Posted on 11/30/2008 2:15:45 PM PST by fightinJAG
[snip]
But Obama's ideas do nothing to confront the heart of the problem. The issue isn't just that students can't come up with the cash for college, it’s that the cost of college is growing far too fast. From 2002 to 2006, tuition and fees at public universities rose 57%, according to The College Board. That's more than three times the rate of inflation and, more troubling, far faster than our real economic and wage growth over that period.
Most of my peers supported Obama. Polls show he won the under-30 vote by 34 points, the largest of any candidate in a generation. A lot of students are attracted to his humble roots and commitment to education. And he has discussed plans for easing the burden of college costs: increasing the Pell Grant program, cutting out banks as middlemen in the direct loan program, tuition credits in exchange for participation in the Peace Corps, and perhaps helping recent graduates consolidate their debt.
Increasing the federal Pell Grant program sounds noble, but it really isn't. Given the state of the federal budget, is it really fair for people like me to pay for college by borrowing from the next generation? That isn't just irresponsible. It's immoral. The Baby Boomers have already victimized my generation this way by elevating the national debt to nearly $35,000 for every man, woman and child in America. This was a myopic act of selfishness that my friends and I will spend a good portion of our lives paying for, but the last thing we should do is pass it onto our children with interest.
(Excerpt) Read more at thedailybeast.com ...
Dems do not understand morality. Its all about “feeling good.” So, ruining the country for the next generation is not thought about -— because you wouldn’t “feel good.”
No discipline, no morality. All Obama!
>No discipline, no morality. All Obama!
I got my college, what I’ve completed, paid for by the Army... that requires some discipline.
“commitment to education”
For his own children. The others that would like to use some sort of voucher programs can go pound salt as far as he’s concerned. After all, his best “victims” for socialism DEPENDS on large masses of uneducated populace.
It takes a lot of dough to keep profs in their comfy lifestyles, teaching courses such as Womyn's Studies, Gender Studies, and Diversity/Multicultural Studies.
ping
The laws of supply and demand play a role in this as does the normal bell curve distribution of intelligence and ability.
Filling schools up with Affirmative Action students and low performers who would not otherwise be clogging up the system is a real problem. The idea that every student is college material is politically correct claptrap.
Not only does this artificially create extra demand for financing, class space, etc. It also increases costs by creating a need to expand remedial tutoring, to dumb down some instruction, and reduce standards of performance.
OTH, we end up with one of the most highly and expensively educated force of burger flippers imaginable.
That’s why I always say that the quickest, most efficient way to defund the Left is for every family that can homeschool to do so.
According to a recent info from the College Board:
the AVERAGE cost for college tuition has gone up a cumulative 944% since 1978 ($655 to $6,185), which is nearly 300% greater than the cumulative rate of inflation during the same period (336%).
If a gallon of regular gasoline ($1.78 in 1978) had just kept up with the rate of increase in college tuition during the same period, it would sell for more than $12.00 a gallon today.
[P.S. At just the rate of inflation, 1978-2008, $4.00 a gallon gas would be about normal.]
Yet, the U.S. Congress holds Soviet show trials condeming “greedy” private American oil companies, but when Mr. Obama’s friends from academia come calling, Congress just has one question: “How much?”
Additionally, not a single legislative proposal from a single Democrat, on the subject of college tuition, has ever actually proved to LOWER tuition. Everyone of their proposals seeks NOT to lower tuition, just insure the outrageous tuition gets paid shifting more of the payment to taxpayers.
NO MORE NEW PELL GRANTS should be given, except to education institutions that LOWER tuition costs, 5% a year for the next five years.
Maybe some tenured college professors would actually have to devote more than their current average of six hours a week to actually teaching classes; and maybe academic health and pension benefits would move down closer to the median possible for the average private sector worker.
As it is private sector workers have been paying the salaries of a bloated college education industrial complex and funding, with their wages, health and pension benefits for academia that the average private sector worker will never see in their lifetime.
It’s a crime.
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