinkingly assumed a debt of 80 K (plus interest) to assume a career teaching kids who have special needs, for which she will earn 30K a year. Nice.
This is NOT “America The Beautiful”
This is “America The Ugly”
Even State schools are being priced out of the market for many students or require amazing debt, and it’s not about climbing walls and overpaid professors.
I know a lot of professors, and even the the ones at expensive private colleges are significantly underpaid relative to their educational experience when compared with non-educational sector Ph.Ds. Overwhelmingly, faculty salaries are being frozen or are rising at rates lower than inflation, both in public and private sector education.
It’s mostly about the lowest government support of education in generations. Many universities are having trouble just keeping their buildings and other physical plants running. The same people who brought us ketchup as a vegetable in the 80s are responsible for the college debt culture now. Colleges and universities are struggling at every level.
I sure didn’t think it was the professors themselves were getting rich off tuition increases, anymore than nurses get rich from from the insane rise in costs of medical care and drugs.
And I know state schools and community colleges are really being squeezed hard by government funding cuts, and are forced to increase tuition costs as a result of that. The result is, as you say, fewer and fewer students being able to attend college at all, and state colleges struggling to even survive.
This is, or sure ought to be, a source of national shame. Higher education should be open to all our kids, not just the weathy ones, and those who choose to teach ought to be paid what they are truly worth and then some.
This particular story featured a kid who chose a very expensive school she could not afford, in order to pursue a career in a very low paying field. (One of colleges they referred to as a “country club” school.) And there IS something very wrong with how many kids today think these kinds of schools are the only “really good schools”, and sucked in by the ammenities they offer.
I have yet to fully recover from my visit to St Olaf Campus a few years back, just after they opened a billion (?) buck building with a nightclub in it, among many other things. Ok. I know I am old and behind the times, but my gawd, NOBODY needs a place that fancy in order to learn. Most especially when it leaves them facing a life of corporate servitude in order to pay for it.
One must wonder how many of those who run these visibly profitible private schools have a hand in the cuts in federal funding to state run colleges.
for learning, but if they want to attract students the private colleges have to spend considerable amounts on physical plant to compete against each other. This is really driven by American consumer culture rather than a money making model.
The vast majority of the accredited private colleges are non-profits and are strictly limited in the amounts that they can acrue year to year. They have neither stockholders nor anyone else who gets rich if they’re more profitable than last year. There’s really very little money being made in education, even by elite private institutions. There are certainly exceptions, but they’re very few and far between.
<<This is really driven by American consumer culture rather than a money making model.<<<p>
Say more, please? Do you mean it’s because kids and parents expect/want more now, in terms of fancy campuses, etc?
<<There’s really very little money being made in education, even by elite private institutions<<<p>
Then I guess I just don’t get it: help me see then, where IS the money going? Who IS making the big profits?
It used to be that a college student was pretty happy with a glorified closet for a dorm room, and mediocre dorm food. Now they want apartment style living and a Starbucks on campus. Colleges are in competition for those students who can actually afford to pay tuition and are having to spend a great deal on physical plant to attract those student/consumers. In general, until very recently college was heavily subsidized both public and private by various government programs. That’s not really happening any more, which means that the actual costs of running educational institutions are falling on students and their parents. And college is a very expensive proposition. More so at the private schools with lower teacher student ratios and better facilities. As I said, colleges and universities are mostly non-profit organizations and as such are actually limited by statute in how much money they can make.
So a good bit of the increased costs are simply the loss of previous subsidies and costs that used to be absorbed by society in a variety of ways being passed directly to the student. The other big cost driver is likely to be health care (speculation here, but informed speculation). Most colleges and universities provide good health benefits for their faculty and staff and also provide significant health insurance for students. Those are costs that have grown at insane rates these last few years.
Not to mention some fairly astronomical salaries earned by professors at these “nonprofit” institutions. I did academic personnel at UCLA for a bit, and that was a real eye-opener and total turnoff with regard to the academic life. Not a level playing field, by any means. It is totally medieval. Not only do these lords and ladies (often promoted through neptotism) of academia earn WAY into the six figures, but they have RIDICULOUS teaching schedules, like two classes PER YEAR, not to mention infinite perks and luxury fully subsidized year-long vacations every seven years (otherwise known as sabbaticals for those poor overworked slaves). Worst of the worst are personnel procedures where people get to vote on their colleagues IN SECRET like some cabal from the dark ages. Time for the universities to step into the twenty-first century and earn their tax breaks by actually becoming PUBLIC BENEFIT corporations. Just a thought.
I’m here to dispute a couple of the things you are saying, as not being generally true of public institutions.
The coin of the realm at places like UCLA (and virtually all Ph.D.-granting institutions that are “publicly funded”), is not instruction, but rather income generation. I teach at one such university. What drives the level of my salary? It’s how much research funding I bring in. Not how many students I teach, or how good I am at teaching.
Is this right? No. However, public funding of higher education has been greatly reduced in almost every state. California used to be a shining beacon of providing low-cost public college education for its children. Not since Prop 13, the beginning of many cuts in public funding. And tuition does not even begin to cover the true costs of college education, even with the recent steep rise in tuition. That’s reality. If your energy bills have risen, think of the cost, for example, of heating or cooling many large buildings, some of which are in terrible condition.
I agree that teaching 2 courses a year is a very (even ridiculously) light teaching load – lighter than mine by quite a bit. However, research takes time, lots and lots of time. And that research, again, is what brings in cash. The cash does two things: It pays for the research, and more importantly to the university, it also pays indirect costs to the university. This is a percent of the total amount of the grant, to pay the university for space, lights, heat, services, etc. that the grant uses. It can be a lot of money. For example, a small federal grant I had for about $150K brought in an additional 75K to the university in indirect costs. I didn’t see that money, but the university did, and used it however they wished, for the larger purposed of research and education.
It is these indirect funds that allow a university to pay for sabbaticals -[as well as light, heat, building maintenance, all those things that tax cuts have taken out of public budgets}. And by the way, most universities do not fully fund sabbaticals. Faculty usually have to take a pay cut, and/or find a temporary position or use grant or fellowship funding or personal savings to pay for them. Some institutions have no sabbaticals or no funding for them – but you can take them without pay.
Nationwide, very very few profs earn 6 figure salaries. Most who do are in medicine, law, engineering, architecture, or other highly paid professional fields. Administrators, of course, are paid more than ordinary profs – true of managers everywhere. Look at the average salaries of people in history, political science, art, English, etc. and you will see stunningly low salaries. In my state, such faculty earn salaries well below those of public school teachers.
As for nepotism, most states have vigorous anti-nepotism laws, though some do not. Perhaps California is one such state, in which case I would expect many violations of good ethical principles in this respect, just as we see in the private sector. Most faculty cannot ever supervise or make decisions concerning their spouses or relatives without violating either a state law or a university rule.
Oh, this is a rant, I’m sorry. I just know that most faculty I’ve seen work very hard. Our rewards are not for doing what the public expects (and yes, this is not good), and mostly the public does not know how we spend our time. I wish it were otherwise.
I realized that I should have talked about them and about indirect costs, but I had something come up last night that kept me from responding. Also, thanks for the energy costs note. I hadn’t thought of that, and I should have.
My wife’s a physics professor, and I’m right there with you on work in for monetary rewards out. But she loves her work and her students and keeps right on teaching despite the fact that her Ph.D. would earn her five times what she makes as a professor in the private sector.
Thank you. I love my work as a prof, too. All of it. The mix of teaching and research and service stuff is just fun. I especially enjoy turning students on to scientific thinking, and to having a way to influence public policy related to my field. I couldn’t do half of that in the private sector.
Your red light. The main thing is it sounds like you are an academic insider and so long as it’s appeasing your ambition and paying your bills you will defend it.
I know a lot about the education system in California. I graduated from high school in California and have a BA from Cal and three advanced degrees from California universities including a Ph.D. from UCLA and have taught in the university system for 20 years.
I was thinking I should have added this to my post so people wouldn’t attack me as an ignoramus.
And while your patting yourselves on your collective backs for your fun, cushy jobs (in comparison with the vast majority of the labor force here on this planet) maybe I should mention that I have lots of experience as a fundraiser for educational insitutions, so I pretty much know what the funding picture looks like.
And speaking of personal attacks. . .
Tell me how this was personal.
patting yourselves on your collective backs for your fun, cushy jobs sounds pretty personal to me.
You need to relax. I don’t know you and you don’t know me. There is nothing personal involved. This is a discussion of philosophical issues.
so long as it’s appeasing your ambition and paying your bills you will defend it.
This strikes me as a personal attack and over the line.
I thought your condescending dismissal of my comment was over the line.
And why shouldn’t I take it personally if you do?
again your confusing me with kidspeak, and even if you weren’t, personal attacks are generally frowned upon at BooMan, or that’s my understanding.
I don’t know that kidspeak took it personally. That’s not how I read her/his post, but others will come to other conclusions.
No personal attacks.
If it seemed like I took it personally because of the way my comment was dismissed, I apologize. I did not take it personally, but I think it’s sad that my extensive experience of the academic community was brushed aside in a way that could be described as “rudely” if I were interested in taking things personally. Which I am not. I was just trying to engage in a discussion.
that was kidspeak.
I doubt very seriously that St. Olaf makes a profit. It does have a lovely campus, full of buildings that are not cheaply built and which are maintained carefully.
I’m also quite certain their new building, likely the one you saw, did not cost 1 billion dollars, though it was very expensive. Buntrock Commons is the Student Center (the Buntrock family gave $26 million to pay for a large chunk of the building’s costs.) As to the “nightclub” I recall it from my Carleton days – this is from the current Olie web site:
Granted that the concept of a Lutheran nightclub is a little hard to think about – that was, and probably still is, some of the humor of it.
Defending the Olies – wow. It’s just proof that we Carls really are better people. (grin)
I’ve little idea (despite the constant fundraising mailings) how Carleton’s financials are doing these days, other than noting that tuition costs are even more astronomical now than they were when I was there – and I sometimes wonder if the tuition is itself used a marker of “elite” status without regard to the practical necessity of such a cost.
However, I am now working at a state-funded institution (college, not a research Uni) that has to fight viciously for every dollar it receives from the legislature. It becomes clear in the rhetoric of both the lawmakers and the administration that the conversation about publicly funded higher education centers on these colleges and universities justifying their immediate benefit to capital. Public colleges and universities have to speak of themselves to students in the same manner as the private tech-school diploma mills, i.e. “You can earn this much more if you get your degree here” and, more importantly to those with the purse-strings, tell the owners of capital that they will produce x amount of human widgets for their consumption per annum.
As with many other things, we USans need to take a hard look at what we value and why.
and, um, hail to the maize and blue!
As with many other things, we USans need to take a hard look at what we value and why.
That, I believe, is the core of the whichever onion one is trying to peel.
What DO Americans truly value, and what price are we paying to have it?
My state university is much the same. And as mine is in a “Black city”, our Repub legislature loves to cut our funding compared to all other state colleges and unis. They also think all our students are minorities (we are overwhelmingly white, like almost every other state university in the U.S.). And we also, like you, have to fight that sort of vocationalism: this degree better prepare me for something immediate and specific, or else! Plus that inevitable “students are our customers” thing that I detest.
You and Scribe are so right. What do we, as a citizenry, really value? If we want our people to be educated,then our public actions should reflect that. Instead, we seem to have returned to the days of college admission by fathers’ income & status. That is not good for the future of the country.
I had a feeling I’d flush out another Carl somewhere along the line!
Kind of fun, huh? Thanks for providing the opportunity.
I’ve been working on a graduate degree for the last few years, and have watched the tuition steadily go up by 10% every year, so that what was once $770 per credit hour is now well over a thousand. Of course, I’ve already completed 26 credit hours, so I am unwilling to throw that all away because the tuition has gone up.
Does that make me “a child raised to adulthood wrapped in a sense of entitlement and exceptionalism?” I don’t think so. I’m a single parent, responsible for supporting and raising 2 children, and don’t spend any time on campus outside of class. I’m racing to finish my degree before my kids need help with their college tuition (my version of the girl’s new dress described above).
I want to know why the funding for education that was available in the early 90s has dried up, despite the amount of taxes I continue to pay. I want to know why education is slipping out of the reach of the middle class, when most jobs that pay enough to live on require an education. Why are wages not increasing enough to keep pace with the rising cost of living and healthcare?
I really, really hope the answer to it isn’t “Because those in power want the masses to be ignorant and malleable, so they price education out of the reach where anyone but their own spawn can afford it.” But I’m afraid it might be.
I’m suspiscious of that too.
“Does that make me “a child raised to adulthood wrapped in a sense of entitlement and exceptionalism?”
Of course not, CG. I think it was clear I was referring to that young woman who was clearly clueless about what she was getting herself into.
As a single Mom myself, I know well why you’re doing what your doing. (BTW, credits were 37.50 each when I went to a community college for the Assiciate Degree in Nursing that let me raise my kids alone. But still, I came out oweing 10 K, in days when that might as well have been 80K)
My point was really that people from all walks of life are feeling the pinch of rising college tuition. Except the uber-wealthy, of course.
I also have to admit that I was wondering why no one had counseled the young lady in your diary about the need to get a degree that would get her a job that would enable her to pay off the tuition debt. Her parents, high school advisor, etc. all seem to have been MIA on that one. Of course, we all know how hard of hearing young people can be when someone tells them something they don’t want to hear…
That was addressed too. She could only remember a guidance counselor telling her that school would be a “good fit” for her. Her Dad was ill with cancer, and her Mom had to quit her job to take care of him, which is why they couldn’t help, and probably were pretty preoccupied. She said she’d been very naive, and that she’d do it all diferently if she could.I really felt bad for her.
get a degree that would get her a job that would enable her to pay off the tuition debt.
The show stated that she is now working in special education.
I don’t sympathize with her consumer choices too much, but she’s doing something productive and positive for “the least of these”. So, are we saying she’s a fool for not choosing pharmaceutical sales?
What can I say? I paid my own way through school both times, and based my choices on (1) studying something I was interested in; (2) being able to pay the tuition, and (3) not having endless debt when I finished. As scribe noted further, she really isn’t in the position she’s in because of her shallow consumer choices OR a sense of entitlement and privilege.
I guess we could be saying that teachers are underpaid, or that she could have chosen a less expensive school (but even state schools are getting out of reach, as KMc noted). Personally, I’m sticking with the waste of taxpayers’ money that used to fund education, and now funds miltary misadventures in the middle east and tax cuts for people so wealthy college tuition isn’t an issue.
What do you think?
I certainly am not.
I worked with a Michigan graduate once who told me she taught in a public school for a year after she graduated, before she moved to New York to go into marketing. I may be eremembering wrong — I haven’t seen her in over 15 years — but the reason she did was because under Michigan law and whatever financial program she was in, her student loans were forgiven in return for her teaching that year.
Now that seems like an extremely enlightened program to me, especially in the case of someone like this young woman who is doing a difficult and demanding job (but not thankless, if the special education parents of my acquaintance are any indication). You might want to pro-rate the forgiveness — say, $10K per year — and maybe expand it to other kinds of public service such as working for a local government (city/county/state), but there ought to be a way out for some of these crippling debts that involves something other than money.
I don’t know if they still have that program anymore, but one of my junior high school teachers (my Civics & Journalism teacher, actually, who was one of the better teachers in the local system) took advantage of it after she graduated from college. That was how she became a teacher. She had overwhelming debt from financing her own education (this would have been in the late 60s, early 70s), and the feds were willing to forgive loans in exchange for her coming to Miami (where there was a shortage in the public school system) and teaching for a set number of years. Then she decided she kinda liked it, so she stayed.
Now that you mention that I think she said she had to teach in an inner-city school in Detroit or something like that. It wasn’t just any old school.
OK, maybe it’s because I’m a guy, maybe it’s because I’m a geek of limited social skills, and maybe it’s because I am doing my damnedest to not fall into the consumerist trap, but when I saw the title of this diary, I didn’t automatically think Dior and St. Laurent. I wasn’t even thinking of Nordstrom and Macy’s. I was thinking “Rice-a-Roni” and “Jif” and “Cap’n Crunch” and “Coca-Cola,” because those are the brand names that affect my life, and in large part I already buy house brands rather than the big-name stuff. (Not always, of course. The local supermarket’s house version of Cap’n Crunch is no substitute for the real thing. But I digress.)
It’s not that I don’t sympathize with this young woman to some extent. I do. My own daughter is paying off student loans and she’s nowhere near as indebted as this woman (some $20K last I checked). I just think it’s sad that people like her come out of college with these expectations that they have to wear the right clothes, drive the right car, the whole nine yards, and none of that is really necessary to having anything that really matters in life.
I immediately thought of the grocery store implications of the title too. 🙂
That was my reaction too Omir, sadness, that this is how it is for so many of our kids now. Sadness that our culture culture, have move so far from teaching our kids aobut those real and lasting values that really matter, leaving the, vulnerable to feeling truly deprived when luxuries move out of reach.
Since I have never been able to afford “brand name clothes,”, and have always had to shop home brands at grocery stores, I cannot personally relate to her pain, but I can feel compassion for it.
I have two kids in college right now, and though we help them with things like car insurance and cell phones (a necessity IMO) they are paying for college with loans, grants and part time jobs. Still, both of them will come out owing around 15K, which is very very small comparatively speaking.
NC has very low in-state tuition, but of course with room and board and books we’re really lucky to come in around 10K per year. They qualify for Pell grants and subsidized Stafford loans as well as state need-based grants based on my income and their real father’s income.
However, the interest on their unsubsidized Stafford loans has doubled in the past two years and that will hurt later on.
I have always shopped for their clothing on the clearance rack and nothing makes me happier than getting a great shirt or pair of cargo pants at Goodwill for 2 bucks. My kids are very anti-establishment and actually refuse to wear brand names. They’ve been like that ever since the oldest one went through his thrift shop and Goodwill period – which he never outgrew. I’m proud of them for that. They’ll sometimes wear brand names that I bought on clearance or at a thrift store but it better not say Gap or Old Navy or whatever. They absolutely refuse anything that is Tommy Hilfiger or Guess or other high end crap like that.
Kids like that girl aren’t assured of getting a job anyway – fewer and fewer of them do these days. A high price education doesn’t assure you of anything. I read a survey the other day that more than 45% of college graduates return home to live.
I think people really don’t understand the extent to which the game has changed on the ground the past few decades. There’s practically no sense of corporate social responsibility or accountability left anymore (not that there’s ever been a whole lot in the first place, and the only kind we’ve ever had has been what the workers have demanded).
Corporations (always let by the state to be more powerful than individuals because the state and corps have a reciprocal relationship) have amassed an absurdly disproportionate amount of power since the 80s, not just domestically, but globally. What’s being sold to most folks who believe themselves middle class now is basically a modernized form of abusive indentured servitude (and the poor are, as always, getting the worst end of that deal); only those who are already wealthy, luckier than average, and/or smart enough to read the writing on the wall are able to escape it. Everyone else’s ass is, for all intents and purposes, already bought and sold.
A good deal of this has been obvious, but you’ve had to know how to read the signs, and it’s hard to learn how to look past all the bullshit, especially if no one is teaching you. I remember a big wake up call in my own life coming when one of my profs at uni was talking with us students about the rough tuition increases we were already seeing in the 90s, and then she pointed out, “And you see them building new buildings on campus but has anyone noticed that they’re building over all the open spaces? That there’s no place for you to hold large protests anymore? I mean, if a significant portion of the student body wanted to get together to protest this, um, where would you even go? The big open quad that used to be the middle of campus is gone, and now there’s a Student Union building with a Chick-fil-A and a coffee hut selling Starbucks.”
Wow. . .is this ever one of my hottest hot buttons. First of all and forever more, why isn’t education to the highest level a student can achieve, FREE? It should be. Education is the future of not only our country but the world. It matters. It should be of the highest priority in our society.
My take on why it is such a low priority for our government. . .well, students who actually learn while they attend University have a proclivity to become thinkers. Thinkers are dangerous. Thinkers most often become liberal humanitarians, people who care about others, people who want to be of service and to help others; People who want equity and fairness in laws and government. This is not something the Power Mongers want in the masses. They want compliant, always struggling to keep their head above water, people who have no time to think even if they were inclined to do so.
The cost of text books alone is an economic nightmare, averaging $1000 or more per semester.
Bonded servitude is what the Corporate Storm Troopers want, and it seems it is what they are getting. And, further more, there is no need for so many University educated US citizens. . .they can get the jobs filled by foreign grads for less than half the cost. Now that the Global Corporations “OWN THE WORLD” they could care less if anyone in the USA has a job except for their own over privileged progeny.
What the heck, Brand Names? couldn’t ever afford them when I was growing up, and never have. I also never cared. Back in ancient history when I grew up, if there was something we wanted or needed to purchase that we couldn’t afford, we saved up for it until we could.
Fortunately when I attended University, the many, many jobs I worked while going to school allowed me to pay for my schooling. No, I didn’t have any extras. No I didn’t have any play time either, but I was able to keep going to school, just barely. In more recent times, I was always surprised by my co-workers as they complained about how hard it was to send their kids to college. Not that I was not aware of the very high cost of it, but that absent any scholarships, the parents were attempting to pay for it all,with or with out loans. When I asked why their child didn’t work to help out. . .they were shocked. It’s too hard for kids to work and go to school. What?? too hard?? Most of the kids I went to college with worked at least some part time job. . .but now it is too hard? Amazing! Lots of us went to school for a year, then worked for a year, etc, etc, as well as worked jobs all during the school year.
And to further prove to you what an old foggie, out of step, geezer I am, why do kids today have to have everything? I sure don’t fault the children, but parents, WHY do you give them cars, pay the ins., buy their clothes (and yes often brand names), buy them computers, pay for their internet, pay for their cell phones, give them their spending money, give them credit cards, pay for apartments, on and on and on, buy, buy, buy?
Yes, I know it is not all of you that do this. Yes, I know it is not all kids that expect this. But the numbers that do are stunning to me.
So kudos to those who have taught their children differently, who have given them a sense of self-reliance and independence, who have instilled real values and allowed them to learn to do as much for themselves as they are capable, who have trained them into a knowledge of “real life” and the difficulties of just living from day to day in the best way they possibly can. Kudos, indeed, for these things seem to be an extraordinary rarity these days.
Nice rant, Shirl!
I can answer a couple of your ‘whys’ just from my own experience.
As to cars: neighborhood schools are gone. Sidewalks are gone. School buses are great for getting a child to and from school at regular hours. But if there is anything they want to be involved in such as newspaper, band, drama, sports, etc., in involves a lot time either before or after school or both.
My two college kids have cars but they belong to us. We allow them to drive the cars as long as they behave responsibly, pay for gas and insurance as they are able, and don’t mess around in them. I don’t know how it was a long time ago because I’m one of those people who never had a car, but insurance is mandated now and EXPENSIVE! My 18 year old son’s insurance is over $200 A MONTH!!! There is no way he could go to school and work enough to cover his expenses.
With minimum wage being worth less now than 10 years ago, the kids would be working and working just to pay for gas and insurance for the car they drive to work. That’s why we pay. But they don’t expect us to and there are definitely conditions attached to those privileges. Going to school and maintaining good grades is their job right now and as long as they hold up their end of the bargain, we will too.
Chances are still great that they’ll get out of college and still not find a good job, and if they do, they’ll pay more for health insurance and have less job security than ever.
Many textbook companies are now owned by European publishing houses – no matter having a U.S. address. They are raising prices beyond all belief. Their profit margins are enormous.
I’ve been told that you can buy the very same textbook you would buy at a college bookstore, at someplace like amazon.co.uk for a fraction of the price. I have not actually tested this theory, however.
The problem we have run into with attempting to buy textbooks online is that the professor often will not list the required book in time to allow us to buy it from a discount broker or online. We always try to buy them used, but it still averages about $700 per semester per kid for my two.
If that’s the case it seems rotten. During my first college experience the books were always stocked and ready to buy a couple of weeks before classes began.
It still seems like even if you have to air freight them over from England it might be cheaper than buying them locally, but I’m not in your position so I’ll take your word for it (and be glad I’m not the one buying the books).
There is a great deal of truth in what you said, and I like the idea of a free education, including trade education (chef school, electrician’s apprenticeship, whatever) as far as the student can learn. However, I’m not sure how to reconcile that with my personal experience. I actually went to college twice. The first time my parents were paying for it. I was not as diligent a student as I might have been, to put it mildly, and to make it worse in my last semester I had a girlfriend to whom I paid entirely too much attention at the expense of my studies. I ended up at the end of that semester kicked out of school, broke with no place to live, and to make matters worse the girlfriend literaly threw me out of her house into the snow. (Well, she did not physically throw me, but there was snow, and I was not welcome back.)
The second time through I financed school myself as I went, saving money out of temp jobs when I was working and unemployment pay when I wasn’t. I went to a community college a quarter of a mile away rather than an out-of-state university. I had a clear idea of what I wanted to study, and ended up getting a 3.97 GPA in the program and a career as a high-tech gypsy, which is what I’m doing nowadays.
I’m not saying this is true for everyone, but spending my own money really made me pay attention.
I couldn’t agree more! What you have to work for and “earn” yourself has far more value than the freebees. By Free Education, I mean relatively free. Some sort of value trade for work done for the university or the community in exchange for schooling. Or some sort of volunteer work in your field of study in exchange for school. Certainly, all trades should be equally available to those with talent, application and interest.
To continue in school, a student would have to perform at certain acceptable levels of grade standards, every semester. If you flunk out, then a one or two year wait to have a second try at it. The third try, you would have to pay your own way totally. Something like that.
While education is wonderful, the real purpose of an educational system is to sort young people by class.
In the mid and late 20th century, the purpose was to sort by class and intelligence. But intelligence is no longer regarded as useful to the American political economy.
Add to that, as you say, the fact that anything can be turned into a scam, and here we are.
All I can say is get that lady a shovel.
Pax
Not only at Harvard, but at many universities economics students feel that humans are about much more than money and profit and they demand to see that reflected in their curriculum.
Do people that spend tens to hundreds of dollars extra on an article of clothing to get an embroidered initials or ponies on their tit, ot a special swoosh on their butt pocket think they are smart?
Wow..thanks to all commenters who have left me more confused that I was to start with,about what is really behind the fact that college has become all by unaffordable for all bt the very rich.
Consumer driven demand for fancier campuses.
INcreased ompetition for richer students.
Reduced governemtfunding.
Educators paid too much.
Educators not paid enough.
Educators as fundraisers (research.)
Nespotism.
Too low teaching loads/sabatticals, etc
Rising costs of books, medical care. utilities, maintenence, etc etc etc.
But where and what is the core of the onion we’re peeling here?
What is causing this increased consumer demand on the part kids/parents for ever fancier campuses?
Admittedly, I know little about the field of education, which has been well recealved by this diary!
But I DO know a considerable amount about the medical field,and what has happened to it since it it was privatized and turned into a profit making business.
And I sure do see some similarities, the most striking of which is this: Health care used to be “patient centered”. Education was intended to be student centered.
Now both are all about money first. Every single business and person involved in either delivery system is out to make as much money off it as possibly can be made. Of course. That’s a freer market, competative based model, right?
The outcome? The patients, the students, (excluding the rich of course) the very people around whom these dedicated professions were once centered, are all but shoved right off the game board.
Educators, nurses, doctors, we all are now are expected to serve the “money centered systems” first now. Not our patients. Not our students.
we were marching and this mother with two teenaged daughters were coming out of one of the uppity department type stores…. Saks I think. They had their toenails done, their hair was perfect, they had their perfectly packaged bundles in perfect pastel paper mall bags. Shiney, happy people…
And they looked at us like we were dog shit.
The Gulf States have been drowned.
The wars are killing more and more children.
Americans don’t have jobs, healthcare…
But as long as some woman can still shop at Saks…
that’s all that matters. G-d Bless Americuh. Got Credit Cards?
As long as their is still Monday Night Football and Nike Ads on TV… all is hunky dory.
As long as young women can still worry about what they’re wearing instead of who made the garment… and the bombs bursting in air.
Gave proof through the night that our GREED was still there.
Oh say does that star spangled banner ON SALE…