Posted on 04/05/2011 12:57:24 PM PDT by ReleaseTheHounds
How much should a college education cost? According to the College Board, the average cost of earning a degree at a private, 4-year university is now more than $100,000. If tuition prices continue to rise as quickly as they did during the past decade, a college degree will cost more than $200,000 by the time today’s third-graders are applying. That price tag is enough to cause most parents to break into a sweat.
Is a college degree really worth this cost? Some bright minds think Americans are paying way too much. In fact, Bill Gates--one of the country's most famous college dropouts--thinks it should be closer to zero. He told an audience last summer: “Five years from now, on the web, for free you’ll be able to find the best lectures in the world. It will be better than any single university.” ...
Forward thinking elected officials now have the opportunity to expedite the arrival of the free college era, and—in the process—solve a major problem for American families while providing big relief for taxpayers and federal and state budgets.
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
I don't believe I will be holding my breath on that one.
By the time third graders get to college, $200,000 will be worth nothing.
Yaahahhhh, just wut we all need.
The dems are completely in the pocket of the academic university crowd. They will fight any attempt to lower the cost of college with every breath they have.
I have to agree that it is staggering! I’m in the process of sending my 2nd child to college this fall. My first is in his 3rd year. His college is approx. 33,000 per year and we had to come up with 20k each year on our own after scholarships and loans (ie stafford).
My 2nd child chose a college that is 53k per year. I’ve died a little and haven’t figured out how to swing this one. He did receive nice scholarships and including the stafford loans will bring us down to about 23k at least the first year. Not sure what we look forward to in the following 3 years.
My 3rd child may never make it to college! We probably will be living on the streets!
Stop governmental finanancial aid
Stop the lie that college is necessary or desireable for most people.
“His college is approx. 33,000 per year”
Shocking.
I paid less for a 4 yr degree at MIT not that long ago.
I’m a high school teacher...some of our grads over the last ten years have a degree from private and public universities, and debt approaching a hundred thousand. That’s fine if they major in a job producing area, if they don’t...look out. One of my former students has a law degree from Michigan (a good school) and no job. He owes sixty thousand.
Hope your kids are wise enough to understand this.
Government officials should mind the peoples business and get the h e double toothpicks out of the mf'in education business. POSTHASTE!!!!
Agreed. All of the easy money chasing degrees pumps up the prices.
Right now universities are a free ride for the Bill Ayres, Duke 88-types and fringe lefties who can draw out six figure salaries for basically being screw-ups.
End financial aid and government subsidies and let the market set the price.
Yeah well, we have to keep upper middle class Communist College professors in their lifestyles - so fork it over. They deserve it.
The reason companies demand a degree is they desire applicants who know how to read and write, and a high school diploma no longer is an indicator that the holder knows the Three R's. Fifty years ago, they would have been able to just demand that applicants be able to pass an employment test, but now the EEOC will file suit if the tests flunk too many minorities.
If we eliminated the EEOC and its requirements, then the demand for college will be much reduced. People could go directly to work from high school, and engage in distance learning over the Internet. In such a scenario, people would take courses over their lifetimes rather than just four years after high school.
Two years at a community college, two years at a university.
I worked for a corporation who paid for my college classes. That was sweet.
“My 2nd child chose”
Nope. If it’s your money, then you chose it.
Simple answer: The government stops paying for it and the free market would settle it out in short order.
Seriously? I can’t imagine what MIT would cost today! My son did apply there, but it wasn’t his first choice. Out of the 5 he applied, 4 accepted him. MIT did not!
His first choice was/is WPI (Worcester Polytechnic Institute) which is a really good school. This is where he will be going!
Congrats on completing 4 years there!
I just checked the current cost and it shows for Tuition/room & board at 50.4k each year not including books. That’s cheaper than WPI - that isn’t right! :(
The article is not a serious discussion on the subject of higher education costs. While I agree that the current model of higher education is broken, it will not be fixed by merely putting some lectures on the web. A new higher education model must be developed through private initiative. Government does not want to change the current higher education system because changes would bring large upheaval to established schools and colleges.
Changing the higher education model will require a large private initiave (probably initiatives) aimed at commoditizing the product, standardizing the evaluation, and unbundling the product. Cooperation among developers of education material, online education communities, and technology will enable a revolution in a large part of higher education. Changing the public mindset will require large promotional efforts and a quality product. I believe a skeptical public can be convinced to change its perspective (different college experience) if convinced of quality and much lower costs ($50 per credit hour).
With a changed model, subsidies can be focused on the clinical and lab areas that do not fit this model. Even the first two years of medical school are traditional classroom material so I think the new model can apply to large parts of higher education. Higher education institutions now offer many online courses often not professionally done and costing even more than traditional offerings.
My talk is heresy among my colleagues. They think that a different model of higher education is not possible.
Let the government completely take over higher education the way the leftists professors and administrations want, then when the government realizes there isn’t enough money to pay the high salaries, they make the professors work for food.
I understand your logic that it is my/husbands choice. He has worked extremely hard through high school achieving high honors throughout his years. He did this since he knew that this was the school he wanted to attend.
From what I know of this school the employment rate is extremely high. Companies seek out these students almost from the start (freshman) giving them internships over the summer. I am hoping that this is the case, although I know just how bad the economy is. I am one of those unemployed that is finding it downright impossible to find a job.
I however was never able to attend college. Jobs postings nowadays require a college education. Maybe I’ll have to go back when I’m done sending my kids.
That wouldn't be a bad idea if the United States existed in a vacuum, however it does not. The problem with the above is that the market may decide to import more educated workers to fill the void, to create more corporate headquarters in countries with a more educated workforce etc. Unfortunately, this is a subject that absolutely has to considered with international competition heavily weighed.
Unless you are going to college to enter the maths and sciences it is not worth it.
For at least the first two years of college, the community college is your friend. My eldest is a homeschooled 11th-grader taking pre-calc at the local community college (thank you, dual enrollment!) and in so doing gets a college credit transferable to any of North Carolina’s state universities. I will encourage her to work this system to the hilt before finally transferring to NC State or UNC-Chapel Hill (f’rinstance) to get her sheepskin. State is looking like the most likely candidate at this point.
My son was just accepted to Notre Dame last week. $181,000.00 for four years. : (
I think I did the smart thing for my son....who took a few quarters of college and then decided it wasn’t for him.....I paid for the BOND for his construction company....so he could have his own company. He was surprised at his 10th high school reunion to find out he was doing better than his college trained friends....and probably still is...although the company he now works for has gone down to bare bones....taken pay cuts, laid off people....but is hanging on....
This is a plea for distance learning for college, which is in effect, I take it, simply homeschooling for college.
“Is a college degree really worth this cost?”
No.
The problem started when the purpose of college started to be a good job. That’s way divorced from where it should be.
The purpose of college should be self edification and for the advanced training occupations, such as archeology or law. Anything else is school. And even the basis of those should be “on the job” training.
I submit people with advanced degrees are actually in many ways LESS suited to a good job. They’ve been kept out of the natural world too long and learned to give too much deference to elitist fads.
Here’s what I found in college: most kids there didn’t belong and were struggling. They attended college to appease their parents who bought the pitch that ALL kids above the welfare class should attend university. The students were binge drinking on daddy’s credit cards.
Classes were slow and dull due to the high school-level students who were struggling. In addition, high schools inflated grades to increase “self esteem” so that an A average now meant nothing. One school’s C- student was another’s A student... hence the SAT and ACT tests. The entire system is a suckers game.
Parents still believe their children are getting a higher education when in fact college merely trains them to toe the liberal line and preps them for a life of uncritical thinking and servile behavior.
Most graduates must now be re-programmed to actually think and work for a paycheck (unless they go into the growing public sector or stay in school as post grads and professors). Many degrees are meaningless now, except as “papers” of admission into dumbed-down jobs and the entire public sector. Note: Math and Science degrees are the exception.
The thing that drove prices up were government backed loans.
Drop them.
I got an accounting degree by going at night. Two classes a semester(Fall, spring, summer). 18 hours a year. Less than 5 years.
I did it in two because I already had a BSBA.
Guaranteed? If you are just multiplying the first year by four, it WILL increase. Of course, what's another $10-20k?
That is what I tell young people to do nowadays. Find a company that will pay for it. Hospitals, for instance, will often pay for a nursing degree for a competent Nursing Aide.
And I ALWAYS tell them do a community college first, unless mom and dad really are loaded or they have a great scholarship.
But there are careers that require special schools. For instance, vet science. But even that might support your argument, because after two years at a cheaper college, often kids decide their heart’s desire is something totally different.
I started out in art, went to a tech trade, and ended up in the advanced sciences. I guess I’m what you call well rounded. (In more ways than one, but that’s a different subject).
Find law firms where the partners are MI grads. Companies like to hire alums.
Smart move! I’ve always thought that accounting just might be my chosen area. I always enjoyed it in school and also did my fathers books (for his business) when I was in high school. I really loved it!
I just might consider this...
I am with you.
And I think it would work because people (especially those trying to put kids through school) see the system isn’t working. I mean, where is the one place blacks break down for the Democrats? School choice.
The Dems will fight this tooth and nail. The colleges are their power base, filled with elitists who have little true world experience.
My son just graduated with 150 hours of Accounting credit (needed to sit for the CPA exam) and only has $11,000 in debt and had very little in scholarships.
He is finally employed at a major bank in the tax department.
3rd party payers make everything more costly everywhere it’s done.
it divorces the payee from any financial realities.
It’s supply and demand. So long as people are willing to pay that price, and the government makes it possible thru artificially distorted loans, the price will rise accordingly.
Tuition, mortgages, and health care are all expensive precisely because people are willing to go to great lengths to pay staggeringly high prices, and because the government provides incentives for them to do so.
not going to college.College is not a waste today, it is a destruction.
It is the modern equivalent of being captured by early 1800's slave traders and sold into a lifetime of slavery, degradation, illiteracy, broken families and poor health.
We have a draft in Israel, plenty of professionals as one would expect with my people.
But the military stint seems to make people more serious, and it also encourages people who should be in trades (and make plenty of money, mind you), to go be in trades.
I doubt this model would work for the USA, as we are just different people (and surrounded by millions of savages who want us dead -— does focus the mind).
Some variation, though, might work.
I really hate to say something that will tee people off, but here goes. MAKE YOUR KIDS PAY THEIR OWN WAY TO COLLEGE. If it takes them 10 years to finish, tough shi’ite. If I were a very wealthy man, I would not pay for college. If it isn’t earned, it isn’t worth the paper it is printed on. Unless they are going to be a doctor, engineer, or something in the hard sciences, they are better served at the local CC, or learning a trade.
YEP...what you said....I earned undergrad and MBA while worKing FULL TIME! And, my company paid for all the tuition...(they changed their policy after me...hahaha)
Ah - someone speaks the unspeakable - a breath of air. The undergraduate degree is not providing cutting-edge, must give it 100% of time and effort. The little boys and girls don’t work so they can devote their time to school??! Yeah right. Walk through a college neighborhood on any weeknight and just observe the devotion to eduction. If the kids are working and attending classes they will stay out of trouble because they will be too tired to do much else.
My daughter is going to a school in the fall. She got about 90% in school grants and scholarships. Work study is the only federal funding she got. Of course she can take out loans to do the rest. A lot of private universities don’t use tons of federal aid. Of course mileage may differ.
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