Kentucky to cut college programs

originally posted by: F4guy
Illegal marijuana is already Kentucky's number 2 cash crop
Legalization would kill the underground economy.

But it would be new taxable revenue.

We are the Blew Grass state. I think we are the perfect market for it.

originally posted by: Aazadan
a reply to: F4guy

Marijuana isn't the answer to everything. It shouldn't be illegal, but I don't see what it has to do with the structure of college.

It's revenue that's needed because it's a budget shortfall prompting Bevin to propose these 'cuts.' And Kentucky has been in need of new revenue sources for many years now.

We grow good pot, here (not me, of course). So, why not capitalize on it. Sooner or later it will be legal, and the sooner the better.

originally posted by: Aazadan
Matt Bevin clearly doesn't understand

Bevin understands that the Department of Education made the pursuit of a college degree fertile ground for Liberal Thinking.

Bevin is leveling the playing field.

Ahhhhhahahahahahahaha!!

From your article...

“Find entire parts of your campus … that don’t need to be there,” Bevin said in a speech at the Governor’s Conference on Postsecondary Education Trusteeship in Louisville, Ky., the Associated Press reported. “Either physically as programs, degrees that you’re offering, buildings that … shouldn’t be there because you’re maintaining something that’s not an asset of any value, that’s not helping to produce that 21st-century educated work force.”

it can be said that if a college has a building dedicated to a program that shuttering it and closing down that division ain't an option that's viable. there are no jobs cuz, we all can't be STEM graduates that are promised jobs but are given misery instead.

It's hell out there getting a normal gig and that's for the the high paying qualified positions that kids with degrees got. America is still cranking out engineers and the likes, its THEM that can't get jobs either.

a reply to: cenpuppie

I honestly don't know what the heck he means by getting rid of buildings. Like, tear them down and dispose of the debris? That seems costly...and stupid.

They sure won't be selling plots of land smack dab in the middle of campus to private buyers.

a reply to: MOMof3

Or they could be setting an example of"Not spending what you don't have",it sickens me to hear people not including facts,the citizens chose fiscal responsibility,about time someone did,can't eat steak with a hamburger income,simple fact

a reply to: Oldtimer2

If you are part of the brain dead who believes the lie the US is broke. It's peculiar how we are never to broke to enrich the rich with more, like tax cuts.

originally posted by: MotherMayEye
a reply to: cenpuppie

I honestly don't know what the heck he means by getting rid of buildings. Like, tear them down and dispose of the debris? That seems costly...and stupid.

They sure won't be selling plots of land smack dab in the middle of campus to private buyers.

That's exactly what he's proposing, tear the buildings down and stop paying money to maintain them.

originally posted by: Aazadan

originally posted by: MotherMayEye
a reply to: cenpuppie

I honestly don't know what the heck he means by getting rid of buildings. Like, tear them down and dispose of the debris? That seems costly...and stupid.

They sure won't be selling plots of land smack dab in the middle of campus to private buyers.

That's exactly what he's proposing, tear the buildings down and stop paying money to maintain them.

But tearing them down and clearing the debris costs money. Probably more than just closing the doors, turning off the utilities and just sending someone over to check on them, now and then.

I'd just like to see some numbers on that, I guess. It sounded kind of ridiculous to me.

a reply to: MotherMayEye
Perhaps he's referring to satellite campus buildings. All the universities have them I believe. Rather than buying an existing building or simply renting, they somehow feel that they must build each time a new program pops up.

Our local U has a building at the edge of campus that could and should be easily sold. It was built about 5 or 6 years ago, has a dozen or so classrooms and 17 office spaces. Two of the offices are occupied and the rest of the building sits empty, being heated in winter, cooled in summer and cleaned every day. It is ridiculous.

originally posted by: Aazadan
For example the USPS is a public entity that we shouldn't leave entirely to the private sector. In another case, certain medicines for rare conditions can only be developed with public money because there's not enough people contracting that disease to fund the study of it.

I would argue against your USPS comment relatively easily, save for maybe very rural areas. As far as medicine goes--that's a very worthy pursuit of knowledge--women's study, it isn't.

Sometimes we should be devoting resources to studying something, if for no other reason than we gain the knowledge that isn't deserving of heavy investment.

No, sometimes people should be devoting their own resources to studying something just for the sake of studying, not causing the taxpayer to do it on their behalf. This is the main point of my entire comment surrounding this thread--it should not be taxpayer's burden to subsidize the pursuits of people who want to 'study for the sake of studying.' Hell, you don't even need a college or university in order to do that.

A course rarely goes in depth into a subject, most often a course exists merely as a piece of a larger subject. It has been my experience that few subjects don't have a complete degree program attached for those interested.

And again, the onus should not be on the taxpayer to make that happen for programs that have little-to-no ROI post-college.

Unfortunately, we only have two ways of confirming competency in a field right now. College degrees, and certifications. You can look to the IT field to see how well the certification route has been going (hint: it's a disaster). The only other thing we have is college degrees and they haven't been faring all that well either.

Right--the way that we are doing things is not yielding very good results. I'm a massive advocate of trade schools over college for many people, but with the way that society has been conditioned to view a college degree as a golden ticket to the chocolate factory, not to mention the drastic diversity in education quality making many degrees not worth the paper on which they're printed, it's no wonder that our reliance on a degree is like building a home on a sandy foundation.

Taxpayer subsidization of this perpetual problem is not going to make it better--ridding our colleges of relatively useless programs and degrees might. It's better than continually feeding the pig and making it fatter while, in turn, shrinking the state's coffers in order to do so.

I actually think K-12 needs a complete overhaul.

So do I--that's why we homeschool. Even if we did not have a "special-needs" child (Asperger's Syndrome), the system would still be exceptionally broken.

I for one, would like to see more job based training in compulsory education though, as well as classes on personal finance, investing, negotiation, and ethics. An alternative would be a more dynamic schooling system too, where each student could have a unique curriculum that meets their needs. A couple months back I suggested a standardized testing system that would allow for that very thing.

We seem to agree here, at least in theory. I hate standardized testing, though--while it's a necessary evil, I think that they do it in absolutely the wrong way and put so much emphasis on them that they design the entire year's curriculum around the test, which IMO is putting the cart before the horse. Testing should be done on things learned at the natural pace, but instead, students are taught to memorize, not retain...to remember in the short-term and not how to apply the concept for the long-term.

It's absolutely broken--on that, we'll agree to agree.

originally posted by: TonyS
a reply to: Black_Fox

Actually, that is not altogether true. The A&M (Agricultural and Mechanical) provide really good technical and business educations. People from all over the world come to Texas A&M for everything from engineering degrees to advanced Ag decrees. I read about a wealthy Italian gentleman who did 4 years at the school to learn the wine making business, then returned to Italy where he started and manages a very lucrative and successful vinyard and wine making/bottling and marketing business. He learned that at A&M.

I mean sure, but the vast majority of majors don't apply to real jobs. Gender Studies comes to mind, as well as 90% of the history and environmental majors. This is why Trade and Tech schools are the best schools that aren't Medical or Law schools.

a reply to: MotherMayEye

I don't know how property taxes work on public school land, but my KY property taxes increase as the value of my land increases, and the quickest way to increase the value is to add buildings on it.

I'm uncertain, but I would assume that removing unused or unnecessary buildings that have relatively tremendous value would decrease annual tax costs.

Plus, on a college campus full of drunk young people often fond of daring each other to do stupid things, leaving an abandoned building on campus with someone attending to it's security every 'now and then' seems like a recipe for disaster and vandalism.

There are a lot of old campuses in KY with many buildings past their use that would cost an extreme amount of money to retrofit for any modern use--I would assume that this is a main type of building that Gov. Bevin has in mind. Advocating for tearing down modern buildings doesn't seem to be what he's proposing.

originally posted by: SlapMonkey
a reply to: MotherMayEye

Plus, on a college campus full of drunk young people often fond of daring each other to do stupid things, leaving an abandoned building on campus with someone attending to it's security every 'now and then' seems like a recipe for disaster and vandalism.

I thought about this point, the other day, then I thought "Well, other classroom buildings are also typically closed at night." I was also referring to maintenance, now and then...not security.

So, I felt that wasn't a compelling argument for tearing down buildings.

Also, most state/public colleges don't pay property taxes. So I don't see any savings there, either...if that was the point you were making.

originally posted by: MotherMayEye
a reply to: Aazadan

Kentucky needs to legalize recreational use marijuana to generate revenue for the state.

The end.

It would certainly make unemployment with no prospects more bearable.

originally posted by: MOMof3
a reply to: Oldtimer2

If you are part of the brain dead who believes the lie the US is broke. It's peculiar how we are never to broke to enrich the rich with more, like tax cuts.

What? The U.S. is broke, I mean -- they have plenty of liquid cash that they borrow from china based on the power of petrol, this is called "Credit Rating" -- but if the Petro USD goes belly up, we lose our credit line. We operate fully and totally on credit, so without the credit line we can't pay for anything, that's when debts get called as due, and you start surrendering territory and land to those who own the debt notes for it [China.]

This is why we as a country do everything for big oil, big oil is the only reason our country is so prosperous.

Why do you think China buys our debt? China isn't our ally, they've openly spoke about toppling The United States without war, and you can see they are plotting to replace the Petro USD with a gold backed alternative. If they can knock the US Dollar out of the World Reserve Currency and usurp it with their own, we fail as a country over night. That's why WWIII is a real concern right now, which is also why China is funding Noko and Iran's nuclear development.

We wouldn't have trillion dollar deficits if we weren't broke, I mean -- you gotta be brain dead to believe we're not. The U.S. has substantial credit because of the amount of crude in North America that we don't even drill for -- that's why we control the middle east, to use their oil first. If oil is ever rendered redundant, i.e. "Green" everything, electric cars, so on and so forth, it'll reduce the value of oil, which will also reduce our credit with it defaulting the country in the process. This ties into why the world is playing into AGW and why The United States pulled out of the Paris Accords.

AGW isn't real, but it's a push to develop alternative energy by those who wish to Usurp the United States as the world's Hyper Power by devaluing oil. Not conspiracy theory.

Pre-industrial C02 ppm was 240, post industrial [current] is 480. The Jurassic period had 4,000 and there weren't cars and factories burning fossil fuels. 480 C02 molecules to every on million particles counted is NOTHING, it's not even insignificant, it's basically non-exisent. PPM stands for Parts Per Million. Also -- vegetation scrubs C02 from the atmosphere, so if the number actually was alarming -- I don't know, maybe, kill less trees.

a reply to: SRPrime
There's suppose to be trillions of American dollars stashed in tax havens. Then the trillions paid on wars that have no return except broken, or dead bodies, and lots of profits for corps. We americans are so stupid to be our own enemy.

a reply to: karms

I think students must pay more attention to self-education.
Just follow the program it does not always give the best result
I've been working as a freelance writer about a year and a half.
And during my work there I have learned much more than just following a college program.