So first he nationalized the student loan system and now he is going to muscle colleges into taking more students who receive pell grants and other programs that he has his own socio-political reasons to support.
Like he proposed Obamacare to reduce healthcare costs?
Why doesn’t the government do this for grocery stores? convenience stores? Carpet stores? Electronics stores? Craft stores? Boutique shops? Gas stations?
“plan would instruct the Department of Education to rank colleges with their peers....”
The blind and dumb leading the blind.....
Wow, he single-handedly solved our nations ills in a single bold and brilliant maneuver.
What a man!
< /SARC>
Fresh off his successful [sic] plan to make healthcare cheaper, the kenyan community organizer attacks another problem! /s
FedGov ratings are just another lever of extortion for the Chicago bolshevik mob.
I see the infancy of the Department of Integration and Social Disorder forming right under our feet. Calling Sheila Jackson Lee (when that elusive DHS position falls through)
By doing this isn’t he conceding that No Child Left Behind is a success? In face of opposition by his union buddies? Wouldn’t colleges just ‘teach’ and ‘administer’ to the new criteria? Maximize aid by making sure their students get employed?
And wouldn’t a direct outcome of this be that the Ivy’s, which are able through their alumni networks to place their graduates easier, end up with more subsidies while the smaller liberal arts colleges that prepare students for graduate schools get screwed?
Because there are no great challenges facing the United States at this time, Great Leader pokes his nose in an area that doesn’t usually receive a federal nose-poking. Thank you, Oh Great Leader! May your government and domain ever swell and may the cost, to thee, of thine own nose-poking, remain immaterial.
The ranks of Amsoc’s Inner Party must be filled with properly indoctrinated cadre.
Hey kollege kids!
Back to school with you and work hard: your Wookie is already planning her next vacay in Shangrila. Menu: Toasted hummingbird tongues. Unicorn fillets. Creme de Drank. Flaming Skittles Jubilee.
How was your summer staycation? Sucked, huh? This is why you gotta be careful what you wish for: Thanks to you pinheads we all got it.
Good and hard.
I am of the opinion that the only areas that Government “needs” to be involved in education is to decide for the Federal government (for hiring purposes), what constitutes a high school diploma and a college degree.
The only area that they MAY get involved in would be the establishment of a system for transferring credits across state lines (interstate commerce), but which is really unnecessary.
Which, as we know, will make the higher-performing schools far more expensive. So the "affordable" schools will be the poorer performers. What kind of thumb on the scale will save the historically black colleges?
Stop all student loans. Make people pay in cash.
yeah just like health ins is getting cheaper, yeah uh unh right..............
Let me suggest a better plan which the courageous (sarcasm) House Republicans would never take up.
1) Eliminate the Department of Education and the $150 billion per year the federal government spends on Pell Grants, Stafford grants and administering student loans. Also eliminate all research grants and other direct and indirect subsidies for higher education.
2) Return the education loans to the private sector
3) Allow the free market to work
The immediate consequence would be colleges and universities having to suddenly be competitive in a new marketplace for higher education. The first step they would all have to take is to slash the bloated administrative and faculty overhead structures and increase the productivity of those remaining employed. Force tenured professors go to the classroom and teach 5 or 6 classes a week instead of studying patterns of discrimination against left handed minority subway riders in the inner city. These same professors can be assigned new tasks such as grading the papers and exams of their students instead of delegating the task to graduate assistants. The bloated administrative staffs would have to be slashed. Goodbye to deans of diversity, ethnic studies, gender studies as well as their staffs. All non education activity would have to be scrutinized including the funding of student community organizing clubs through student fees. Utilize technology to lower instruction costs. The focus would return to actually teaching students instead of fake research and bureaucratic empire building.
Another consequence would be the destruction of the parasitic “for profit” colleges who cannot survive in the marketplace without government grant and loan money.
If the government subsidies were eliminated from higher education the market would work quickly to deliver low cost alternatives to students of all income levels assuming there was a demand.
With respect to aid for low income students:
1) Work to save money for college, then work while in college.
2) Join the military, serve the nation, and use the military education programs to earn a degree.
3) Scholarships funded by private entities
4) Private loans
5) States can set up scholarship funds for low income students if the state taxpayers feel it is a priority. If not, too bad.
The reality is there is not entitlement to a college education. Motivated low income students will find a way to fund an education. Unmotivated students will not.
The crying shame in this nation is we are spending billions to educate students in the arts and humanities for jobs that do not exist while community colleges are cutting programs that train people for real jobs because the administrators are trying to turn the community colleges away from their focus on technical education to education in the arts and humanities.
A nearby county in NC had an outstanding two year technical program in woodworking. Many students graduated and went onto jobs at cabinet shops or started their own businesses. The community college hired a new president who came in and decided to shut down the woodworking program in order to shift funds to “higher value” four year college track programs. Her rationale was the furniture industry was moving offshore so the graduates of the woodworking program would have no jobs. In reality, 95% of the students either went on to their own businesses or worked for small contractors, not large furniture factories. Obviously it did not occur to her that the students in the woodworking program might not be suited to a four year degree and the skills they were developing might be their only chance at decent jobs and a middle class lifestyle.
The nation would be much better off if the bloated higher education establishment was jerked off the government teat and had to compete in a free market. Doing so might even cause some of the marxist professors to lose their jobs in the inevitable downsizing. That would be a good thing.
It isn’t about making college cheaper.
It is about improving the revenues of the government who has taken over the funding of college.
The media and local political intelligentsia are falling all over themselves slobbering & covering him deliver this drivel at the State University in Buffalo right now. The campaign continues ....