Posted on 06/21/2018 7:47:44 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
On Oct. 14 last year at Steyn Online, Mr. Steyn ran a diverting little article on the 20-year-old flick “Good Will Hunting.” Not having screened the film, I probably wouldn’t have read the piece were it not for a tip from a reader; in this case a young stock trader who sent me the following quote, (the quote is so tasty I’ll plug the kid’s videos). Good Will Hunting, which I still haven’t screened, deals with the travails of a super-smart young man who is janitor at M.I.T.:
The loathing that the college maintenance staff feel for the professors is also well done, and there's a sharp scene where Will and a Harvard boy spar over Minnie Driver:
"You just paid $150,000 for an education you could have got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the library."
"True, but at the end of it I'll have a degree and you'll be serving my kids fries in the drive-thru on the way to our ski vacation."
(Two decades on, a 150-grand degree is no obstacle to a rewarding career at the drive-thru window.)
Several things jump out from this brief quote. First, a four-year degree from Harvard will now set you back something on the order of $270K in today’s dollars. According the university’s website, the “total 2018-2019 cost of attending Harvard College without financial aid is $46,340 for tuition and $67,580 for tuition, room, board, and fees combined,” or $270,320 for four years, assuming no inflation.
Second, I don’t know how many late-book return days could be settled in 1998 for $1.50, but I’d be surprised if the inflation in late fees since is anything like the inflation at Harvard. (I refuse to research inflation in library late fees;)
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
In my last article on the escalating cost of higher education, I urged that the feds end their backstopping of student loans. Such guarantees, as well as all the other taxpayer money pouring into higher education, account for some of the inflation in attending college. If college students are finding it difficult to get loans to pay for college, they should assume that situation is going to get worse.
On June 14 at Inside Higher Ed, Andrew Kreighbaum reported on a bill called the PROSPER Act, which stands for “Promoting Real Opportunity, Success, and Prosperity through Education Reform.” Here’s the text of the Act, and here’s a webpage of the House committee in charge. The Act is aimed at overhauling the Higher Education Act. One of the provisions of the Act is to end loan forgiveness for student debt; the ABA chimed in against the change on June 12.
Although the PROSPER Act is having a hard time getting support, that may change as the crunch of federal indebtedness (which I believe will begin on Oct. 1) becomes ever more acute.
Spending a year or two in community college can cheaply reduce your ultimate college costs. As can going to a state school. Unless you are getting into a “big name” school, a state school degree is just as good, and much cheaper.
My kids did community college in place of high school junior and senior years, then transferred.
Yes, Community Colleges are cheaper. Shop around for one with excellent transfer numbers.
The modern day American University or College is past its relevance. I would not pay my own money to have my children attend and I would seriously hesitate even if it was fully paid for by someone else. I would only send them to a school like Ave Maria University, for example, or a school akin to it (i.e. Liberty, Christendom).
JoMa
I was homeschooled. The idea was to provide an education, avoid miseducation, and make me financially self-sufficient.
The nearest college was Bucknell, which my folks could easily have afforded. Of the three requirements mentioned above, it would only have met the first. Having been prepared, I could have obtained an education there without a great deal of interference, but it would have been on someone else’s dime, and the rampant alcohol and drug abuse at Bucknell, plus the liberal political atmosphere, made it unacceptable.
So I went to work and invested my starting salary. I still work — I enjoy it. The investments have made me financially secure.
I’m several years short of my 30th birthday.
Meanwhile, I know two people who studied welding. One’s 19, the other is 22. They found starting salaries of about $30 an hour — a lot more than my starting salary.
They don’t fit the myth either.
Nor do all the men and women who choose to join the military.
You don’t need the overpriced wall art, the diploma. All you need is to learn something, stay away from drugs, and perform dependably (show up on time, on schedule, and do the job). Companies are desperately looking for people who fit that description. If you can’t do that, the college degree won’t take you any farther than the bus to the burger joint.
Most young people could read and write and do math, including girls.
There were many tutors who plied their trade in cities where they catered to whatever students needed. These students were looking to enhance their education by learning business skills, accounting, foreign languages. Some studied Latin to prepare themselves for college where Latin was required.
These students, who did not go to the colonial colleges, were attending what we would call today personalized community colleges. The students would show up at the tutor's home about 5 PM until 8 pm. It was essentially night school, much like people today wanting to better themselves by working full time and getting classes after work.
The average number of students at the early colonial colleges was around 70 students. Those students spent 4 years studying for a bachelors in philosophy, later going on for their masters leading to either a law or divinity degree. This is where we got good judges and good preachers.
No one went into debt because of school. You only went to college or a tutor if you could afford it.
"Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States."—Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
So schools are working in cahoots with the feds to inflate tuition costs, helping to unconstitutionally expand the already unconstitutionally big federal government’s powers by doing so.
Patriots need to support Pres. Trump in leading the states to repeal the 16th and ill-conceived 17th Amendments.
I've known 3 CotO graduates over they years, and they all were outstanding people with terrific work ethics.
Mark
Here are a few real world solutions to this:
* Kids always live at home unless on total scholarship.
No cross-country college tours. No picking a school because the architecture or girls giving the tour look good. You live at home and commute to school. You cut the cost of college in half. You limit their opportunities to indoctrinate the kids, such as RAs in dorms giving diversity lectures at night and students have to publicly pledge to “ally” or else you’re the pariah of the dorm.
* Kids have to decide on a practical major early on, and they must discuss changes of major with parents. You don’t get to waste 2 years and $20K+ as you try to find yourself.
If you like a subject, you read about it and join clubs. You don’t waste a year or three getting a minor in it. If you don’t know what you want to do at all, take a gap year, earn money, read a lot and figure things out first.
* No one earns a master’s degree unless it is proven to be necessary to the career like a master’s in psychology to become a counselor or nursing to become a Nurse Practitioner.
* AP tests and dual credit in high school are critical.
* You can work part time in college. Do so.
You’ll avoid trouble trying to find things to do with the spare time. Use the money to pay for as much schooling as possible.
* No “enrichment” trips or Spring Break trips.
There is no moral mandate to waste 2K on a Spring Break trip. If your friends require you to waste money you don’t have on a fancy education while your parents or your future self pays off student loans, they are not really your friends. They’ll pressure you to get a car you can’t afford or waste money in other ways to meet their expectations.
You don’t need to go to Spain for the summer to really learn Spanish. Talk to the people in your community who speak it, instead. Frankly, you’ll learn more.
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