Posted on 12/27/2016 8:10:36 AM PST by Academiadotorg
A university think tank just published a list of recommendations for paying for college. Perhaps not too surprisingly, they mostly involve increasing taxpayer-funded government subsidies of higher education.
To its credit, the Miller Center at the University of Virginia acknowledges that the economy is worse than the U. S. government claims it is. "Total unemployed, people who want to work but are discouraged from looking, and people who are working part time because they cannot find a full-time job peaked in 2010 but remains at 9.8 percent," the executive summary of "Investing in the Future: Sharing Responsibility for Higher Education Attainment," reads.
Nevertheless, the key word in the recommendations published by the Miller Center is "sharing." The "National Commission on Financing 21st Century Higher Education" primarily recommends that we "increase federal and state institutional support" and "enhance state revenue to support higher education."
"The 14-member National Commission on Financing 21st Century Higher Education is led by two former governors and includes two state legislators, five university presidents and five private sector CEOs," according to the report. Nonetheless, though the quartet of public officials, current and former, who serve on the commission is neatly bipartisan, it consists of partisan Democrats and establishment, maybe even accommodationist, Republicans.
My own ideas of fixing the degenerate swamp that is our college and university system.
1. No tax monies. Period.
2. Students get jobs outside the college/university to pay their tuition. Learn to work while they learn their schooling.
3. Specialize “trade” schools for sciences and medicine. Cut out the fluff and nonsense requirements that don’t directly apply to the sciences.
4. Drop the whole non-science degree mills.
5. Make High School valid again.
I have a bachelor’s in economics and a master’s in public administration.
Damn shame I can’t cash my diplomas in.
Every time I talk to young men about their futures, I urge them to learn a trade — and then read voraciously, especially history.
Everything I know comes from a lifetime of reading. I approached my college years as strictly fulfilling the requirements for a couple of sheepskins — neither of which gave me any wisdom, any character, any real-life experience.
As we used to say in the Army, it was just a matter of “getting my ticket punched.”
I’d sooner give a buck to a wino on the street than donate to either of my universities.
Don’t get the impression I’m bitter. College was strictly a business deal. They got their tuition, I did the coursework, I got my diplomas. No rite of passage, no expanding of my horizons, no encounters with great ideas.
Small world, I’m an International Economics major and an Air Force vet.
My story is pretty much the same as yours, a business deal, get a degree, didn’t matter in what, and you can enter the A.F. as an O-1.
I too have done most of my learning from what I have read on my own. There was a time I was reading a book weekly and probably 3 to 5 magazines a month on subject matter of interest. Gotta tell you...love e-readers, no issues of where to store the books after having read them.
Not quite sure what you point is but your third sentence seems to contradict your first sentence.
From my almost 40 years of working in the “STEM” fields both as a worker bee & manager my observations are, new BSs/BAs in math & science will get “entry level” type jobs maybe as a lab technician or beginner programmers, then if they show any initiative at all the move “up” which could mean out to a different job. These “entry level” jobs might be at a lower salary level then an engineer but within 5 years that difference dissipates. For liberal arts & humanities BAs its much harder to get started, now I am talking about corporate or government hiring. But once that happens again its the individual. The biggest problems I have seen is liberal arts, etc seem to have an “attitude” the “corporation” is required to do them a favor until they write that “Great Novel” or something equivalent. “Liberal
Arties” etc who strike out on their own and make it. Great! More power to them!
When I was an undergraduate there were a lot of profs in engineering and even the sciences with industrial experience. Now its very rare, in fact I detect a hiring prejudice against them. That trend of hiring profs who haven’t stepped outside the doors of academia since they entered at age 18 started during the Vietnam War. Goal was obviously to protect them from the draft!
As far as foreign students there is way way too many of them in STEM fields at US colleges& universities. Unfortunately for a lot of state schools they need them for the extra money they bring. Some schools would be hard pressed to keep their graduate programs going without foreign students. Other issues driving the foreign student surge, the schools getting “academic ego & reputation boost” by having foreign students, also after 50 some years of allowing this to occur, there are a number of “foreigners” maybe on paper USCITS but in practice and attitude not really. They are now not only in the faculty but in administrations of colleges/universities often “feathering their nests” for themselves and other foreigners. Additionally I have seen them break every hiring regulation civil rights law to hire their tribesman, clansman & nationality. Doing things no native USCIT could do. Also the college/university gets to indulge themselves in the fiction that they are doing that “world citizen thing”. They are part of this world community and not part of the USA or even the state where they sit.
So in so many ways they are subversive to US standards, yes definitely true!
>>Jobs by designated education level of occupations, May 2013
That graph makes the same error that the DOL makes and that is assuming that “a job is a job” (their dubious source for the unemployment and “jobs created” stats). Here on FR, we like to point out that minimum wage and part time work is not something that adults should aspire to. Then we say that a very low-paying menial job is something that you can’t raise a family on.
So, if you remove all the jobs that would put the worker below the food stamp or even the poverty line, your graph would change significantly.
In state university. (much to her disappointment).
First year I payed close to 20K so she could have the "full experience". This year was apartment owned by the school so it was a little cheaper. Next year is study abroad with the agreement she stays home and commutes the second half. By then she should be close to done.
Then I have one more. Currently he's tied to be valedictorian. The top two in my daughter's class got full scholarship offers to a few big schools. My kids are 25% Asian. My daughter wouldn't check the Asian box but my son will--so keeping my fingers crossed that works in his favor. Though Asian is the only other race/ethnicity that can be discriminated against.
It's painful. Especially when you know it's such a racket.
My brother put his kids through Duke. Took out loans, etc. One works for one of the Big 4 accounting firms (who will hire a music major out of any school--meaning they hire anyone) and the other one works in one of the labs at Duke. LOL.
I think my past and future statements allow for that.
The exceptional individual is, ... well Exceptional!
Just pointing out that even S.T.E.M programs produce their share of failures but point out that it’s okay because the ones that do secede at the very tops of their fields contribute significantly more to the Industries and success of the country.
I.E They S.T.E.M. programs are a good bet, and that’s where we should be focused.
As for fewer and fewer practical applied teachers ... is there any wonder in the political correct cocoon the Colleges wrap themselves up in?
Go look at some of the countries who have faced upheaval over the last 50 years. See how many of them have been driven by ‘student’ lead revolutions.
Thanks for the clarification !
I agree !
I am old enough to remember the Red Brigades in Europe!
Nazism as well as Communism was most popular on German campuses for much more then then with the average German trying to get by & raise a family!
I appreciate that she is “different” than what I read about. I guess I would say that there are a ton of millennials whom we never hear from. The media, on both the left and right, want to make their point. So they find a snowflake among snowflakes and that is who they decide is “the story” or the “exemplar” of the generation.
My point is there are probably more people out there like my kid and pretty few Social Justice Warriors.
And 99 Luftballoons.
Wanna find millionaires?
Go look for guys who have run their plumbing or HVAC businesses for 10-20 years...
Good service, and hard work will pay off.
You know what I would like to see? A federal report card on each college, and major within college.
It would be easy to compile. The IRS already knows which college a student goes to, from the annual form 1098-T tuition form which colleges generate so taxpayers can deduct tuition expenses.
Have the IRS generate a report of the median gross income of students from an institution, at 1 year after graduation and 5 years after graduation. Add a field to the 1098-T to include a code for the major, which the report can be further broken down by.
Give parents and students some REAL information they can base decisions on.
My contention is that there are other ways to get that fluff stuff besides having it mandated as part of the original degree required for employment.
Cut the mandatory and you cut the bloat which feeds the idiocy that’s dominating our colleges and universities now.
Have separate schools for “personal enrichment” that people can spend their income on *after* they enter the workforce as a hobby, if they’re so motivated.
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