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.
Government officials should mind the peoples business and get the h e double toothpicks out of the mf'in education business. POSTHASTE!!!!
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.
Simple answer: The government stops paying for it and the free market would settle it out in short order.
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.
Unless you are going to college to enter the maths and sciences it is not worth it.
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 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.