When Tuition is INSANELY HIGH, UNAFFORDABLE, why is the conversation...

[iamwhatiseem]

Once again kids this is yet another example of what happens when you have an artificially inflated demand. And once again - it is the government that creates the false demand.
Just like the housing industry, just like the credit-financial industry - the government comes in with "fairness" as the motto and screws everything up.
What could possibly be wrong with "every child should get a college education"...that's what politicians on both sides say. Who could argue?
How about every single parent and child that isn't getting a free ride?
4 Year Degree??? There is no such thing as a four year degree any more.
It takes 5 1/2 to 6 years to get a "4 year degree" today. Why? Because colleges pile up students with unnecessary pre-requisites like never before. And why do they do this? Because the majority of students are getting financial aid paid for by the government.

But then comes the real money - housing. Colleges everywhere have built rows and rows and rows of campus apartments where the rents are EQUAL to luxury apartments.
My daughter stays in a quad apartment on campus where the combined rent is $2800 per month!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AGAIN - they get away with this because the government (you) is subsidising the rent.
Colleges are no longer about educating students - they are a lucrative business extracting as much money as they can get away with from those students, their parents and the taxpayers of this country.

 

[sublime]

Education costs have skyrocketed thanks to government involvement. If it was not for the government guaranteed financial assistance the schools never could have jacked rates as high as they did. They never would have built all these fancy resort like atmospheres to attract new students and that guaranteed pot o' government gold. It's truly sickening what has happened.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6RW5vPH14c]Stossel special 4-6-2012 part 2 - YouTube[/ame]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBDRrKIMHGo]John Stossel - Is College A Rip-off? - YouTube[/ame]

 

[Sunshine]

...birth control costs??? The cheapest (meaning least expensive) IL STATE college costs minimum $30K a year! Most schools are well beyond that. Four years equals up tp $120K at the MINIMUM! This is a 2nd first mortgage! Going to college is becoming essential to landing a decent job, but going to college is becoming unaffordable to everyone except the upper middle class or upper class!

Yet people want to talk about the affordable birth control options. First, NO plan covers condoms and condoms are the only form of birth control that prevents STDs. If you are sleeping around in college, or anywhere for that matter, then condoms should be used not the pills (or just the pill). Even if the person a has boyfriend (or girlfriend) in college they should use condoms. You don't know what your partner is doing. Be honest how many of you were loyal to your college (or even highschool), girl or boyfriends? I can honestly say I wasn't loyal to any of them! I guarantee I wasn't the only one! The pill might prevent you from getting knocked up (or knocking someone up), but it won't prevent you from getting AIDS, HERPS etc. Second, what is $9 a month, when tuition costs $3K-$5K a month! Where are the priorities. Maybe this spoiled girl should get, I don't know, a job in college!

This comes from the mindset of a father who has 3 kids and one on the way. The rising cost of college keeps me up most nights!

No one owes your kids a college education.

 

[iamwhatiseem]

My daughter has now went 3 1/2 years and will just begin her actual degree work this fall. After attending summer classes of course...just like last year..and the year before that.
She goes to a well respected school that ranks 3rd in the country for what she is going for.
But there is a little number that the school doesn't like to talk about. A number shared by universities country-wide.
35% graduation rate.

 

[SniperFire]

Education costs have skyrocketed thanks to government involvement.

Hey. I see a pattern here.

 

[Sunshine]

My daughter has now went 3 1/2 years and will just begin her actual degree work this fall. After attending summer classes of course...just like last year..and the year before that.
She goes to a well respected school that ranks 3rd in the country for what she is going for.
But there is a little number that the school doesn't like to talk about. A number shared by universities country-wide.
35% graduation rate.

What I learned when I was teaching in a college is that they keep adding 'required' courses on to the extent that an AD degree can equal a bachelor's and a bachelor's can equal a master's. We were asked to cut some from our curriculum which was an AD nursing program.

 

[Clementine]

One wonders why the US makes it so difficult for it's citizens to get an education. It's free in Europe.

As if the liberal professors would take a cut in pay.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Public college costs DOUBLED under Boosh- another strange coincidence. Pub dupe morons!

There is actually a reason for that, the federal student loan program was expanded by Bush. that made college available to more people, and drove up costs.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

One wonders why the US makes it so difficult for it's citizens to get an education. It's free in Europe.

Tanstaafl.

 

[Greenbeard]

I don't think that makes Obama a snob, but I do disagree with the president's view. Everybody in America going to college would be foolish. Everyone going to college would result in a massive surplus of college degrees that would render them utterly useless, thus negating the whole point of going in the first place.

What we need is to get more people into vocational and trade schools because that is what we are facing a shortage of right now.

Remarks of President Barack Obama -- Address to Joint Session of Congress (February 24, 2009) :

It is our responsibility as lawmakers and educators to make this system work. But it is the responsibility of every citizen to participate in it. And so tonight, I ask every American to commit to at least one year or more of higher education or career training. This can be community college or a four-year school; vocational training or an apprenticeship. But whatever the training may be, every American will need to get more than a high school diploma.

 

[PoliticalChic]

One wonders why the US makes it so difficult for it's citizens to get an education. It's free in Europe.

Schools may be free, as the teachers are public employees, but it seems you get what you pay for with government schools: 40% drop out rate, and not even one French school is in the top 40 in worldwide ranking (University of Paris is number 42, and only three French schools are in the top 100). By comparison, the US places 17 in the top 20. (http://www.arwu.org/rank2008/ARWU2008_A(EN).htm)

Academic Ranking of World Universities - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Political Junky]

Can you please quote someone who has said making higher education unafffordable to a high percentage of American citizens is a good thing.

I can quote one of your party representatives that said, "President Obama once said he wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob."

No you can't.

Says a lot, doesn't it?

I don't think that makes Obama a snob, but I do disagree with the president's view. Everybody in America going to college would be foolish. Everyone going to college would result in a massive surplus of college degrees that would render them utterly useless, thus negating the whole point of going in the first place.

What we need is to get more people into vocational and trade schools because that is what we are facing a shortage of right now.

Obama didn't say that everyone should go to college. He said that more need some further education, be it trade school or technical training.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

I don't think that makes Obama a snob, but I do disagree with the president's view. Everybody in America going to college would be foolish. Everyone going to college would result in a massive surplus of college degrees that would render them utterly useless, thus negating the whole point of going in the first place.

What we need is to get more people into vocational and trade schools because that is what we are facing a shortage of right now.

Remarks of President Barack Obama -- Address to Joint Session of Congress (February 24, 2009) :

It is our responsibility as lawmakers and educators to make this system work. But it is the responsibility of every citizen to participate in it. And so tonight, I ask every American to commit to at least one year or more of higher education or career training. This can be community college or a four-year school; vocational training or an apprenticeship. But whatever the training may be, every American will need to get more than a high school diploma.

Believe it or not, you just proved his point. Why should someone like Tiger Woods go back and get career training? Would Steve Jobs doing an apprenticeship at IBM have made him better at what he does? Would LeBron James benefit from going to a community college? Only snobs think that an education, by itself, will accomplish anything.

 

[iamwhatiseem]

In a nutshell...
I think we can all agree that colleges and universities across the country are drunk on taxpayer money that pays both tuition and room and board - and - that they have piled up pre-reqs on students to get even more money.
I think we can all also agree that the government indiscriminately giving out grants to students with little to no stipulations (as in graduated High School) - has overpopulated classes as well as dilluted the value of a degree.

 

[DaGoose]

Can you please quote someone who has said making higher education unafffordable to a high percentage of American citizens is a good thing.

I can quote one of your party representatives that said, "President Obama once said he wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob."

No you can't.

Says a lot, doesn't it?

I don't think that makes Obama a snob, but I do disagree with the president's view. Everybody in America going to college would be foolish. Everyone going to college would result in a massive surplus of college degrees that would render them utterly useless, thus negating the whole point of going in the first place.

What we need is to get more people into vocational and trade schools because that is what we are facing a shortage of right now.

Uhhhh....it was a DIRECT QUOTE, junior.

 

[GHook93]

Obama offerin' help for student loan debt...

Obama Urges Congress to Extend Law on College Loans
April 21, 2012 - U.S. President Barack Obama is urging Congress to extend a law set to expire in July that would prevent interest rates on student loans from doubling.

Obama said in his weekly Internet and radio address Saturday, "In America, higher education cannot be a luxury. It's an economic imperative that every family must be able to afford." The president says making it difficult for young people to afford a college education is nothing more than "cutting our own future off at the knees."

President Obama will take his message of affordable higher education to university campuses in the key electoral states of North Carolina, Iowa, and Colorado this week. While Obama looks for ways to help middle class college students, Republicans used their weekly commentary to attack the president's energy policy and economic agenda.

Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri says the president should be focused on generating jobs, and he should stop blocking a oil pipeline project from Canada, through the United States to the Gulf of Mexico. Blunt said the oil pipeline would create thousands of U.S. jobs and help reduce our demand for foreign oil.

Source & videos

Temporary "solution" for long term problems. Basically you have get payments stretch out but the balances remain. Many of these people fall into negative amortization. They get screwed in the long run.

 

[GHook93]

Not at all surprising that the same people that advocate a health care system that pays twice as much for inferior results also believe that making higher education unafffordable to a high percentage of American citizens is also a good thing.

Can you please quote someone who has said making higher education unafffordable to a high percentage of American citizens is a good thing.

I can quote one of your party representatives that said, "President Obama once said he wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob."

This is a guy that you almost elected as your party pick for President.

Says a lot, doesn't it?

He says a lot of things, but talk is cheap, education ISN'T! He also said he wants everyone to have healthcare, yet their will still be a similar number of uninsured in 2014 when Obaminationcare kicks in, yet insurance costs and premiums will go through the roof!

 

[Dr.Traveler]

Its interesting to note that public funding in many states for the Universities is being cut off or drastically reduced. Over the last 5 years my University has lost around 5-7 million dollars of funding from the State.

We've cute just about everything that can be cut, frozen salaries for the last 5 years (no cost of living raises even), and we'll start firing faculty and staff and closing programs. Yet if we raise tuition to cover the lost funding, people go ABSOLUTELY F'ING CRAZY!

The math is pretty simple. If the States refuse to fund the schools, the schools will have to find a way to raise money. That means increased tuition.

 

[Dr.Traveler]

In no way shape and form is a bs or ba worth the cost of obtaining it. We should be advocating vocational education.

Unfortunately, you need to take this up with the large number of businesses and industries requiring a college education where one isn't necessary.

I see a lot of kids in the freshman level math courses that have no business being there. However, the reality is that they HAVE to be there to get a shot at any decent paying jobs. If we see more jobs that can support a middle class income that do not require a college degree, this likely wouldn't be an issue.

 

[Dr.Traveler]

4 Year Degree??? There is no such thing as a four year degree any more.

Yes, but not for the reason you think. Check the college catalogs. Every program is required to submit to the catalog a 4 year plan for every single BS or BA I've seen.

The problem is that students are coming in needing more an more remedial classes, and many programs are assuming that a student who will graduate in 4 years will start at the very least in Pre-Calculus, if not Calculus. On top of that, to graduate in 4 years a student needs to average at least 15 credits a semester. Many students simply won't rack up that many credits due to poor study habits, outside time commitments, athletics, etc.

I do see many students take longer than 4 years sadly, but most of the time if that happens I can look at their transcripts and see they came in under prepared or did not take early semesters seriously.