Some articles on College and the high cost/low benefit of higher education:
Will tuition ever stop increasing?
These unprecedented levels of student loan debt have only been worsened by a lackluster economy. Around 50% of graduates with bachelor's degrees under 25 are either unemployed or underemployed, according to the Associated Press. It doesn't help that over the same period that saw rapid rises in tuition rates and tuition paid, incomes have stagnated. That means that a college education is increasingly unaffordable for most students and necessitates a continued increase in student loan debt.
Making college more expensive: Our view
Making college more expensive: Our view
Democrats' proposals do little to rein in costs.
The United States prides itself on being innovative and creative. Yet it is struggling to train its next generation of achievers. Despite rapidly rising sums that the federal government has devoted to loans and grants, American college students and recent graduates are wallowing in debt. At last count, they owed $1.2 trillion.
Not surprisingly, the leading Democratic presidential candidates — Hillary Clinton,Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley — have come up with plans they say will make colleges more affordable and provide debt relief for millennials. Though well-intentioned, their plans threaten to drive up costs rather than rein them in. They would all throw more federal money at colleges while offering little but hope that these institutions would hold expenses down.
If history is any guide, colleges and universities will channel much of the additional money into areas that don't directly benefit students. They might also hike tuition, telling students not to worry because taxpayers will pick up much of the additional burden. A Federal Reserve Bank of New York report found that colleges increased tuition 40 cents for every dollar received in Pell Grants, and 65 cents for every dollar in subsidized loans.
Clinton's plan is the least ambitious and the most practical. Yet it still amounts to taxpayers spending a lot more money without concrete efforts to make colleges control costs. Its centerpiece is a 10-year, $175 billion program of matching grants to states that would require states to reverse recent budget cuts. It would also allow students and graduates to refinance their debts at lower interest rates, expand programs that let people repay their loans as a percentage of their incomes, and enhance existing education tax credits.
She would pay for all this with higher taxes on wealthy Americans. While the affluent can and should pay more, this is a well that lawmakers can go to only so often. New revenue that goes to tuition assistance is money that can't be used to shore up Social Security or Medicare, expand the nation's infrastructure, or reduce the budget deficit.
Plans offered by Sanders and O'Malley would go even further, setting a goal of debt-free education for all students at all public universities.
A better idea would be to take a magnifying glass to exactly why college costs have skyrocketed at three times the overall inflation rate since 1980. As with health care, the answer involves what happens when bills are paid with other people's money.
Too many universities have become bloated and inefficient, using their revenue in ways that don’t benefit the students’ education: Million dollar salaries awarded to top-paid college presidents. Professors who barely teach. Sparkling recreation centers, such as the one at Louisiana State University complete with a lazy river. Bloated bureaucracies with endless vice presidents. Money-losing sports programs.
It doesn’t take a Ph.D. to figure out where money could be saved, but persuading colleges to part with these extras won’t be easy. This is where the federal government and states can harness the leverage that accompanies their dollars to demand accountability, perhaps by awarding grants only to institutions that hold the line on tuition and fees.
Contrary to what many schools would tell you, such cost cutting isn't impossible. Purdue University in Indiana has frozen its tuition for two straight years and will continue to do so for at least two more. To be sure, some of this has been done with the budgetary gimmick of taking more out-of-state students, who pay much higher rates. Even so, Purdue's focus on cost containment should be followed by other schools.
Only by attacking rising tuition at its root cause will the problem of college affordability be addressed. The Democratic candidates need a little more educating on this.
There is no "root cause." But there are many causes. Most of which can be found in what we are. That effects how we behave. Just as what chimpanzees are effects how they behave and what bonobos are effects how they behave. After that is our diseased capitalist, expansionist and consumerism driven economy. But probably the biggest problem is living in a multiethnic society. Different creatures just don't like being around each other. It doesn't happen in the wild, and it shouldn't happen among parasitic humans.
That is why I think both Germany and Japan kick America's ass when it comes to the value of their yearly exports. Because in Germany, they have mostly Germans. And in Japan, they have mostly Japanese. This makes them more patriotic and gives them a heightened sense of community. Which in turm makes them happier. And happier people are more productive. If college professors lived in a society that they were happier to live in, they would be willing to take less to do what they do.
