Barack Obama has been dumping crap on America for six years, but after getting comprehensively thrashed in November and facing a Congress comprised of people who are sick of his subversion, he has finally proposed a constructive idea.
Why didn’t he do this six years ago?
Free? A the expense of whom?
College education has become much too expensive for the majority of families. Up 500-1000% over the two decades
Community colleges are a lot less expensive that 4 year schools. The courses I took were cheaper that the books.
Prices at CC’s have skyrocketed too.
I am sorry Steve, but at least around here they have not.
This is the tuition for the local community colleges:
http://www.cccc.edu/businessoffice/tuition/
This is a page for student aid
http://www.cccc.edu/tuition-aid/
If people do not WORK for something they do not appreciate it. Our schools and government housing makes that very very clear. People need to have “ownership” but our young people especially in the middle and upper classes have everything given to them and are even bribed into good behavior since a palm on the butt or even yelling is no longer P.C.
GIVING college to people is NOT a solution it is just another method for the Progressives to BUY votes if you are stupid enough to fallfor it.
The kids going to the ‘Free college’ will pay for it for the rest of their lives as their wages are taxed to pay the debt on an ever increasing Federal debt. At least if they pay up for the education up front and outright they know how much they paid.
…….
On the subject of spiraling costs of regular colleges….
The reason is to get people to take out student loans made out of fairy dust that then has to be paid back with interest fromf your labor. Saving for a college education and paying for it outright does not allow the Banksters to steal your wealth. (Note you can not rid yourself of the debt through bankruptcy, a Banksters dream.)
+100!
Looking at my county
For three students renting a trailer from my neighbor:
3 bedroom trailer ……………. =$400 = 4800
food/fuel ………………………. = $150 = 1800
Utilities…………………………. = $200 = 2400
cell phones ………………………..$150 = 1800
FICA taxes ……………………. $1,695 = 5085
Federal tax…………………….$4,260 = 12780
state tax …………………………$2,325 = 6975
—————————————————–
Total expenses for year for three = $35,640
3 semesters are available
3 classes (9 credits) ….$ 694.00 * 3 * 3 = $6,246
(Online courses are available)
So total expenses are around $50,000 for the three students including books and stuff.
There are several restaurant type jobs in the county for $30,000 a year (and up). that is $90,000 a year for the three students. For cloths there are plenty of 2nd hand shops with clothes for $2 to $10. The local flea markets sell anything from Athletic shoes to living and bedroom room furniture to washing machines, frigs and stoves. There is also lots of food available.
There is ZERO reason for someone who is willing to put in the effort to need a hand out. Heck over the four years to get the two years of training you could save up to $10,000 for tuition at Duke or UNC.
Many of the wait staff locally are doing this. I know because I talk to them (and leave a good tip)
DUKE: https://www.cappex.com/colleges/Duke-University/tuition-and-costs
UNC: http://admissions.unc.edu/afford/cost-of-attendance/
Right. So I wonder what he will propose for cost controls and who shall pay the bills. You? Me?
Who will pay? if you earn money, you will pay.
Sounds like the same argument made for Obamacare. Medical care has become much too expensive for the majority of families. Ultimately, sounds like we need a single payer, government run health system. Get rid of insurance premiums and co-pays. Just make doctor visits and surgery free for all.
Yeah, and if I have to pay, through my taxes and wealth-redistribution (entitlement) confiscation, for every student in the country to attend college, then it’s going to be that much more expensive, and that much more difficult, for me to pay for my own children to attend college.
College is so expensive because of federal student loans, period. The federal government caused the problem, and I fail to see how the federal government getting more involved is going to fix anything.
The solution is to restore the tie between free-market forces and college courses and tuition. Too many people graduate college with six-figures in loan repayments, and a degree that is barely worth the paper it’s written on. Too many schools use tuition money to fund research, instead of funding professors teaching students.
And if federal student loans must exist, then the principal and interest should be market-based according to the ROI of the degree. (Sociology or “Women’s Studies” degree? Lower principal, higher interest rate. Engineering? Higher principal, lower interest rate.)
But establishing a new entitlement that I’ll have to pay for? No effing thanks.
You have to ask? At the expense of you, or your children. The money will either have to be taxed or printed/borrowed. This will cost more than anyone can dream right now, because enrollments will skyrocket with the barrier to entry lowered.
When a good or service is free, there is unlimited demand.
And there is a lot of waste.
One of the better things that Gough Whitlam did in Australia during his failed reign as Prime Minister was to facilitate a far more inclusive university system. Hats off to Obama for this. However, my admiration over this announcement is tempered by the reality that there is no proposal to go with the suggestion: no costing, no government push. It appears for all intents and purposes to be aimed at getting his name in the papers, perhaps testing the waters, perhaps stealing some thunder from the Republicans…anything but an actual proposal to introduce comprehensive tertiary education to improve the US education system.
We already provide 13 years of ‘free’ education, and by ‘we’ I mean land owners, 75% of my property taxes goes to a school system in which I have not and never will have kids. I’m sick of supporting other peoples families at gunpoint, I’m taxed enough (too much) already.
If you pay a property tax it is not yours. You’re just renting it from the government. We are all slaves of the State. Slavery was never abolished it only changed in form.
2009– Year of the Slave
Also, the American education system – higher ed, is already inclusive. But for those not born with a silver spoon, they have to work for it. While my college mates were off partying and pledging, I was working. I paid my entire college cost – and I worked full time the whole time.
If you want it, and you have the intelligence, it is always accessible, and without mortgaging the rest of your life.
I paid for mine.
Can I get a reimbursement?
(With 30 years of interest?)
College is unaffordable for most now. Times have changed.
True. The price of higher ed skyrocketed once the Feds started pouring money in.
It created a bubble, just like in real estate. The markets function in predictable ways even when the government tampers with them. Especially then.
Should we pour in more federal money?
What better way to pop the bubble that needs to be popped.
Says the father of two teenagers who still has a few dollars in his own student loan debt (including law school).
The solution is to turn off the federal spigot, and force colleges to compete for students at market prices.
Compete? Quelle perversité!
Exactly! The feds have made it so there is no top to the cost of a college education. So there is no incentive to hold down costs. Pouring more money into it by making eternal students will not make it affordable as it will still cost. It will be pouring gas on a fire.
The lack of good jobs, overwhelming regulations, and a Democrat Party Administration intent on destroying the working and middle classes to implement its far left program is imo the reason that the Democrat Party has perused policies that enrich the public and private education lobby at the expense of students and parents. .
Pardon my language, but: tough shit. Work harder.
…mainly because the last thing this debtor-nation needs is to create yet another policy by which the populace becomes evermore dependent on the federal government.
And guess who gets to control the curriculum? You think the AWG indoctrination is bad in colleges now, just wait until the thought police control your grades and therefore your ‘free’ tuition.
They are probably going to mandate AWG theory classes for all program recipients.
Back when I was in college a VW Beetle cost $1995. Now a VW costs 20x that. Shall we allow the Feds to subsidize my car, too? How the hell can we pay for all of this? Enough already
2015 beetle $20,695 ….. more like 10X & you are getting a heck of a lot more car than a Beetle from the 60’s or 70’s.
http://www.vw.com/models/beetle/
@ Stewart pid. Beetle vs VW, 10x vs 20x who cares…. My point being the govt is too involved in everything we do. Enough already!
Funny thing. My father learned a lesson in the 1970s: never buy a new car (again). I may have examined that lesson, but I have never made that mistake.
Being a person who only buys used cars, it was such a relief when Obama pushed the “Cash For Clunkers” deal that basically doubled the price of a used car over night & took a huge number of perfectly serviceable used cars off the road.
(remember, the used car you got credit for had to be running, & it had to be destroyed, & you had to buy a new car with the money)
Perhaps he will propose an increase in the GI Bill for those who serve their country?
What are you smoking?
How about instead of paying for college, he proposes price controls on tuition and salary caps for professors?
What? Libs won’t like that?
You’re right; that is completely out of the question (price controls on tuition that is) …
Price controls are idiotic. They cause scarcity. Do you remember Nixon’s price controls? Rent control is a good example. If you put a cap on tuition, then universities would have to cap the number of professors, buildings, administrators, desks and so on that they had, and hence limit the number of students attending. Price controls are still government meddling in the economy. Better solution is to get the government out, period. If there were no federal student loan program universities would be forced to compete on price and ho-hum state universities would have to charge what they were really worth. Textbook publishers couldn’t charge $250 for a book because nobody would be willing to pay it.
Ya, just pointing out hypocrisy of libs.
We could start with that Harvard professor who shared a brewski with the PoPo and first brewer.
I’m guessing it would run my taxes up 500 to 1000 dollars or so.
Of course that won’t happen, Uncle Sam will just borrow the money.
So how much is the national debt now? $17,000,000,000,000
Just over $18,000,000,000,000 according to the online, realt-time debt clock:
http://www.usdebtclock.org
It will raise taxes eventually. The debt will be paid. If taxes are not explicitly raised, people down the road will pay through the hidden tax of hyper inflation.
I paid for mine too. About 40 years ago. In fact, as far as I know, everyone else did too. I’m sure there must have been some students who borrowed money to pay for school, but I’m pretty sure the vast majority of students (and/or their parents) paid for their schooling.
How did I do it? Well at the University of Utah where I went, tuition was about $350/quarter (the U was on the quarter system at the time) for a “standard load” of 12-14 quarter-hours. I was an officer in the National Guard at the time, and the money I was paid for the monthly weekend drills and summer camp was what I used to pay for my University education.
How did other people do it? They worked during the summer. A lot of them worked painting houses, or roofing, or landscaping. You know, summer work. You could tell who did it by their deep tans when the school year started anew every fall. When was the last time you saw American college students doing any of those jobs? Heck, when was the last time you saw *any* Americans doing those jobs?
I submit that the easy availability of government-backed student loans created one of those vacuums that nature abhors, resulting in a dramatic increase in illegal immigration to supply the labor that previously was supplied by able-bodied college students. It’s a non-obvious connection, much like those “Connections” that James Burke used to talk about on the BBC show (shown on PBS in the U.S.) of the same name many decades ago. This latest proposal by BHO will just exacerbate the problem. What better way to remove even more Americans from the workplace and replace them with Democrat-voting undocumented workers?
Cheers Lynn
I agree Lynn. I work with high schoolers and those now in college come back to visit me every year. I chat them up about summer work and most don’t know what “work” means. Of those who do, they are hoping to get occasional baby-sitting jobs. Very few look for 40+ hours worth of work to fill their summer vacations. When I was in college I spent some summers working for landscape businesses mowing lawns and trimming shrubs. I made enough to get me through a private college (I worked during school too). Those jobs in our area are not filled by college students these days. They are filled by very nice and hard-working Ecuadorians.
I was fortunate to get a job in HS at an Audio Club, and then a PX. Once I was off to college, my summers were occupied by working at a Theme park! Actually not a bad job (the perks were fun). Summer was for full time work – but then so was school. I worked full time my senior year, and took all night classes.
Holy crap! I had forgotten all about the Audio Club. Mine was at Patch Barracks in Stuttgart, spent many ear blistering hours playing with the best 1970’s audio tech. 😆
I later worked for AAFES while in college, 32 hours/wk plus a full schedule, and a summer job managing a buffalo farm as well. I still do not know how I did it all.
Given some of the patrons at the theme park, you could call it a Buffalo farm. 😉
Mine was in Frankfurt. Young GIs with no where else to spend money in the early 70s – many walked out with very expensive audio systems!
Lynn Clark says:……………..”How did I do it? Well at the University of Utah where I went, tuition was about $350/quarter (the U was on the quarter system at the time) for a “standard load” of 12-14 quarter-hours. I was an officer in the National Guard at the time, and the money I was paid for the monthly weekend drills and summer camp was what I used to pay for my University education.”
Now here’s the question. How did draft dodging Bill Clinton who lied to a survivor of the Bataan death march to avoid the service do it?
Rhodes Scholarship aka paid for by Cecil Rhodes who wanted a world government and ran by Nathan Rothschild. {:>D
Sort of like Obama wants to do now. (I expect Obama to be in a UN post after this 2nd term.)
Where is your foresight Gail?
YOU should be making these kinds of extrapolations and predictions, not me …
http://youtu.be/AIcfMMVcYZg
Not to mention that not all students are interested in, or would benefit from, higher education. However, I do believe that vocational education, whether at trade schools or community colleges, is a desirable option for many, if not most. Still, it should not be at the expense of others!
It should be available as an alternative in High School. My best buddy got his Masters Electrician’s ticket at the age of 16 years. The youngest ever in the state.
Didn’t the gov. take over student loans about 5-6 years back?
Now here is an educational change that you may agree with …
Football will be a compulsory subject for high school students in China from 2016.
Apparently Obama realizes that after 12 years of our current education system two more years are required for the students to be able to read at grade 7 level. Just another hand out to the teachers unions.
And they don’t educate only indoctrinate. One has to toe the party (Communism) to attend a Community College or work in one. Everything DC gets its hands on will turn to crap.
Student loans around 800 Billion.
College is expensive because government guarantees the recipients of tuition, the colleges, they will guarantee loans to students. Why should they lower tuition?
Then there are the multiple billions in endowment funds.
If they guarantee home mortgages, imagine what would happen to the housing market. Oh wait!
Two years of college so they can qualify for a minimum wage job. Brilliant!
Bingo. Everyone complains about the high cost of higher education, but no one asks the simple question “why are costs ballooning”. The generous federal grants already in place for colleges have created less incentive for colleges to reign in their costs on the front end. It has become another taxpayer funded feeding trough with the Lib profs, staff and their associated unions gorging themselves. Unfortunately, paying the basic tuition costs for students will encourage these institutions and their unions to carry on business as usual with their ever growing appetite for huge unjustified salaries and benefits. It is the same reason cities and towns are going bankrupt, as they struggle to maintain services.
A full-time professor earns $500,000 and more….
The top ten profs and their salaries
There is NOTHING that says these people can actually TEACH. Often they can not if the Physics and the Math profs I had at school is any indication.
Then there are our buddies the ClimAstrologists. This looks at pay per hour worked.
Here is a list of salaries for faculty at UVA. I believe the Provost earned in excess of $700,000 per year. There was a long list over $425,000. It took a lawsuit to release the salaries and was only accomplished because it is a state funded school.
I doubt there is much dedication due to “the love of teaching”.
http://blurblawg.typepad.com/files/university-of-virginia-faculty-salaries.pdf
Thanks for the extra data on salaries.
Because of FOIA, the local rag publishes the salaries of all State employees in Virginia. So you can compile your own lists of the other Universities in that state if you wish – http://datacenter.timesdispatch.com/databases/salaries-virginia-state-employees-2012/
I know that Steven / Tony does not have the same emphasis on individual responsibility as many of his readers do, but I wonder if he has thought this one through. If government supplies free education, the government will dictate what is taught — do we want that? The proposal increases the demand which will drive up tuition and other prices — do we want that? Perhaps the proposal’s cost will mean that it will not be free for everyone, and that means that the middle class will face higher costs with probably no or little help — do we want that? The proposal will take students away from private schools and place them into systems where the government controls the curriculum — do we want that? Some students start at 14 years of age to save for college and figure out how to make it work; this proposal undermines this concept of personal responsibility — do we want that? Community schools have been an avenue where kids who goofed off during high school years could get back on track with their education; this proposal means that kids/adults can goof off for two more years before getting serious — do we want that?
The unintended consequences of this proposal will be more than we will imagine at first glance. Do we do continue to erode the concept of personal responsibility in this nation? The best economic decisions are made when the person who receives an item is the same person who pays for the item.
@An Inquirer. I agree totally……almost. I was one of those goof offs in high school that found a love of biology in the local community college and went on to get my BS in bio and business. So I may be an outlier on your bell curve.
Better, perhaps, we should have 1930’s style work projects; parks, monuments, rehabilitation of inner-urban areas ’employing’ all those drawing welfare benefits … some of those might *choose* to take the college direction after exposure to that environment …
Otherwise, I see the ‘kids’ spending a couple years wearing brownshirts in an Obama-corps if the requirement is to ‘pay’ the schooling back via performing govt service; I imagine Obama is having wet dreams thinking about all the ‘community organizers’ he is going to turn out with this kind of program.
.
“I imagine Obama is having wet dreams thinking about all the ‘community organizers’ he is going to turn out with this kind of program.”
I certainly agree with you there _Jim.
Because I had to take 18 credit hours every 3 years to keep my certification I took a lot of community college courses besides courses at various 4 year Universities. (It was much cheaper and closer.) From the early 1980s through the last decade I watch the quality of the courses go downhill. The last straw was when they made getting a passing grade dependent on class attendance and the ‘councilor’ said I needed to take a remedial ‘how to study course’ because I missed three classes
WTF! I not only had straight A’s but a straight 100 average for that class (accounting) but they flunked me anyway based on attendence – go figure. When I got my BS in Chemistry, I never went to any of my physics or calculus lectures because the profs couldn’t teach. They were so bad they confused instead of clarified. I just went to the recitations, labs and tests and still got Bs in all those classes.
Why in heck should a COLLEGE be a babysitting service for those over voting age? All that is required is showing you learned the course material and did the tests and labs.
Also back in the day my Uni flunked out over half of the freshman chemistry class. IIRC it was close to flunking 3/4 from a starting class of ~400 freshman year to ~100 by sophomore year. None of this pampering the students crap.
The Federal involvement in education is a huge reason why college costs have risen so much. And this proposal requires only a C+ average, which will magically become the floor. It is all government scam, they told us that pre-K was necessary, but has that improved test scores? No, it has not. What was the article I saw about freshmen in college reading at a 7th grade level?
http://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/education/item/19867-education-expert-says-college-freshmen-read-at-7th-grade-level
Sheesh, the more the feds get involved, the worse education becomes. The feds are the ten ton bull elephant in the room, destroying everything in sight. So I guess Obama’s proposal is to get them up to an eighth grade reading level? K-14?? LOL
The children got a better education when we had one room school houses.
Do you know why what that was?
b/c the OLDER kids were present in the classroom (and all that follows or entails, like mentoring, setting an example, discipline etc. of the younger ones by the older ones); that has been remedied* with the ‘modern’ education system …
*implied sarcasm, in case you miss it
Again you are correct.
I have three friends who went to one room schools. There is nothing like having to teach the material you learned to another to not only make sure you learned it but that you will remember it.
This is the web page of one of those people who has since died This site best viewed with a glass of scotch! and The Calamity Jane Austin Hoax He managed to net a plagiarist who came back at him in an irate fury after getting an F from copying the site verbatim. {:>D
One of Obama’s first acts as President was to kill the Washington DC school voucher program. He sends his girls to a posh private school, but forces other struggling parents to leave their kids in the local dropout factory.
His later education plans were no better, expanding universal Pre-K when Head Start has been scientifically proven not to provide lasting educational benefit to any child, and the overtly racist My Brother’s Keeper plan to provide more resources just to young black and latino men.
This plan sounds bad, and given Obama’s track record I guarantee that the final product would be an unmitigated disaster for the country.
Milk has become really expensive over the past 25 years.
So we need free milk. Every child should have a shot at being tall. Think of the children.
If the Congress doesn’t make milk free, they obviously hate children.
And that 2 years will then be worth exactly what you paid for it. Plus all the classes will be full, so real students can’t get in, but will be mostly empty with in a couple weeks….
Course if you’d just kill all the H1B visas, the classes will be full again, and for the entire semester…
I’m glad Mr. Obama’s splendid proposal was put to discussion here. There seems to be many worthy theories what the President has on his mind. Here is the list so far:
1. Mr. Obama decided to replicate the success of ObamaCare by federalizing education – Dave
2. Mr. Obama understands that the higher ed bubble is killing the middle class. He decided to pour more money in to shock the system with freshly printed federal money, pop the bubble and lower the costs – bleakhouses
3. Mr. Obama is trying to kill two birds with one stone. Provide free education and solve the debt crisis at the same time by bankrupting the system and presumably force the creditors to renegotiate the debt – wordsmeanthings
4. Mr. Obama understands wants to provide free high-quality Climate Change program to college students – Password protected
5. Mr. Obama cares about the military and wants to implement an new GI Bill for returning soldiers no longer needed in the wars he successfully ended – Chuck
6. Mr. Obama agreed to implement compulsory ping-pong college program in exchange for the Chinese implementation of a compulsory school football program – Truthseeker
7. Mr. Obama realized that additional two years of free government schooling is needed for all students to read at 7th grade level – TomE
8. Mr. Obama wants the students to qualify for a minimum wage job – slimething
9. Mr. Obama wants to provide the students with an opportunity to do patriotic service for the country in exchange for free education – _Jim
10. Same as 7. but with a more ambitious goal of reaching 8th grade level reading proficiency – Don
It may of course be all of the above.
I apologize if I misstated or misattributed any of the explanations, or if I missed any. The excitement is building and it just keeps pouring in.
—–
And I hope I didn’t screw up the code.
Errata:
4. Mr. Obama
understandswants …5. … implement a
nnew GI Bill …(the thing is hard to proofread)
In Australia when I attended university (tertiary level education) in the late 1970’s the government picked up the full cost. However, these days with my daughters the government pays for some of the cost and the students have to pay the balance. However, students are not required to pay off the debt until their income from a job, post graduation, exceeds a certain amount. This maybe a suitable compromise in the US situation.
Primary and secondary education is paid for by the government unless you attend a private school, however the government provides a partial subsidy to private schools. I think that your college education is equivalent to secondary level education in Australia.
If you want to reduce crime and poverty in a community a good education a must. Being conservative I prefer that governments don’t infer in our lives, but I don’t think that children should have to pay for the sins of their derelict parents.
you are making the assumption that the drugs, crime, and rampant unemployment in our ghettos is due to lack of access to higher education. Sorry, but nothing like that.
One massive driver of our feral pavement apes is ‘Lord Of The Flies Syndrome’. As long as we continue to subsidize dystopian culture and sociopathic behavior we’ll continue to have it.
How many university graduates are unemployed or do crime and drugs??
Pretty sure every single NFL player has at least 4 years of college. Are you saying NFL players don’t commit crimes or do drugs?
NFL players have lower crime rates than the general population.
https://stat.duke.edu/~dalene/chance/chanceweb/123.nflviol.pdf
Lower conviction rates.
O. J. Simpson…
Madoff
That is a very well-played ex hoc ergo propter hoc. *slow clap*
Dave says:
“NFL players have lower crime rates than the general population.”
National Football League player salaries run the gamut from the bare minimum wage of $375,000 set by the collective bargaining agreement (CBA) made by The National Football League Players Association (NFLPA) and the owners of the teams, to about five times that much.
With salaries like that I should hope they have a lower crime rate!
What the left won’t tell you about black crime <=== Read it.
Prices too high? Pour untold billions more in and watch prices plummet… said no economist ever.
Two major reasons that tuition has skyrocketed – the increase of administrative (vs. teaching) positions (e.g. VPs of Global Communications, Student Life, Public Affairs,etc), and the absurd expectation of parents and students that they “need” the Ivy imprint on their degree and will pay anything to get it. In-state tuition at public colleges is still affordable in many states, assuming that parents know how to save, and students know how to work. I paid every penny of 3 big-U degrees by working, my daughter is will get her B.Sc. debt-free, and her brother knows that he will need to do likewise. Sorry, but I’m tired of paying other peoples’ way as well as my own family’s.
oh yeah! two years of underwater basket weaving and queer theater, that’ll certainly make the mooks and dorks more employable. Will they have a mandatory semester of “would you like fries with that, sir?”
There is nothing new here. There exists no free lunch.
http://youtu.be/YLzaOKKqFvI
Times have NOT changed. We only repeat the mistakes of the past.That’s why those in power always try to control the past.
OK, that’s different. It’s good, bipartisan.
Boehner did a back of the napkin at Marcel’s:
$35 billion a year, $70B total for two years. $80B if all 57 states participate. Less than a rounding error on the big items.
The thing is Wen Jiabao called and said they won’t do it if it’s not at least $100B. Not worth the accounting overhead, he said. It will have to be 3 years free college to make it worthwhile.
Is a college degree worth the cost? You decide.
http://youtu.be/kXpwAOHJsxg
Back in 1978 I did the calculations and found a sex change operation would net me a bigger salary than getting a PhD!
Now, under Obamacare, it will cost less too.
Great, this will just drive up prices further. Imagine not having to cut costs to compete!
What Skeeter needs to tell the kiddies is that we already have enough unemployed college grads, and what we need are people with real skills. Skills like welding and heavy machinery repair, that can pay six figures a few years out of school.
http://www.mikeroweworks.com/home
Mike Rowe for President!
Work ethic?
Something else about which Skeeter has no knowledge.
Maybe I’m just getting old and crotchety but it seems to me that more younger folks today lack good work ethics. Awfully lot of people 30 year old range living in their Parents basements, etc. See it at my work all the time. Job security for me, but man o man I just can’t see how a driver can live on the pay one gets for 2,000 mi or even less in a week. But many of them are quite happy with that it seems except they still want more pay for less work. When I drove for miles I did everything I could to average 3,000 mi per week. You don’t like the pay? Find a different place to work the offers a better deal.
Rah, I recently worked to start up a new kind of plant, the first of its kind. We started out with 4 of us in our forties and fifties, and after a few months hired on a teenager and a few twenty-somethings. Us old farts outworked them seven days a week, not only did they not keep up, they couldn’t. We had to work virtually all the overtime because they refused, they said they were tired.
Does General Welfare mean that the federal government has to provide education ?
http://tenthamendmentcenter.com/historical-documents/united-states-constitution/thirty-enumerated-powers/
problem solved in one go, all the money wasted on climate change pays for the education. Of course what do you do with all the out of work fanatics who will be unemployable- back to college.
“Newly empowered Republican lawmakers are threatening to protect U.S. taxpayers from being fleeced again by the Obama administration, which in late 2014 recklessly promised to send another $3 billion of American tax money to a United Nations climate fund. “
Obama will name it the “Hands out, don’t study” program
The 1970 census showed those employed in the field of Education was 6,079,968 for a total population 137,085,000. The 2006 census showed those employed in the field of Education was 3,215,000 (1996) for a Total population 304,059,724. So the number of teachers is 1/2 for three times the population. (In 1970 the Baby Boomer ‘hump’ had pretty much passed through.)
The result of our government controlled Progressive Education formulated by the Father of Modern Education, Fabian John Dewey, is the Dumbing Down of America
We now have one of the worst education systems in the world. Stalin tried Dewey’s system in Russia and tossed it out when he realized it produces complete dummies, useless for anything but sitting on the government dole.
I just recieved the current Community College Spring brochure.
FEE SCHEDULE
$70 – 1 credit hr
$180 for full schedule of courses.
Classes: SUSTAINBLE Living series: (27 courses) including
Social Enterprise: Building a Sustainable Local Economy
Little Houses: An Emerging & Sustainable Alternative
Biofuels 101
Water Efficiency and rain gardens
These were the ones highlighted at the top of the page with a full description.
Courses in UN AGENDA 21 anyone?
We also have courses like:
Dance — West Coast Swing and Three Count Hustle I and II (one of several dance classes)
Gentle Hatha Yoga
Tai Chi for Health (part 1)
Intro to Reiki I (what the heck is Reiki)
Knitting
Sewing
Backyard Chicken Schemes
Cake Decorating I & II (That can be turned into a business at least)
Creative Living Weekends (I & II & III)
Therapeutic Cooking
Discovering your Poetic Voice
Write your Life Story
Jewelry Making- Adorn Yourself with Handmade Creations (A whole page of similar stuff including 3 pottery classes and two artistc welding classes aka Basket weaving)
MS Word & Excel (isn’t it a bit late for that course?)
Defensive driving
Alive at 25 (Again isn’t it a bit late for Drivers Ed?)
There is a 1 &1/2 pages on small business courses
2 page on Professional Development with several classes at different times for Forklift driving, Motercycle basics for dealers, Principles of Manufacturing: Logistics, Real Estate Broker and Vehicle safety Inspection, OSHA 10 and OBD.
Motercycle rider safety courses
A few language courses like English as a foreign language.
A 1/2 page on Human resource courses – you know, the people who keep those over 45 from ever getting a chace to interview.
1 1/2 pages on Health occupations, EMS & EMTs
A 1/2 page on computer courses like microsoft office, Quickbooks, Excel…
Yes they do have some ‘REAl’ courses. Their Chemistry class was dumbed down from the one I took in high school in the 60s. The accounting class instructor was so bad I took over teaching the class and got the students organized to get her fired. Once the US government OWNS the Community Colleges, they will be as pitiful as our High Schools are now.
We need to FIX our grammar schools and High schools not keep people in school till they are 20 years of age or more!
In defense (small) of the CCs, in this state, there are as many adults picking up after work classes as there are regular (supposedly) 2 year students. Most of those classes are designed for the adults. I have availed myself to several classes like that – Sign Language and Braille. They are not meant as a degree course.
Community colleges are great for what they are meant to do. Give continuing ed classes for adults. Accounting, Small business, language, pottery, jewelry making, basket weaving…
They are also good for giving two year degrees in things like bookkeeping, vet tech, nursing, motorcycle repair.
Finally they supposedly let people get the first two years of a four year college degree…. maybe…
From the courses I have taken, Community colleges are much closer to high school than to the University I went to. In other words a good four year school will not accept the credit hours except possibly as electives or at least they should not.
In other words the kids coming out of high school are now so poorly educated they can not get a job in anything except burger flipping so the progressives are throwing out another sop to the dumbed down peons.
Hubby just pointed out something else about the DemiRat win-win free Community college idea. It gets rid of all those embarrassing unemployable high school students that the progressive school system produced.
Hey Gail! To carry your trail a little further — “Community colleges are much closer to high school than to the University I went to” and universities are much closer to what community colleges used to be. So where does one go if one wants a real university education? Maybe India…
If you are not familiar with “Confessions of a College Professor” http://professorconfess.blogspot.com/ it is well worth a look. Especially, check out his listing of popular posts and what he has written about remedial courses. I think you will be verified in a lot of your opinions about education today.
Blast! Blast! Blast! I should never have started reading that “ProfessorConfess” site again… Now I have to wipe the spit off the floor. Gail, if you can read http://professorconfess.blogspot.com/2015/01/universities-ripping-their-own-hearts.htm without throwing things, you are a better stoic than I am.
http://professorconfess.blogspot.com/2015/01/universities-ripping-their-own-hearts.html
At first did not return anything but a blank page even on the google search
……………..
Why am I not surprised that the student loan scam money went into the pockets of the Admin and not the lowly adjunct and assistant profs who actually do the teaching.
Why am I not surprised that the US universities have now been gutted.
Sure explains how Obummer got such great grades and a law degree doesn’t it?
An Adjunct Dies Honorably was an interesting solution to the problem.
It is similar to the home schooling solution to rotten K-12 education.
My usual plug for Dr Art Robinson’s home schooling:
http://www.robinsoncurriculum.com/
Articles on Dr Robinson’s methods from Home Schooling World:
http://www.home-school.com/Articles/columnists/dr-arthur-robinson.php
Hey Gail! Not sure why my links are acting wonky today…
Glad to see your links to the Robinson family. You may remember how the University of Oregon acted against Dr. Robinson’s children when he ran for office.
http://www.kval.com/news/local/117619993.html
State law. All State 4 years schools must transfer all credits from a State CC. However, while basket weaving may account for an elective, it will probably not fill any requirements for a real degree at the 4 year school.
Jason Calley says:
Hey Gail! Not sure why my links are acting wonky today…
…………………..
I just went nuts on https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2015/01/13/shock-news-a-senator-doing-his-job/
Trying to get a link to post and I was using (wwwDOT) to make it a dead link!
Seems WordUnimpressed is doing a bit of censoring from what I can tell.
Are we surprised?
Another goodie for obama’s free shit army.
Free! Lets be honest, what Obama means is paid for by the minority of people who still work and aren’t sleazy enough to have quit working and chose to live on welfare. So how much can we put on the backs of the shrinking working class? What has been Obama’s and the Democrats goal for the last 6 plus years? To destroy the middle class. Every person in the middle class spends more money on taxes then they do on all of their living expenses. The single biggest expense for working class Americans is taxes. So why is “free” community college a “good” thing. Only 20% of people who go to a two year colege today graduate within 3 years. At least half of the programs at community colleges are pure BS programs or do not lead to a work career. Imagine if community college becomes “free” how many new useless two year degree programs they will create to suck that government teat to death. Will the net good to the public exceed the net cost? And regardless of that question is it even constitutional to tax Peter to give Paul “free stuff”? Imagine too who will get to attend community college once it is “free”. It won’t be the honor student or even the “B” average students because that is unfair don’tcha know. It will be the “D” students and the “F” students because they are the ones who were culturally discriminated against. Sooner or later our government will run out of other people’s money…
According to the White House, 9 million students would benefit an average of $3,800/year = $36 billion. So if the Congress does not fund this, they hate college students and clearly want to prevent young voters from having opportunity.
With all respect, O is a divider who takes from one group, gives free stuff to another and creates strife between the two if the group being robbed complains or refuses to pay.
I’ve seen enough of their ‘math’. All profit and no loss, a perpetual motion machine that cures cancer, and lowers sea levels.
NOTHING is free. This is a spending proposal and has to pass through Congress, as the taxpayer is clearly expected to foot the bill for this largesse.
Or he will illegally Executive Order this and steal more money from the people.
Last night I evaluated those comments that indicated insider knowledge about the President’s policy goals and posted them as a numbered list. My list got caught in the filter because I hyperlinked every item back to the text so instead of bothering Steve about releasing it, I’m reposting it as plain text, with a fresh update.
———-
I’m glad Mr. Obama’s splendid proposal was put to discussion here. There seems to be many worthy theories what the President has on his mind. Here is the list so far:
1. Mr. Obama decided to replicate the success of ObamaCare by federalizing education – Dave
2. Mr. Obama understands that the higher ed bubble is killing the middle class. He decided to pour more money in to shock the system with freshly printed federal money, pop the bubble and lower the costs – bleakhouses
3. Mr. Obama is trying to kill two birds with one stone. Provide free education and solve the debt crisis at the same time by bankrupting the system and presumably force the creditors to renegotiate the debt – wordsmeanthings
4. Mr. Obama wants to provide free high-quality Climate Change program to college students – Password protected
5. Mr. Obama cares about the military and wants to implement a new GI Bill for returning soldiers no longer needed in the wars he successfully ended – Chuck
6. Mr. Obama agreed to implement compulsory ping-pong college program in exchange for the Chinese implementation of a compulsory school football program – Truthseeker
7. Mr. Obama realized that additional two years of free government schooling is needed for all students to read at 7th grade level – TomE
8. Mr. Obama wants the students to qualify for a minimum wage job – slimething
9. Mr. Obama wants to provide the students with an opportunity to do patriotic service for the country in exchange for free education – _Jim
10. Same as 7. but with a more ambitious goal of reaching 8th grade level reading proficiency – Don
11. Mr. Obama discovered a budgetary perpetual motion machine and wants to implement it immediately. The machine also cures cancer and lowers sea levels. – gator69
It may of course be all of the above.
I apologize if I misstated or misattributed any of the explanations, or if I missed any. The excitement is building and it just keeps pouring in.
P.S. I have second thoughts about attaching item 11 to last night’s list. Gator may have been facetious.
My parents were poor (both born before 1920) and were teenagers during the Great Depression. Why didn’t they turn to crime?
Anyway, it’s good to see professors will be serving their community by working for free.
Before the 1960’s it was generally understood that an IQ of 116 or higher was needed for college level work. How many students entering college ( expressed as a percentage ) now have an IQ at that needed level? If one assumes IQ is normally distributed and the Standard distribution is 15 and the mean IQ of the American population is 100 (it isn’t, it is getting lower year by year) then the percentage of of the population with IQs above 115 is 16%. This means that most of the people going to college are really not college material as way more than 16% of college age individuals are now attending college. Obama’s new push for more of the population to go to college is destined to fail because there just are not the numbers of bright people to fill the slots. Even today too many individuals attend college and waste resources because they don’t belong there. Hence, lowering of standards once again to accommodate a new influx of sub par students. It isn’t college that most will experience but it is Day Care for young adults.
Dan Kurt
A seventh grade reading level will get you into most universities today. Professors are handing out A’s out like welfare checks, you get the grades mom and dad paid for, customer satisfaction. Who cares if little Jimmy is an idiot? The university got their money and the kid got a diploma. Ford was not the only one to recognize the profit of an assembly line.
I’ve known students with measured IQs between 70 and 90 or so, some of whom who have been on high school honor rolls. One such of my acquaintance was also severely emotionally disturbed. She entered a community college program in child development, with a reading/writing level I estimated at fifth-grade level. She actually earned a certificate in that subject!
Another did not like to read and displayed no intellectual curiosity. She was accepted at a local four-year institution (known for catering to remedial students) and was placed in remedial courses. She had been an honor roll student in high school.
“It may be hard to get into an Ivy League school, but according to Walter Williams, professor of economics at George Mason University, that’s where the hardship ends.
According to his research, our 1.1 trillion dollars in college debt is sure buying some awesome grades at some high brand schools.
Take Brown University for instance. Two-thirds of all letter grades given at Brown University are A’s.
At Harvard, fifty percent of all grades were either A or A-. And 91 percent of seniors graduated with honors.
I’ve got news for you if 91 percent of people are graduating with honors, it’s not honors.
Eighty percent of the grades given at the University of Illinois are A’s and B’s.
At Columbia University, fifty percent of students are on the Dean’s list. I’ve got news for ya if 50% of students are on the Deans list, it’s not the Deans list. It’s just a list of half of the school.
And how about Stanford? Only 6 percent of student grades at Stanford were a C or below.”
http://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2009/05/06/fraud_in_academia/page/full
You said it! I guesstimate that no more than 20% of the population can benefit from a college education, due to most people’s lack of intelligence and/or motivation. Face it, by definition, half the population has less-than-average intelligence.
I believe (no proof, of course) that intelligence is closely tied to intellectual curiosity. If a student lacks that particular trait, I suspect that s/he is not college material.
The government student loans served two purposes. The first was to inflate college prices to the limits people could borrow and create debt slaves while secondly making many more totally unable to afford it. Now ‘reform’ must take a form of preserving these high prices and letting them grow even higher. This can be done by forcible transfer payments from taxpayers and savers to the colleges.
Why didn’t Obama do this earlier. Reason number 1, it’s pandering and political nonsense. It’s only proposed now so republicans will look bad shooting it down. Reason number 2, it wasn’t time yet. That is the loan system still had wealth it could it extract before people started rejecting the system. People have started to reject the system and before it becomes mainstream they must ‘reform’ the system to keep people in it.
Once people get their ‘free’ two years they of course will want to finish. Then two years will cost what four used to cost.
Throw the peasants some scraps and taking the scraps further enslaves them. Obama feels and reads the script written by people who understand things far better than he does.
Nothing happens unless it benefits government and those close to it.
I seriously question the motives behind this proposal. Do we need more college students? Most new graduates can’t find a job in their field. Many then try to apply for graduate or professional schools, where there are an average of 5+ applicants for every opening.
We have over 800,000 foreign students in our colleges and graduate schools. If there are 9 million American students that want to go to college but don’t, why do we have almost 1 million foreign students? There is simply no evidence that there is any shortage of college students or new college graduates, or any strong demand by employers for more.
Meanwhile we import between 100,000 and 150,000 foreigners on H1B work visas every year to flood the market for educated workers. Wages in STEM and other supposedly “high demand” areas are stagnant, with no evidence of a worker shortage. For scientists in particular, the pay rate set by the NIH for a biomedical graduate student is still only $10.50 an hour full time equivalent with no overtime, no job security, no pension, no 401k, no COLA, no contributions to lifetime Social Security earnings, no unemployment insurance, and only enough benefits to cover a single person. After 5-7 years and earning a doctorate, the NIH pay scale goes all the way up to $18.50 an hour full-time equivalent with no overtime, no job security, no pension, no 401k, no contributions to lifetime Social Security earnings, no unemployment insurance, and only enough benefits to cover a single person, although they do get a COLA. Does this sound like the type of compensation a high demand worker filling a crisis shortage would receive?
I looked up the Davis-Bacon wage scale for my area, and a high school dropout holding a flag on a federal construction site makes $18+ per hour with fringe benefits. Do we really need to encourage people to go through 10+ years of post-high school education to make the same amount at the end in a workplace flooded with foreigner workers?
Thinking upon the lede or opening post, I hope our host is not going full Charles Johnson (of Little Green Footballs) on us …
“What happened to Little Green Footballs?”
http://theconservativecitizen.com/2010/01/23/what-happened-to-little-green-footballs/
rah says:
“Maybe I’m just getting old and crotchety but it seems to me that more younger folks today lack good work ethics. Awfully lot of people 30 year old range living in their Parents basements, etc….”
No you are not getting old. I found the lab tech I hired straight out of school with a two or four year degree were just about worthless and I had to fire them. In late, 1/2 morning break, hour lunch, 1/2 afternoon break and leave early instead of an 8 hour work day you were lucky to get 6 hours. When you caught them reading magazine instead of doing the analysis the production line was waiting for, they would tell you to F..K off B…ch! So I would fire their asses. After a few of those I would not hire anyone UNDER 35 much to the dismay of human resources.
Best young person I hired had been a carpenter’s helper and wanted to get into a ‘better line of work’ He was a really sharp guy, learned fast and you never had to tell him anything twice or worry he wouldn’t come in.
If you think college is expensive now, just wait until it’s “free”.
I went to community college for biology and then on to a BS in bio and business. Great learning experience, however I have learned as much if not more from this blog. Thank you Tony et al!
Steve/Tony, love ya, bro, but, you’re wrong in this case.
Tuition is high precisely and exactly because of the continuous government subsidy to the colleges and grants and loans to the students. It’s an endless fountain of money to the colleges, all they have to do is raise their rates, and they’ll get more money. Obama’s “free” idea only enhances this effect.
Furthermore, as I’m sure you are well aware, not everyone is cut out for advanced education. We all know a graph of our IQs per population come in the shape of a bell curve. 100 being the median point, or the apex of the bell. Now, if you ask me, I’d say people with an IQ of 100 don’t belong in any college. They simply lack the capacity to grasp the complex notions a college is suppose to teach. Why should the tax payers provide funding for all people to go to college when we know the majority of the population have IQs less than 110? That doesn’t make any sense. Don’t we already have enough climatologists?
Lastly, this is also why the lunatics insist that we need illegal immigrants. We have convince the average American that they all need to go to college and get a degree. Most degree holders believe manual labor is something for people without degrees. But, we can all agree that we do need people engaged in manual labor. Our factories still need workers, as does our construction industry, as does our …… etc…. etc…. Must we have people running a shovel with an Associates degree? How much would that labor cost?
ERRrrrrr,mmmm
I have worked construction with a college degree. Some of the guys I was working with also had college degrees.
Yeh Gail, me too. Were you running a shovel? How much was that worth? Did you need a college degree to run the shovel? Did the college degree make you better at running the shovel, or hammer, or whatever? I’m not ashamed to admit it. A guy who lacked even an HS education showed me how to run a hammer and a shovel. To this day, he’s still better at such things than I am, and I’m no slouch. None of my college education helped me in building bridges. I was a laborer.
And, that’s my point. You don’t need a degree to be a good construction worker. I’m here to testify. I’ve seen it and done it. The guy that taught me how to swing a hammer was my foreman. He’s not building bridges, anymore. He’s running a small trucking company …. still, no HS diploma nor any college, but, still rocking it. Don’t even get me started on roofing. What does a degree in English or education do for a roofer?
I’ll also state that the last real laborious job (re-manufacturing semi-truck breaks) I had, , when I told my boss that I had accepted a position elsewhere (I did the on-line/night school stuff for my degree), he looked at me and said “oh, thank God”!!!! He explained that while I out-worked everyone else there, I thought and talked too much. He’d have 100 of me or none of me, but, he really didn’t want one of me. The job I was doing wasn’t given to thinking. It was given to doing.
Gail, I guess what I’m trying to say is this … http://suyts.wordpress.com/2015/01/09/time-to-break-out-the-iq-bell-curve-again-another-response-to-zeros-idiotic-free-community-college-idiocy/
I worked Casino games with one – does that count? 😉
Ah, yes. I also worked casino games in Nevada after earning a B.A. I was unable to find other work at the time.
Never worked in Vegas, but I understand their Craps dealers make a good salary.
I worked slots at one casino, and keno at another. The salary was $2.00 per hour, plus tips, which averaged about $5-$10 per week. Once, though, I received a $200 tip from a happy keno winner. I left because they just didn’t like card-counters.
OMG. Please tell me this is an early April fools joke or the web site has been hacked.
1.) http://usdebtclock.org/
2.) The federal government has no constitutional authority to interfere in this market.
3.) This will merely drive up the gross cost of education by artificially raising the floor under prices. After the market adjusts, the average net (out of pocket) costs will be the same, the tax payers and students who self-finance will be harmed, and the only ones who benefit will be the community college bureaucrats. There’s no such thing as a free lunch.
4.) Do you really want the federal government to exercise that much financial influence over our *community* colleges? It’s worked out so well with our police forces and health care.
5.) I can’t believe we have to make these arguments here, of all places.
Nice point!
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/obamas-free-community-college-idea-hard-sell/story?id=28099664
“…While certainly ambitious, the idea currently lacks a total price tag, proposed legislation, and Republican support on Capitol Hill.
But the White House says that’s beside the point at this stage.
The president merely hopes ‘to start a conversation,’ Obama domestic policy adviser Cecilia Munoz told reporters….”
In other words, he has no intention of actually following through on this. It’s “eye candy” for his State of the Union so he can spend the next year talking about how all those hearteless republicans hate education. Remember his “jobs plan” in 2011? Same thing. Empty words. No point arguing on the merits.
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/44449392/ns/politics-white_house/t/obamas-jobs-plan-paid-seems-not/
It’s expensive because they have gourmet cooks and luxury dorms. It’s expensive because there is no accountability…
It’s the 21st century, the whole model of education needs to change.
Shouldn’t need to actually go to school but maybe twice per week with all the technology. There is no reason 90% of it can’t be done from home.
On line courses work fine… If you can read.
Tests MUST be done at the school. (Online cheating is WAAaaay too easy)
Lab work has to be done at the school and recitation sessions with an assistant prof or grad student for discussions, question answering is a must. In person quizes should be done at that time also.
The biggest problem with on line courses is cheating. I took a couple via the Community College and If I wished I could have had Hubby take the course and do the homework and tests and no one would have had any idea the work was not mine.
The correspondence Stat courses I took were the same. Much too easy to cheat.
However modified correspondence or on line courses would certainly lower the costs.
Kids who study hard in high school has a chance to do FREE college work through PSEO Postsecondary Enrollment Options
Google it.
My kids earned 12-14 college credits in high school and cost nothing.
They use their high school time for productive work like learning instead of clowning around.
Have you had 12 free years of public education?
Are you still stupid?
Then Obama has a plan for you…..just 2 more years will cure you!
And Gruber will explain it all to you.