College May Become Unaffordable for Most in U.S. , page 5

reply to post by poet1b

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While we're at it, how bout we adopt the 3-tiered approach that Germany uses? Universal pre-preschool to those who want it, mandatory preschool, kindergarten all the way to 5th grade and then they're given aptitude tests to determine if they're going to be high performers of society.

Cause nothing says freedom like predestination!

Using a college education as a barrier for employment should be considered discrimination. It is supposed to be equal opportunity for all, but the expense of a college education clearly cuts off a huge portion of the population from a fair opportunity to succeed.

This is an outrageous fallacy. If everyone had a college degree, what do you think it would be worth? Value is only applied to scarcity, and when you neutralize the rewards of those who work hard now, make their OWN opportunities, and pull through college, you've got nothing to show for it but another failed law. No, socialist.


[edit on 4-12-2008 by SpencerJ]

I thought this recent story is rather pertinent to the thread.

Harvard University's endowment suffered investment losses of at least 22% in the first four months of the school's fiscal year, the latest evidence of the financial woes facing higher education. The Harvard endowment, the biggest of any university, stood at $36.9 billion as of June 30, meaning the loss amounts to about $8 billion. That's more than the entire endowments of all but six colleges, according to the latest official tally. Harvard said the actual loss could be even higher, once it factors in declines in hard-to-value assets such as real estate and private equity -- investments that have become increasingly popular among colleges. The university is planning for a 30% decline for the fiscal year ending in June 2009.

online.wsj.com...

The numbers are simply staggering. The article goes into greater detail regarding other schools as well. With endowments this large, why the skyrocketing tuition rates? Granted Harvard is the largest but endowments are the bread and butter of any university or college.

Originally posted by earthman4
College has NEVER been affordabe by most in the US.

Completely untrue.
I say this with a modicum of authority as someone who has a) worked in higher education for over a decade and b) wrote my master's thesis on the subject of this thread.
Now I focused on state institutions since they receive a lion's share of the middle and lower income students so I cannot speak to the world of Harvard, Yale, Stanford or the University of Spoiled Children (USC). But with the creation of the G.I. Bill (1940s), National Defense Education Act (1950s), and the Higher Education Act (1965) the number of people attending university or two year college has exploded. In 1949 there were 2.6 million attending (this data does not parse the enrollments between public and private) source by 1970 there are 6.4 million in Public institutions alone source. Now I don't want to go all wonky in here but suffice it to say that higher education has been consistently more affordable for a larger number of students until about 20 years ago. At that time TPTB began shrinking the amount of money available to students through grants and federal loans making it more difficult for poorer students to attend. This is where, in the last 10 years or so, we have seen a growth in PRIVATE student loan companies which are for all intensive purposes loan sharks, to fill the gap. Their interest rates are ludicrous and they prey on unsuspecting (mostly ignorant about credit and personal finance) college students. Many of these students are basically becoming financial indentured servants after college due to these loans.
Higher education inflation is out of control. This is in part due to simply the nature of the beast. Colleges are not supposed to be for-profit entities but more and more often they are expected to be just that. As state budgets tighten they go after softer funds (much easier to cut funding to higher education than say medicare) leaving state univ's to either, cut courses, research and staff (to the detriment of everyone) or raise tuition, which itself basically an increase in "tax" on middle and lower income students.

The easy answer to all of this? There is none. Higher education needs to find ways to help offset their budget cuts without killing students pocketbooks but states and federal governments need to prioritize education (of all levels) to a higher place in the pecking order.

Obs out

reply to post by kettlebellysmith

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This is a bit of a misnomer, the idea that athletics siphons off a tremendous amount of resources. It is, for the most part, not true. Most of the "big time" college athletic departments are not even technically part of the Universities they represent. Many live in a never-neverland of not quite part of the uni and not quite a corporation. How else could coaches get million dollar salaries? Uni presidents certainly don't make that much, partly (again from the public school perspective) because states won't allow it.

I can say that the uni where I work gets scholarship money paid to them by the athletic department for their scholarship students. Also of the gazillions of dollars that "big time" athletic departments make from bowl games, going deep in the NCAA b-ball tourney, from wealthy donors, etc. the uni gets some of that back.. not MUCH mind you... but a bit.

Now, I am not defending the way that college sports is handled in the U.S., simply pointing out that dumping on athletics or shredding athletic budgets (for small schools that don't have these gargantuan programs) hurts students.

Obs out

reply to post by kettlebellysmith

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Actually, a far better idea is to eliminate Title IX's influence over collegiate atheletics. That would allow universities to eliminate sports which don't at the very least pay for themselves, or preferably even turn a profit for the university. You seriously have to had an atrocious atheletic program to not break even in at the very least football and basketball in the NCAA. The shared TV contract revenue for the various conferences, ticket sales, and whatever bonuses the schools share from conference bowl games & tournament appearances generally produces enough revenue that even teams that suck can break even. But when you start expending resources on sports like women's basketball, volleyball, field hockey, etc, sports in which maybe a fraction of the teams actually generate enough revenue to support themselves, then the you end up with lower tier schools actually losing money via their athletics dept.

Originally posted by FoxStriker
reply to post by burdman30ott6

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seems like your on the ball about colleges, got a question for you bro...

Does a Degree matter or a license/Certification for you to do your job.

From what I've seen, Employers give jobs on personality and experience over a bachelors they know they have to give higher salary for.

I've beaten out pleanty of more qualified people for jobs. That includes Masters and Bachelors.

What are you thoughts???

Where engineering is concerned, the degree & experience are of mutual importance, actually. The way the licensing is set up, you have to have a Bachelor's degree from an ABET accredited program to take your Engineer In Training (also called the Fundamentals of Engineering) exam. After you have the degree and have passed your exam, you get an EIT license. Then you must work for 4 years (in most states, California, for example only requires 2 years) as an Engineer in Training, hopefully applying what you learned in college. You are then eligible to take your Professional Engineering exam which grants you license and gives you the privalege to sign off on plans as a registered PE.

In my experience, the three things employeers are looking for in this field are ingenuity, technical mastery, and the legal abillity to sign off on their work (thus taking a great deal of responsibillity over the quality of the work.) I will tell you, my job title is Project Manager, and I am compensated as such. However, I am currently working on a project in which my official job description is lead Civil Designer. Since I'm not the PM on this particular project, I won't be signing off on any of the work... but my company still holds me to a high degree of responsibillity and accountabillity. If I didn't have the license, then legally speaking they couldn't place that kind of trust in the level of my work and they could have to pay someone with the license to scrutinize my work as a protective measure against liabillities should something in the design fail after completion of the project.

Based on that, I don't think that education & experience are exclusive to each other in finding the right person for this position. I think it also depends very much on not just what field you're in, but also how narrow your scope of work is. If you work in an industrial factory designing worm gears for augers, at some point you could probably justify naming a senior worker who may not have a single college credit to his name as the factory design manager. If the man has spent years doing the work without any issues arising and the position doesn't require them to work outside their realm of experience, I think the education recieved from years on the job is possibly even more valuable there than any classroom education someone might have in that field. I've worked with DOT employees from several states who barely had high school diplomas, but knew more about the real world practice of hot mix asphalt mixtures, lay down processes, and roadway construction than I could ever learn in a lifetime of classroom education. I defered to their judgement almost without fail because they knew what they were doing.

reply to post by earthman4

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Thats a negative. That degree symbolizes that you can succumb to certain requirements and thus you can conform to a working place that may not always be ethical but you can deal with and not cause problems. Or more shortly put, College is a Fenced in piece of land for sheeple, or people that are smart enough to be able to handle the bs.

Originally posted by burdman30ott6

Originally posted by FoxStriker
reply to post by burdman30ott6

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Based on that, I don't think that education & experience are exclusive to each other in finding the right person for this position. I think it also depends very much on not just what field you're in, but also how narrow your scope of work is.

I would say quite true.... I was going in for Technician, beat out a lot of folk with higher experience and degree's.

I guess I might see things different, Used to work for a place where my job was to assist business owners.... what I found out was tha they look for people they can mold and wont bring in bad habits, aka ego that they know what they're doing.

Employeers like to hire people they know they can get along with, can do the work, and get a good price on.

It's what I've been told and seen, but I do agree that It might be to specific fields. I guess it also depends on the scope of the company, i.e. size, Corporation, Partnership, Sole Business Owner.... Liabilities.

Fox

reply to post by TheWayISeeIt

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Did you read about the Harvard endowment fund, lost 8 billion USD or 22% in just 4 months. That must hurt.

Originally posted by observer
reply to post by kettlebellysmith

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This is a bit of a misnomer, the idea that athletics siphons off a tremendous amount of resources. It is, for the most part, not true. Most of the "big time" college athletic departments are not even technically part of the Universities they represent. Many live in a never-neverland of not quite part of the uni and not quite a corporation. How else could coaches get million dollar salaries? Uni presidents certainly don't make that much, partly (again from the public school perspective) because states won't allow it.

I can say that the uni where I work gets scholarship money paid to them by the athletic department for their scholarship students. Also of the gazillions of dollars that "big time" athletic departments make from bowl games, going deep in the NCAA b-ball tourney, from wealthy donors, etc. the uni gets some of that back.. not MUCH mind you... but a bit.

Now, I am not defending the way that college sports is handled in the U.S., simply pointing out that dumping on athletics or shredding athletic budgets (for small schools that don't have these gargantuan programs) hurts students.

Obs out

You do have, at least some colleges, that take a percentage of tuition and put it into athletics. not into the program that the student is gettinga degree in, no, athletics, which supposedly pays for itself. nd trust me, i used to rk at a college stadium, UF sports pay for themselves and then some. and some tuition goes towards athletics as wel. So much so that Professors here are not able to print things out they need for classes. That's right, the athletic depatment is taking money from education. What does that leave? more expensive schooling to offset the money that athletics takes away.

reply to post by SpencerJ

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This is an outrageous fallacy. If everyone had a college degree, what do you think it would be worth? Value is only applied to scarcity, and when you neutralize the rewards of those who work hard now, make their OWN opportunities, and pull through college, you've got nothing to show for it but another failed law. No, socialist.

Bullhockey, the more people who obtain college degrees, the more competition in the higher skilled fields we have, and the more efficient and successful the economy becomes. This isn't socialism, it is capitalism at its best. What you clearly prefer is elitism, which is against the concepts on which the U.S. was founded.

Only the only the people who have the ability and the aptitude should be graduating college, but the what we have currently is a system where those with the money graduate, because the curriculum is watered down so the legacies like GW can make it through the system. Getting a college degree isn't about ability in our current system, it is about access and conformity.

reply to post by SpencerJ

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Our graduate programs are so successful because our universites are so well funded and have decades of experience doing research. Our home grown graduates grew the reputations that are allowing our univeristies to rake in the dough from the worlds wealthy elites looking to get their kids prestigous degrees, but thoes aren't the students who earned these universities their reputations.

The U.S. was built by people who had the brains and the ability to survive the harsh conditions of surviving in the wilderness of the new world, the most ambitions and intelligent who came to the U.S. against all odds, and succeeded competing against wave after wave of the worlds most intelligent and ambitious people looking to make it in the land of opportunity. It is only natural that the offspring of these people succeed in dominating the world in technology.

Since the deluge of immigrants has raised our tuition through the roof and change our university requirements from those of ability to those of conformity we have fallen behind on our technological advantage.

How is it that over ten years since Microsoft's successful implementation of windows 95, they seem incapable of developing a new operating system worth a darn. Our IC's have brought in foriegn born engineers by the truckload to lower the wages of engineers. This has resulted in discouraging students from tackling the harder engineering courses and doing the heavy educational lifting of getting a degree in Engineering, simply because the the money is so pitiful. Instead we have become a nation of lawyers and con artists whose main skill is writing shifty contracts that skirt the law.

What you call for is nothing but elitist corporate socialism, which is what reaganomics has loaded on our nation, resuting in our slowly dwindling position as the leader in world technology. IC's destroyed Silicon Valley, and technology has almost gone backwards since then.

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