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1/29/2010
Obama pushes education inflation
Pay for college loans for 10 years (a maximum of 10% of your income per year) and then everything is forgiven? (Well, excuse me. 20 years. But 10 years if one is in a “public service” occupation. What the heck does that mean? That is outright discrimination – and another whole subject.) My good friend Tim Haering said it exactly right early this morning, post-SOTU.
If it’s true what he says, that a high school diploma won’t get you a job anymore, that’s because there are too many college grads and many more job applicants than jobs. We don’t need to spend borrowed funds to make college more affordable and have to dumb down higher education to turn out more grads so that someday workers need graduate degrees to get entry level jobs…. We must make high school more effective…
I woke up this morning with this exact thought floating around my head – and not enjoyably so. I was recalling a very specific moment in my car, NPR news blaring, that stands out as if it were yesterday. Someone in the Illinois legislature was spouting about how we all have a right to a free college education – or something like that. Really. Years ago. I thought, I must remember this guy’s name until I get home because this is dangerous – I must write him for more details. It was an odd name – a name foreign-sounding to my ear at the time. I tried to remember the order of the consonants and the vowels until I could get out of my car to write it down. Well, you know what it was.
Barack Obama.
My thought those many years ago (10?) was “wait a minute – let’s make sure we do the best job we can getting them through publicly-funded high school first.”
My second. third and fourth thoughts were
- What percent of entering freshman require one or more remedial courses before proceeding? [more than you think]
- What percent of kids who matriculate as freshman continue on to their sophomore year in college? [half?]
- What percent graduate with a four-year degree? [25%?]”
Well, I don’t have adequate time this morning to look up all the statistics, but I know I’ve read recent laments about greater and greater numbers of entering college freshmen requiring math or English remedial classes and greater and greater percentages not continuing on either through or past their freshman year in college. No, college is not for everyone. Yes, the country should continue to support programs that help some kids pay for college, with an awareness that when scholarship amounts rise, college tuition costs rise – one of the causes of college cost inflation that for decades has been a healthy multiple of the CPI.
And yes, our high schools are teaching many of our kids ever more stuff. Science and technology info annually multiplies logarithmically – and many high school curriculums have become more and more sophisticated and detailed. Still, I think research will show that many high school graduates are not as prepared as they could and should be for our community’s (much less the world’s) employers.
And now Obama wants to hand a potential free ride (or almost…) to a college education, pushing ever closer to a free college education for all. This is absolutely not good.
Jo Egelhoff, FoxPolitics.net
COMMENTS
It has worked extremely well in the Scandinavian countries. (Oh, I forgot. We don't do what other countries do. Not even if it works.)
Jack Lohman (Thu Jan 28 07:43:31 2010)
How about targeting it to Physicians who enter General Practice? This is what some other countries do. It would have great benefits. Lets not forget that the GI bill proved that an affordable college education has tremendous payback to the student, society in general and the treasury. Being debt free and under educated whether a country or an individual is a losing proposition compared to a reasonable amount of investment in debt and education. Where the balance is I haven't a clue. Remember that Arnold said recently that a society (state level) that pays more for its prisons than its higher education is a society in failure. We need to get our priorities straight and we must start looking seriously at the decisions we make. Remember that about 80% of the federal budget is Social Security, Medicare, Military, and Interest on the Debt.
dave allen (Thu Jan 28 07:56:54 2010)
And let me see if I have this straight. We don't want education inflation yet we want to protect the bankers? I see.
Jack Lohman (Thu Jan 28 08:38:52 2010)
"Education" in and of itself is not beneficial--in fact, the Education Myth is the most persistent untruth ever perpetrated.
First off, 'prosperity' does not follow education; there is not a cast-iron 'cause and effect' except for a few disciplines (medicine, e.g.)
Secondly, most of what passes as "college education" is utterly useless in the real world. Name all the customer-service or banking transactions which require Women's Studies background. Or English Lit, for that matter.
Finally: Allen Bloom was spot-on; it is a category error to propose that education should make one prosperous. Prosperity, defined by income, is earned through abilties and dexterities which are not passed on through "education" (again, excepting medicine.)
Education, properly, should enlighten regarding the Human Condition. TRADE SCHOOL can teach mechanics, etc.
dad29 (Thu Jan 28 09:39:27 2010)
What happened to working in college to pay the bills? It is far to easy to dive into debt and spend time in college. Getting a Bachelors degree with 30,000-40,000 in debt is ridiculous.
David (Thu Jan 28 11:10:54 2010)
David, working in college when there are few to no jobs is not easy. I think we have to start investing more in our lower end of the population, rather than just the upper end.
Jack Lohman (Thu Jan 28 11:19:02 2010)
I am with you, Jo! Jack, we ain't ANYTHING like Scandinavia.
I have lived in a number of countries that pay for the higher education of students, and I don't want my country to go there for a number of reasons.
It fosters such a deep sense of entitlement that students feel little compulsion to go to work. They remain in school, drag out their education time, and don't develop a sense of what real work is truly about. In Europe, they may not leave university until they are up in years, and then expect to go straight to a high-level position with the full package of benefits. They want the older, experienced workers to retire (and draw on the social-safety net) to make room for them to enter the work force above ground level positions. They fail to comprehend that, in a vibrant economy, the number of jobs is not finite. Jobs are created. One may have to start at menial tasks.
In countries where the hopes of moving directly into a good job are more dim, (Latin America, for example) students remain, again, in the universities at government expense for longer periods. Instead of being productive, they become restive and begin agitating. For example, if the cost of public transport or their meal plans is increased by so much as a nickle, students take to the streets to demonstrate and shut down the university and parts of the metropolis in protest.
In this country, we have millions of illegal aliens taking our entry-level jobs. This is wrong. I worked my way through school babysitting, waiting tables, selling dry goods, etc. The sooner our children learn that the government/the world doesn't OWE them, the better off they -- and all of us -- will be.
Janice Taylor (Thu Jan 28 11:36:04 2010)
Jo, the sense of entitlement once again rears its ugly head here. Great post.
Janice, excellent points, and I appreciate your foreign experience to back it up.
Jack, let me see if I have this straight. We should supposedly cut down the costs of health care because it is supposedly too expensive, but let the cost of education continue to sky-rocket?
Soapbox Jill (Thu Jan 28 12:19:45 2010)
We should not disregard either patients or kids, and both should be attended to correctly. On healthcare we are wasting 31% on the insurance bureaucracy and 20% on overuse and fraud, and we should be better managing it but not closing the doors to the sick. On education we should not be paying for kids because of their race, but because of their academic skills. And we should not withhold college because of their wealth.
Politicians are not the best hands at either job, but neither are our free-for-all for-profit marketers. We need a better model for both.
Entitlement? No. How about common sense.
Jack Lohman (Thu Jan 28 13:21:30 2010)
If (and I do mean IF) the high schools are not preparing our kids for higher education then those who believe that have an obligation to do something about it. Higher education is not an option any longer. Today's workforce needs a lot more skills than that of the 50s and 60s. And while we are debating the countries that want to outcompete us are getting more of their citizenry educated. And in those countries there is a culture of the value of education that probably starts in the home.
Kids cannot pay for higher education like I did in the 60s because in the 60s the state invested a whole lot more in me (i.e. paid a much higher percentage of my education) than they do today. A couple years ago I did a back of the envelope analysis on this. In 2006 dollars, when the cost of a year at UWFox was about $4000, had the state maintained its investment at the 1966 level I experience our costs would have been about $1700. The real dollar salaries of faculty and administrators has actually gone DOWN since 1966, yet the tuition has gone up.
Others have posited interesting ideas about how to incentivize achievement. Obama has an idea, and there are other good ones out there. Ideas are what can help the country survive, and one has to have some concerns about our future right now when everything is so darn polarized.
Jim Perry (Thu Jan 28 13:48:58 2010)
This is a problem more serious than just keeping people from schools and health care. Read the article "The Money Party, The Essence of our Political Troubles". We can't afford to fix state or local problems or pay for police and fire personnel (or reduce taxes!) because our economy is being shifted to the leaders of the Money Party. Our root problem is a corrupt political system, and until we fix that it is what it is.
Jack Lohman (Thu Jan 28 15:17:42 2010)
Going into a reasonable amount of debt for a college education is one of the best investments a young person can make compared to not getting a college education at all. This is a fact. It is also a fact that college educated make more and pay more taxes than the just the HS degree. The idea that "I waited tables and had 3 jobs and got through college" while personally noble has very little to do with the challenges so many students face to stay in school. The statistics show (and I have friends)that students who do not have enough money to attend college often have a very long interrupted college career, constantly dropping out to earn enough money to live. Often marriage or children come into the picture and the education is delayed even more. We all benefit tremendously from every upward tic in the college educated population. What ever happened to the idea that a rising tide lifts all boats? When did we become such a cutthroat society?
dave allen (Thu Jan 28 17:42:01 2010)
Post-secondary education may be a place where the free market concept may well work. There is a plethora of institutions competing for high school graduates.
Part of the rise in the cost of post-secondary education is this institutional competition. All manner of expensive "extras" are marketed like gourmet food plans, high-end physical fitness facilities, semester abroad junkets, etc. to win prospective students.
Another part of the rising cost is the antiquated tenure system which allows faculty to hang on with substantial compensation even when there are inssufficient classloads for full-time instruction in their discipline.
A third factor contributing to the rapid rise in post-secondary education costs is the trickle down impact of high salaries in places like Wall Street. Obviously a PH.D. who teaches future investment bankers wants compensation commensurate with the "product" he or she puts out.
Yes, it may be time for the marketplace to level the real cost of post-secondary education.
Dennis (Thu Jan 28 17:45:23 2010)
Janice, You seem to think that staying in school is a curse to be lifted by getting out there and working. If so, then why college at all? Why not just work after high school. Why do Scandanavian countries have so much more wealth than we do? Surely their college system isn't driving them to ruin?
dave allen (Thu Jan 28 17:49:41 2010)
Thanks for the excellent link, Dave. Robert Kutner has a point about the Scandinavian countries. As well, they have a very low poverty rate and only 3.4% unemployment, all a result of their politician's spending for the people rather than their campaign funder's pocketbooks.
As I said above, ours is a problem of political corruption.
Jack Lohman (Thu Jan 28 18:30:00 2010)
Let me also add the argument that some have made (legitimately) that too many higher education graduates introduced to the US market when we are outsourcing even high level jobs is sort of dumb. The real answer (I think) is to revisit NAFTA (as Obama has promised but not done) and to cut the subsidies to companies that are outsourcing their work.
Jack Lohman (Thu Jan 28 18:53:55 2010)
I had an interesting conversation in Florida with two socialists from Germany last year. Even as socialists, they were strongly against universal college because not only were students in their country who get free college doing atrociously overall, but colleges increasingly dumbed-down college criteria to accommodate the masses, to the point it is arguable that graduates were not any better educated than when they entered college.
Most posts here that advocate for giving a college education on the taxpayer dime are convinced that socialism is working in Europe, yet in many ways European countries are less socialistic than the United States (instead of arguing this here, read my article at http://thenewamerican.com/index.php/economy/economics-mainmenu-44/643 ). European countries' success usually comes about precisely because they are less socialistic than we are.
Also, some advocates of free college bring up issues of fairness. Two basic rules address fairness: Life is never fair, and government can only fix unfairness for one person by being unfair to someone else. Think about it: No two students are equally intelligent; some students have developed willpower and drive, others haven't; some have parents and teachers who have taught them how to study, others don't; some people are athletic and get scholarships, others aren't.
If government tries to fix unequal access to schools through free college, they hurt people in many ways. First, every dime spent "educating" someone who is not qualified enough, or driven enough, to gain from that education means that money has been taken from the economy as a whole that could be invested in more beneficial ways by the private citizens the money is taken from. If that money stayed in private hands, it could be used by companies to create jobs — for both college-educated folks and blue-collar folk alike.
Americans obviously suffer from this ill-spent money. Students must work hard enough and smart enough in their job after college to increase the economic output of the country to the point that they, in a manner, pay back their college to the country. If they don't the people of the country suffer. As far as I can discern, there isn't evidence of this payback in Europe or anywhere else with free college.
In fact, one of the big reasons for college price inflation is government inflation caused by present government spending. Every dollar the government creates through fiat money means that the buying power of every dollar already in existence goes down. The government has been printing gobs of money, and that has brought down the buying power of the dollar. Though government statistics on inflation usually only show price inflation in the area of three to four percent per year, inflation is really much higher (and inflation does not spread itself equally through the economy). Background: starting in the 1980s, the government changed the way it computed inflation — to make inflation appear lower. They did this with dishonesty: When, for instance, steak went up in price, the government figured more people would buy hamburger, hence not having to spend any more than they did previously, showing almost no inflation. Using government stats figured in the manner from before the fudging started (which can be found on a site could Shadow statistics by economist Walter Williams) inflation for just the last four years adds up to 29 percent. This is reflected in college prices.
To cut this sermon short: Free college is very, very costly — and inherently unfair.
Kurt (Fri Jan 29 11:04:34 2010)
Work ethic is generally more important than "education". It is alarmingly true that most modern colleges are dumbed down. Just read the book "Profscam"...or go to college 15 years apart, as I did, and see how trivial the classes have become. My second degree was finished in 1995, and I was shocked at the slide in standards.
It is certainly true that a degree does not guarantee a job which is why I had to go back to get a degree that WOULD get me employment, when I returned to the US. (Had to go to university, as the tech school had too long a waiting list--but didn't learn anything more by doing so, and a tech diploma would have served just as well).
Kurt totally understands the way our money is inflated. Our unemployment figures are also subject to book-cooking. If computed according to the honest standards in use during the last Great Depression, unemployment is 20-22%, which is why showing that you know HOW to work is so important.
emily matthews (Fri Jan 29 18:15:46 2010)
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