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The cost of a college education has increased by nearly a 1,000 percent since 1980. Health care, gas, groceries, cars, and home prices haven't come close to those sort of increases. There is no correlation between the huge increases in college tuition or anything happening in the economy.

Has supply and demand effected it? Are their too many students and too few colleges? Hell no. In fact there are fewer students to choose from today, and more colleges. They're fighting over getting students.

Yet, we don't scrutinize colleges with the same skepticism that we do Big Oil, Big Auto, Big Tech, Big Defense Industry, or Wall Street. We let colleges rape us and accept it without question.

Throw in the fact that college are producing more worthless degrees today than they did in the 80's, leaving college grads strapped with huge loans and working in fields totally unrelated to their often unmarketable college majors.

Interesting article on the future "browning" of Higher Ed. Obama's proposal for greater use and accountability for both the Community Colleges and the students seems to be well timed.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/next-amer...e-20150114

Community colleges are already great values. Four year colleges not so much.

But yeah, free community college would be great. So will the community college get professors to work for free? Will the electric, phone and gas companies give them free utilities. Will volunteers in the community maintain the buildings for free?

If not, then how is "free community college" going to be paid for?

It would probably be fair to say employers pay for CC now. CC grads with technical skills get better paying jobs, ie employers pay them back for their education and skills via higher pay.

Currently, CC is often subsidized by county taxes of course. But the incremental cost is a combo of financial aid (scholarships, loans) and cash from family or student employment.

Front loading from employers would be cool, but seems unworkable.

Obamas old fashioned centrist politics sees a national village where we all pay taxes and then distribute them to good and worthy things. Is CC a good and worthy thing?

My problem with that is you fund everyone attending but don't get the community payback from all of them. I like it better to have the students be on the hook for much of the cost, then if you are successful, you earn the cost back in wages.

I also agree with you that the inflation in higher Ed can't be sustained and is nearing the tipping point.

Tennessee is already providing "free" Community College tuition to it's residents, funding it through their state Lotto revenue. Obama's proposal hasn't shown a funding source, but I think scrapping the F-35 that the Pentagon never wanted could have funded this program for decades. Priorities.

(01-15-2015 06:31 PM)chipfan Wrote:  Tennessee is already providing "free" Community College tuition to it's residents, funding it through their state Lotto revenue. Obama's proposal hasn't shown a funding source, but I think scrapping the F-35 that the Pentagon never wanted could have funded this program for decades. Priorities.

Yeah, lottery in MI was supposed to go ENTIRELY to education, yet even withthat added revenue we've still cut the school foundation grants (money spent per student) by a significant amount.

But again, community college is not the problem. It is reasonable in price, and tends to be more tuned in to what the business community needs trained employees in.

The problem today is the crazy cost of four year and post grad education. As stated, it has gone up far beyond the cost of living and inflation. And Washington knows why.

If Washington told students, we will only allow student loans at a rate of $180 a credit hour I guarantee you, colleges would get their costs in line with what those loans would pay. But as long as loans are given that will pay WHATEVER the going rate for attending a particular college, those colleges will charge whatever the hell they like.

Why for example do we give the largest amount of state funds to schools with endowments that make the Vatican Bank look small?

Higher education needs to be reined in and curriculum needs to be looked at with the same scrutiny we look at K-12 curriculum. Worthless, stupid classes need to go, or shouldn't be allowed for college credit. Professors need to be in the classroom, not doing research and not letting Grad students teach them.

(01-15-2015 06:31 PM)chipfan Wrote:  I think scrapping the F-35 that the Pentagon never wanted could have funded this program for decades. Priorities.

The F-35 may be a huge waste of money, but I don't think it's accurate to day DoD never wanted it.

Off topic, but the next big thing is a pilotless, or actually remote piloted, fighter/bomber. Design can be much more responsive without worry about scrambling a pilots brains in a 15 g turn. Future conflict may look like a video game.

(01-15-2015 09:31 PM)Chipdip2 Wrote:  Yeah, lottery in MI was supposed to go ENTIRELY to education, yet even withthat added revenue we've still cut the school foundation grants (money spent per student) by a significant amount.

The lottery money to education was a shell game from the start. The State funds education to begin with, and for every dollar of revenue from the lottery, a dollar comes out of the education budget and goes into the General Fund. There is always a cap on how much money is allowed for education no matter what the revenues are from the lottery.

In some states, lottery dollars are pooled with other funds, making it impossible to determine how much the lottery benefits schools. That is the case in Michigan, Texas and Illinois.

Because legislators in these states decide school budgets well in advance of knowing what lottery revenue will be, lottery money is just another part of the overall budget. If the lottery dollars are below projections, the state makes up the shortfall with money from other sources, or in some cases, simply gives schools less money. If the lottery dollars exceed projections, the state uses some of the money for other programs.

“Legislators merely substitute general revenue funds with lottery dollars so the schools don’t really gain any additional funding,” said O. Homer Erekson, dean of the business school at the University of Missouri in Kansas City, who co-wrote a national study on lottery money and school financing.

https://spartanadvocate.msu.edu/

Pretty much explains the last decade or so here in Michigan.

Thoroughly entertaining piece on the lottery:

(01-16-2015 08:32 AM)Dirty Ernie Wrote:  Off topic, but the next big thing is a pilotless, or actually remote piloted, fighter/bomber. Design can be much more responsive without worry about scrambling a pilots brains in a 15 g turn. Future conflict may look like a video game.

I think this is what the new bomber is going to look like, a "system of systems" as DoD likes to call it.