I can remember when higher education was affordable for almost everyone and student loans were not needed.

That was BR, Before Reagan.

Now we are the only industrialized nation who makes higher education unaffordable for most people, the 99%. We cannot even call America an "advanced" industrial nation because we are essentially a RIN, Retarded Industrial Nation.

Originally Posted by simone

I can remember when higher education was affordable for almost everyone and student loans were not needed.

That was BR, Before Reagan.

Now we are the only industrialized nation who makes higher education unaffordable for most people, the 99%. We cannot even call America an "advanced" industrial nation because we are essentially a RIN, Retarded Industrial Nation.

I hope you aren't blaming Reagan because he had little, if anything, to do with how Higher Education is getting screwed up these days.

The two biggest causes of higher education unaffordability have been the HEA of 1965 and the creation of the US News & World Report rankings. Making rewards for spending the most combined with almost unlimited revenue streams was just a recipe for disaster. Unfortunately this was all combined with a decrease in state funding to colleges due to Medicaid expenditures increasing and K-12 expenditures increasing. The result is tuition going up at 5-15% a year.

No worries, nothing will change. Everything thinks the problem is not enough money. This has never been the problem.

My thoughts on student loans?

We should not support them AT ALL. No state OR federal involvement. If private institutions want to make "student loans" at their own discretion, and taking all risk on themselves, that is fine.

I dont think there is any question but that the availability of student loans has increased the cost of a higher education...and increased it to the point that it is questionable whether it is a sound investment or not.

We need to face a few realities in the US. The first is that we cannot be a nation of middle managers. Somebody, somewhere, eventually has to produce something. Sending all our kids off to get business administration degrees and masters degrees in Piano Performance (yes....I am serious...it is real) is not how you end up with a thriving economy.

Do away with ALL government involvement in student loans...that would go a LONG ways.

THEN increase availability and (this is the most important part) QUALITY of vo-tech training. Currently most votech is a joke. Fix it.

It started when Reagan was governor of California.

Reagan hated it that the lower classes could have access to higher learning, even though he had once been one of them and had been able to work his way through college:

The ghost of Ronald Reagan haunts the American university. College campuses are widely supposed to be the bastions of shaggy liberalism, but the good people managing our higher education system have sometimes behaved as if they were possessed by the spirit of Reaganomics rather than the enlightened principles of humanism. Perhaps the most telling evidence of this vexation is their treatment of university presses.

.... Those of us who work in books tend to see the early years of scholarly publishing as a kind of intellectual utopia. Universities subsidized not only the research and writing of books, but their publication, marketing, and -- through library budgets -- their purchase. Indeed, the viability of most university press books was largely assured on the basis of their library sales alone. It was an almost perfectly closed economic circle.

This benign socialist cycle functioned more or less unhindered from the creation of university presses around the turn of the 20th century until it was eroded by the flood of federal education dollars loosed by World War II. The influx of wartime cash accelerated the growth of existing fields and sparked the equally swift development of new ones. The cumulative result was the mega-university, with its sprawling campuses, big-budget research projects, and close ties to government agencies and corporate R&D units. Meanwhile, the G.I. Bill fueled enormous increases in student enrollments.

.... And then there was Reagan. With his election to the White House in 1980, Ronald Reagan -- who as governor of California had led the charge against his own state university system -- ushered in an ideology of tax cuts, reductions to government programs and private-sector gimmes that proved absolutely toxic to public universities. Some of the programmatic cuts came at the federal level: the research budgets of NOAA, NIST and the Department of Energy were slashed during his administration, for example, But these were hardly the main sources of government spending on higher education. The worse damage resulted from Reagan’s “federalist” devolution of spending burdens onto the states, the universities’ primary source of support. Program cuts and tuition increases became the norm -- and continue to be so to this day.

The erosion of public support was particularly devastating to the humanities and scholarly publishing, areas that did not benefit from Reagan’s increased defense spending and trickle-down tax cuts for the wealthy. Arriving at a large state university in the early 1980s, as I did, was like showing up at a house party after the last guests had staggered home. The streets were littered with burnt-out hippies and faded dreams.

Read more: Ronald Reagan vs. the University Press | Inside Higher Ed
Inside Higher Ed

Originally Posted by simone

It started when Reagan was governor of California.

Reagan hated it that the lower classes could have access to higher learning, even though he had once been one of them and had been able to work his way through college:

Read more: Ronald Reagan vs. the University Press | Inside Higher Ed
Inside Higher Ed

Simone, this is idiotic and paranoid even for you. Reagan requiring kids to pay tuition was not some crazy thing that caused a downward spiral for higher education. Reagan had to balance a budget and chose to make kids pay tuition like every other state. It would be offset by having things like the grants and loans created 2 years earlier in the HEA of 1965.

You, like many others, think this is a problem of revenue. This is not the case for higher education. In constant dollars the cost to educate a college student has gone up 33% since 1970. This is disproportionality at private and public 4 year colleges. Oddly enough, community colleges have had the same cost to educate since 2001. Tuition increases for publics because of a drop in state support. This accounts for the majority of tuition increases over the last ten years. Nevertheless, the problem never started with Reagan making kids pay tuition in one state or saying something about blood in the streets. Get real.

Because of Reagan. Because he started the trend IN NOT INVESTING IN EDUCATION!

US, 25th in math ability.

US, 12th in reading comprehension.

US, 20 in science understanding.

Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!

Reagan! Reagan! Reagan!

I hate stupidity and ignorance!

I hate people who promote stupidity and ignorance!

Originally Posted by simone

I hate stupidity and ignorance!

I hate people who promote stupidity and ignorance!

Than stop promoting stupidity and ignorance. Education does not have a funding problem; it has an educating problem. First off, your post was referring to K-12 education...not higher education as it relates to student loans. Secondly, as Governor, Reagan did what EVERY ONE ELSE had done LONG LONG ago. It's basic fact, Simone.

Inadequate preparation in K-12 does not result in stellar performance at the university level.

Either you believe in education or you don't. If you don't, you are a stupid cheapskate.

Originally Posted by simone

Inadequate preparation in K-12 does not result in stellar performance at the university level.

Either you believe in education or you don't. If you don't, you are a stupid cheapskate.

Yet the topic is funding for Higher Education...not K-12. Believing in education is not the same as providing unlimited funding to education. He did not "start the trend" of not investing in education. We invest better than almost all countries (Denmark and Norway do better) yet have worse results. We are second in Higher Education spending per student (behind Switzerland). Teacher salary is pretty similar but US teachers work a lot more hours than other countries.

So when you come up with this sh*t, check your facts first.

Originally Posted by Steeeeve

Yet the topic is funding for Higher Education...not K-12. Believing in education is not the same as providing unlimited funding to education. He did not "start the trend" of not investing in education. We invest better than almost all countries (Denmark and Norway do better) yet have worse results. We are second in Higher Education spending per student (behind Switzerland). Teacher salary is pretty similar but US teachers work a lot more hours than other countries.

I don't think that the argument can be reasonably and factually made that we do not spend enough on education. I think it is also crystal clear that we are not getting a whole lot for our dollars spent. IMO that has a lot to do with the federal government using DOE funds to beat the states over the head with and trying to force a one size fits all education standard on them.

For that we can blame George Bush (sr).

When Carter signed the DOE into existence, its primary function was supposed to be to pool resources for legitimate federal education interests. He planned to bring the education related functions of the Defense Department, Justice Department, Agriculture, HUD, DOL, and law enforcement (FBI academy, etc...) into the DOE. The only portion of the DOE that was supposed to have anything to do with schools at the state level was that the DOE was going to administer the school lunch program and the head start program, and they were supposed to enforce federal privacy and civil rights as they applied to education.

Reagan ignored it because he wanted it dismantled. Bush Sr re-tasked it. He did away with the whole "pooling resources for legitimate federal education" and replaced it with what we have today, which is defacto control of all public schools by the federal government.

What did we expect from a guy whose father tried to overthrow the US government and install a fascist dictator?

How do these people keep getting elected?

Originally Posted by daewoo

I don't think that the argument can be reasonably and factually made that we do not spend enough on education. I think it is also crystal clear that we are not getting a whole lot for our dollars spent. IMO that has a lot to do with the federal government using DOE funds to beat the states over the head with and trying to force a one size fits all education standard on them.

For that we can blame George Bush (sr).

When Carter signed the DOE into existence, its primary function was supposed to be to pool resources for legitimate federal education interests. He planned to bring the education related functions of the Defense Department, Justice Department, Agriculture, HUD, DOL, and law enforcement (FBI academy, etc...) into the DOE. The only portion of the DOE that was supposed to have anything to do with schools at the state level was that the DOE was going to administer the school lunch program and the head start program, and they were supposed to enforce federal privacy and civil rights as they applied to education.

Reagan ignored it because he wanted it dismantled. Bush Sr re-tasked it. He did away with the whole "pooling resources for legitimate federal education" and replaced it with what we have today, which is defacto control of all public schools by the federal government.

What did we expect from a guy whose father tried to overthrow the US government and install a fascist dictator?

How do these people keep getting elected?

I blame Johnson because he started most of it. People blame Carter for the Department of Education but really all he did was make things more efficient in the area of federal control of education (which, as you know, I'm opposed to). So yeah, Carter gets some blame for that but Johnson was the one that created the programs that rolled up into ED. Oh, and FYI, Heat Start and the School lunch program did not go with ED (and I believe still aren't...head start is HHS and school lunch is USDA).

Nevertheless, Johnson started ESEA and HEA which account for almost all of what the Department of Education does. Carter combined these functions into one department, Reagan ignored the department (one of his greatest accomplishments), and then we get to Bush Sr. I think Bush Sr's was the first to really flat out talk about creating a universal education policy. He did that education summit thing and promised we'd be number 1 in everything in 10 years (or whatever it was). Bush Sr. never realized the purpose of education. He thought it was to be number 1 as if doing better on a test than other countries shows we are better education (fyi, it doesn't). So we got a universal style education system under him and naturally we all became dummer (sic). I didn't follow Clinton that much on education so someone else can fill that in. Bush Jr. followed his dad's footsteps with NCLB which might end up being the nail in the coffin of our educational system. Like his father, he thought the measure of educational success is our rank in math and science compared to other countries.

Until we realize the measure of educational success is our ability to meet the demands of the economy (aka be able to do what a company wants you to do) than we are kidding ourselves. As China will soon find out, being the best at filling in bubble sheets doesn't do you much good. Sadly people like Easyrider and Simone don't understand this...probably because our educational system blows.

Originally Posted by Steeeeve

I blame Johnson because he started most of it. People blame Carter for the Department of Education but really all he did was make things more efficient in the area of federal control of education (which, as you know, I'm opposed to). So yeah, Carter gets some blame for that but Johnson was the one that created the programs that rolled up into ED. Oh, and FYI, Heat Start and the School lunch program did not go with ED (and I believe still aren't...head start is HHS and school lunch is USDA).

Nevertheless, Johnson started ESEA and HEA which account for almost all of what the Department of Education does. Carter combined these functions into one department, Reagan ignored the department (one of his greatest accomplishments), and then we get to Bush Sr. I think Bush Sr's was the first to really flat out talk about creating a universal education policy. He did that education summit thing and promised we'd be number 1 in everything in 10 years (or whatever it was). Bush Sr. never realized the purpose of education. He thought it was to be number 1 as if doing better on a test than other countries shows we are better education (fyi, it doesn't). So we got a universal style education system under him and naturally we all became dummer (sic). I didn't follow Clinton that much on education so someone else can fill that in. Bush Jr. followed his dad's footsteps with NCLB which might end up being the nail in the coffin of our educational system. Like his father, he thought the measure of educational success is our rank in math and science compared to other countries.

Carter wanted to roll head start and school lunches into the department of Ed. He just could not get it done before the end of his presidency.

The department of education is one of the very few things I think Carter got right in his presidency. His plans for it were basically to roll LEGITIMATE federal educational interests up into one department....basically make if "Federal University" and do all your training under one department. He just could not get it done. I think that if Reagan had continued down that path and transformed it to a solely federal education agency, we would be a lot better off today.

Johnson was an idiot. His plan for the DOE was basically the federal takeover of education that we have today.

Until we realize the measure of educational success is our ability to meet the demands of the economy (aka be able to do what a company wants you to do) than we are kidding ourselves. As China will soon find out, being the best at filling in bubble sheets doesn't do you much good. Sadly people like Easyrider and Simone don't understand this...probably because our educational system blows.

IMO we need a complete overhaul of education. We need to accept the fact that schools are not "productive member of society" assembly lines. They are kids, but they are also human beings with personalities and everything. Some are going to be smarter than others, some are going to be dumber. The only way to make sure that no child is left behind is by holding them all back to the pace of the slowest kid in the class. In the meantime, the smarter kids are bored out of their minds and learning to hate school. Trying to stamp them all in the same mold is not working.

I also think we need to rework "higher education", but much of that can be fixed by fixing our lower education. There are a lot of jobs now that require a degree that shouldn't, but requiring a college degree is pretty much the only way you can be sure that the applicant can read and write at an 8th grade level. I dont know very many younger people and I know 4 who managed to graduate from high school despite the fact they were functionally illiterate. College usually thins those folks out. Beyond that, what good is a degree in business administration? None. We have these kids spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in borrowed money, and years of their lives, getting business administration degrees....or even MBAs, who then get out and have no idea how businesses are actually administered and frankly are not qualified to run a quick trip. Art and philosophy degrees are GREAT as long as you understand that you are not going to ever make any money with them and have not borrowed a bunch to get them.

Above all, we need to actually UPDATE our education system. We are still working based on a 300 yr old educational model. Upgrade. Today I cut a deal with a bunch of chinese guys that I have never met on behalf of a bunch of guys from illinois that I have never met. It is called "the internet". It isn't hard.

So Daewoo...I take it you won't be showing much sympathy for this poor lady: http://chronicle.com/article/From-Gr...ool-to/131795/

It's basically a lady who got a Ph.D. in medieval history and is wondering why she is on Welfare and Medicaid. I'm left wondering the same thing...but probably for a different reason.

Originally Posted by Matteau

Ms. Bruninga-Matteau does not blame Yavapai College for her situation but rather the "systematic defunding of higher education."

I blame her getting a Ph.D. in a field that shouldn't have a Ph.D. offering. She claims her take-home pay is $900 a month. Ok, our Wal-Mart deli pays $10.50 an hour and offers 40 hours a week jobs. That's $1,600 a month WITH BENEFITS.

Read the comments, they're hilarious.

Originally Posted by Steeeeve

So Daewoo...I take it you won't be showing much sympathy for this poor lady: From Graduate School to Welfare - Graduate Students - The Chronicle of Higher Education

It's basically a lady who got a Ph.D. in medieval history and is wondering why she is on Welfare and Medicaid. I'm left wondering the same thing...but probably for a different reason.

I blame her getting a Ph.D. in a field that shouldn't have a Ph.D. offering. She claims her take-home pay is $900 a month. Ok, our Wal-Mart deli pays $10.50 an hour and offers 40 hours a week jobs. That's $1,600 a month WITH BENEFITS.

Read the comments, they're hilarious.

Probably wont be setting up a foundation to help her out.....

There is another interesting read at Why Did 17 Million Students Go to College? - Innovations - The Chronicle of Higher Education with a nifty chart from the BLS showing, for example, that 21.62% of customer service representatives have a bachelors degrees, as do 24.61% of amusement and recreation attendants. Bet they are glad they took out $75K in student loans.....

I am starting to see at least a few people bringing up the (I think valid) question of how good college educations actually are these days with every college churning out thousands of degree wielding XXXXXX every year. I cant tell you first hand from hiring and then later firing some of these folks that the degree does not necessarily indicate that they actually KNOW anything. They all think they do....most new college graduates think VERY highly of their level of knowledge. But they are pretty much worthless or INSANELY behind. One of the problems with the tenure system is that you often get professors who have not had a real job in 30 years trying to educate people on how things work in their chosen field. You get MBAs who apparently are unaware of the fact that the 90s are gone...business just isnt conducted like that anymore. Even worse you get professors who have NEVER had a real job, and you end up with guys like freedom who do not realize we are not trading shiny metals for goods anymore.

Personally, I just skim the education portion of applications and resumes anymore. Unless I need somebody with a particular degree to meet legal requirements, I just dont really care. An MBA from harvard does not even impress me. I want to know what you have actually done, not how many lectures you have sat through.