Big Surprise

I understand making college more affordable, but how come no one talks about having the colleges lower their tuitions. A lot of them have large slush funds.

Well, the colleges do what any sensible company would do, they absorb the free money and then charge what the market will bear.

The easiest way to reduce tuition would be to stop throwing government money at them. If we want to have scholarships or loans, the more rare we make them the less likely they will drive up tuition. When everyone can borrow $10,000 then tuition will be $10,000 higher for everyone.

I am not convinced the gov't should be giving to anyone, but if they must, make it available to a small number and then the colleges will not raise tuition in general to take that into account.

Of course colleges, like any business, attempt to influence gov't. It is necessary when gov't holds so much power over your fate. The solution there is to remove gov't's power over the economy, then no one has any reason to influence them to gain favors.

I worked with a lady years and years ago. She always told me that education is a right. I suppose that is located in the Constitution right next to that Health Care is a right.

Anyway, it is a privilege, just like getting a driver's license. Why as a society do we feel that everything should be handed to us and that we should not work for anything?

As for school, it bothers me all of the money that is spent on tuition and books. You would think the books were lined with gold.

You know I have had various student loans and they did the same thing with the loans as they did with mortgages. You would get a loan with BofA and two seconds later it would be sold to someone else. And of course I won't get into the spawn child Fannie and Freddie, Sallie Mae and their implosion a few years ago when they were bailed out.

I think it is time for government to step off!

The main effect that making college universally available has had is the reduction of the value of a college education. Just like our determination that absolutely everyone will graduate high school has reduced the worth of a high school diploma

The truth is there are some people who are just stupid. There are some people who do not want an education. When you force them into education and force the schools to somehow pass them, the education suffers.

And throwing money at it just makes it worse, as opportunists dumb down schools to make more money, and in the long run simply drag down everyone else.

It is a bad idea.

Why can't students work their way through college like we did? And why does a state college education have to cost 40 or 50K. I put 3 children through college recently and as a single mom. I contributed some, and they haad to come up with the rest.

What state were they actually paying the students to study? Was that a pilot program in Georgia? Probably not, but I think it was in the South, but not sure.

True you can not force an education on someone who does not want one. I personally feel that our school systems have failed for many reasons. Not only with the teachers themselves, the union, the parents and all of this, no hurting the students feelings and all of that jazz.

So, how many billions are we ready to dump into the system? Tons!

There are tons of problems, the unions are the big, overall problem, but they also allow so many bad ideas that ti is hard to point to even a dozen things as "the big problems", there are just too many.

For example, putting together discipline problems and learning disabled kids. Is that EVER a good idea? You just end up with slow kids with discipline problems.

Or being unable to expel students from the whole system, you just shuffle them around.

And the same for bad teachers.

And any system based solely on seniority is bound to be bad as well.

Oh, I could fill pages with my complaints on education. The big problem is that the state is involved, at the fed level and state level. I don't agree with public education at all, but if we must have it, it should be a county/city/town issue, not even a state issue.

I am stunned by how much the tuition is at the university where I work.

Of course, part of the reason they can charge $50K per year is that the state and the feds pay $35K, and then the school gives a "scholarship" for $10K to get the $5K they wanted. But for kids with more money, they engage in price discrimination, charge the rich kids the extra $10K and get the extra cash.

We need to do away with student loans, federal financial aid, state financial aid, and treat college like any service, like a doctor or auto mechanic. They tell you what they will charge you to educate any kid, and you pay or don't pay. That's it.

It would end up cheaper than all this financial aid garbage.

Private groups can still sponsor and endow scholarships, but get the feds out of it, and get rid of the pretense that the price discrimination the schools engage in is a "scholarship", it is just the higher ed version of the bargaining car dealers do.

You know growing up, Ivy league was the way to go. Okay, in the freaky neighborhood we lived in. I did not choose that route and my parents gave me their blessing. By the way my sister and brother started and dropped out.

I was always amazed and still today with the price of books. I got a second degree a few years ago and I was thankful for being able to download PDF files of the book. The cost was $45.00 versus the book price of $135.00. Over the years I remember the math books always being the most expensive. Not sure why, but they were.

As for paying your way through college, what a thought. Why do people feel that things should be handed to them on a silver platter.

I would eliminate the Department of Education as a cabinet position, and relegate education back where it belongs: in the hands of the state and local governments. I believe the Tenth Amendment gives this power (not specifically mentioned) to the states and the people as a power not specifically delegated to the Federal government.

Also, I believe that the idea that college is necessary for most of the jobs today is ridiculous. The only thing college is necessary for in many cases is to provide liberal indoctriation to the youth. We are told we should go to college right after high school, and what we end up with is a bunch of people with useless degrees in useless subjects. Seriously, beyond teaching the subject in college, is there any career opportunity for a Women's Studies major? Philosophy? Black Studies?

I went to college fresh out of high school, and like so many of my peers, had no idea what I wanted to do when I grow up (Still don't). What I should have done was find a job somewhere to give me some experience in the real world, or joined the military to get an opportunity to do a number of things. What I did was waste three years in college, and thousands of dollars, only to end up in the Navy being trained for something completely unrelated to anything I'd done before.

My wife, on the other hand, DID finish her degree in, essentially, nothing, and now can't find a good job doing anything even loosely related.

College has its place, and has a useful role to play in the structure of things, but the way it's done now is not much more than a scam on the students, their parents, and the public at large. We'd be better of with Trade Schools and Apprenticeship programs that give knowledge AND real life experience.

I put up on my blog the piece where McCain talked about how we shouldn't be throwing money at something that is broken until it is fixed and how Obama thinks money can solve anything.

McCain is dead right: Until something is reformed, it does not deserve future funding. Clean up your act, show that you WANT to succeed and then we can talk money. I can't justify wasting more and more tax dollars on something that is a bottomless pit of failure.

Sue...the private college I went to got TONS of money from their elite alumnai(e).

I swear to GOD for paying over $30K a year to go to that damn school if I saw ONE MORE waterfountain or statue go up on campus I was going to vandalize something. Why were we getting this pouring in of money and yet I ended up not being able to afford to continue my education at that institution??

should be presided over ONLY at the local level.

The feds should have NO PART in what THEY think should be taught, spent, and allowed in our schools.

They have PROVEN that they have NO CLUE what the American people want or need. So on top of healthcare, education should also NOT be under government control.

I have thought of going back to school, but the cost kind of put me off, even with my huge break as a university employee.

The funny thing about the cost of books is that you can usually buy all the sources form which the text was compiled cheaper than the text itself.

So I have started reading the originals, or second hand, out of date text books I find at used book stores. Much cheaper way to learn.

Though there is an internet/teleconference yeshiva that I have thought of attending, as it would be interesting. I have no intention of becoming a rabbi as a profession, so it would just be for my edification, so online and on the phone wouldn't mater. I don't car eif it is a "serious" degree as I am doing ti just for me.

My degree is in history. I did a year of law school, and almost got a second BA in econ and finance dual major. Got accept to Perdue's PhD program but lacked money.

So, what do I do? I was a software developer and now do computer admin work.

So much for college being the path to your future career.

And I have always argued against the Dept of Ed, and was glad to hear McCain take a few swipes at the teachers' unions.

Of course, I want to return to state funding of the fed. gov't. If we did that, the dept of Ed would make no sense anyway. States send money to the feds to send back to the states? Makes no sense.

I work for one of the "Top 40 universities" (Or so they claim, top 100 at least). You should see how they waste money.

I was impressed that McCain actually took a lot of time to paint Obama as a big spending liberal who wants to substitute government decisions for personal choices. It is true, but that has been lacking from the campaign until recently.

Glad to hear it at last.

(Ok, Palin hit is a bit earlier, but good to finally hear it from McCain.)

And, obviously, I am committed to moving everything possible to the local level, so education would obviously be part of that.

Have to check out your blog. Work has been crazy enough that I haven't been able to read much. (Though I can still post obsessively. I make time for that no matter how busy.)

That's pretty funny. I spent three years studying (insert a major here) before I dropped out. I spent 18 months in training in the Navy and ended up wth a certificate in Medical Lab Science, which I used, along with a couple CLEP tests and maybe one or two classes from my prior schooling to get an A.S. from George Washington U, where I've never actually been.

Now, I am taking Computer Science classes at Kent State in order to get a job I could much more easily learn to do on the job, except, of course, they want a someone with a B.S. Of couse, the prior credits (all 225 of them) transferred in for my "Electives." And yet I STILL had to take a class in "diversity" which is LibSpeak for White Guilt.

I now have enough for two separate bachelor's, but not enough concentration in any one area.

After I had worked 5 years as a programmer, I started pursuing an MS in comp sci at Hood, but realized what a waste it was, how little the theory had to do with reality, and stopped.

I got lucky in my job. I had been programming since I was about 12, but I was working as a clerical temp at Citicorp. I used Visual Basic to automate my 8 hours of reports into a ten minute process, leaving me 7 hours to read books. My boss noticed and asked "you can program?" So I ended up managing modem racks, writing some utility programs, a number of things.

And once you have one job, the education doesn't matter (except for the gov't, of course -- not contracting, but real GS[1-20] jobs), so I was in and went form job to job.

The funniest job had to be my second. I was hired as a junior programmer by a gov't contractor. I was the only native speaker of English, so I got to write the user documents. The problem was the rules said the writer had to be a tech writer or a senior programmer, so I went from junior to senior programmer in a few months.

haha that's what I do in my downtime at work...which I had PLENTY of today because yesterday I did about three days worth of work.

I work efficiently haha (hey my boss has NO complaints about my work EVER, so I must be doing something right!)

I used to read a lot at work, but lately I have been too busy to get much reading done.

There was a time I had enough free time to teach myself new computer languages and start my own private programming projects. That was when I worked in the office, and writing programs looked like I was busy, even if they were just personal projects.

Now that I work form home and don't have to look busy, I read and write more. Or did, until recent projects took all my time up.