Posted on 02/09/2012 10:49:12 AM PST by outpostinmass2
While in my office, preparing for the new semester, I had the opportunity to watch the president’s speech on college affordability delivered at the University of Michigan. I was interested in the speech in part because I am a political scientist, in part because I am a college professor, and in part because I am an alumnus of the University of Michigan. But most importantly I was interested in the speech because my oldest daughter will be leaving for college in just seven short months. And although being a Johns Hopkins college professor has its benefits (Hopkins gives a generous tuition benefit applicable to any college in the nation) I still worry about my daughter and her four younger brothers and sisters. In his speech President Obama focused on three components designed to ease the burden of middle-class families—reducing interest on college student loans, maintaining the tuition tax credit, and creating incentives to make universities lower their costs. Now I understand for some politics is the art of the possible. He proposes these things knowing that as hard as it will be to pass them legislatively, these things are at least possible to get past both houses of Congress. (It isn’t likely, particularly during an election year, but it’s possible.) But for me, politics isn’t just about the art of the possible—about what we can pass in the here and now. Politics is about expanding and extending that art, about pushing the borders to create space for even more change in the future. How can we do that here? What if, instead of proposing policies geared towards individual middle-class tax-payers that revolved around the assumption that higher education was an individual’s responsibility, the president instead proposed policies geared towards embedding higher education as an individual right.
(Excerpt) Read more at schoolsofthought.blogs.cnn.com ...
I want a right to a porche!
I;m all in....as long as ALL college professors and administrators agree to work for free....
Supposedly people have a right to a highschool educaction, but look how few people actually get one.
Maybe they should fix HS before they start socially promoting PhD students.
Done.
...what's that? oh, you want a diploma too? Well, why didn't you say so? you said "education", not "certification". That's different. Certification of comprehensive knowledge of 40 different subjects, well, that's going to take several dozen people hundreds of hours to carry out - THAT is not cheap.
Why not a right not to work, oh hell, we already have that. Damn, called a government employee.
If a president can give it to you, it isn't a right.
Rights come from God.
I think we should end mandatory schooling. Parents who want their kids to be educated will find a way to make sure they are.
Parents who don’t care will produce the bottom tier manual labor force.
We decided that everybody had a right to a high school education, and look how well that worked out. </sarcasm>
Anyone with halfway decent carpentry skill should be able to build one for you, if you cannot.
these teachers and professors and colleges preach socialism etc so why don’t they make education cheaper,
Get paid less, the colleges pay the professors less like half and that way tuition is less.
what’s that, yep professors want to make their nice big money , colleges want to make their nice money but preach socialism when it does hurt them in the pockets.
Oh I paid for my house and it’;s only small because it is all I could afford so I want a bigger house and a nicer car for free.
ARF
I have a better idea, let’s print diplomas on toliet paper, that way they can be put to good use because they will not be worth the paper they are printed on if higher education is a “right.”
>>>I want a right to a porche!<<<
You beat me to it... I was about to post that I have a right to a beautiful Italian woman, olive skin, long dark hair, who will pleasure me in a dozen exotic ways on command. After all, it’s a health-related need. I will accept Spanish, Greek, or Latina women.
We are on the verge of collapse if this article means even half of what it states.
God help us.
All states have taxpayer subsidized state universities that wave tuition for low income students.
Why do we need to expand on this???
you beat me t it.
If these socialist professors and colleges want others to have free education or cheaper education then let these professors work for free or half their wages and then the colleges can ask for half.
Silly me of curse they will not, professors preach socialism but only if others pay for it and it does not hurt their pockets.
The other alternative was basically a work/study program...learning a trade in a working environment.
The more affluent went to private schools or went to Europe to study.
The bottom line...you want something....work for it. THAT'S the American way.
If the people want the gov’t. to pay for something, that’s fine, but please don’t call it a right. Rights have been created for people to steal from their neighbors, the right not to be offended, the right commit sodomy, the right to kill the unborn, etc. William O. Douglas want trees and wild geese to have rights. Where does it end and how does it not cheapen those substantive and genuine rights that our servicemen have died for?
I’m married to one and she’s mine and she’s a great cook on top of all that too.
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