Dear Class of ’13: You’ve been scammed - Brett Arends's ROI - MarketWatch -
This is a very good, but shockingly incomplete, analysis.
Arends does yoeman’s work in sniffing out one half of the problem: the schools themselves, and their paying of staff, and building of fancy new campuses. That surely contributes to cost. But do you want to know what contributes even more directly to the costs of college?
Break out a mirror.
That’s right, you, fellow taxpayer, are the problem. See you, like most people, believe that education in through college is something every student should have, so with numerous programs, many the purview of federal and state governments, we have subsidized the cost of education to the point where 67% of students attending college get some kind of financial aid to do so.
That sounds wonderful, until you realize that many students get loans as well, which are all federal now (thank you, Obama!) and don’t actually feel the pinch of that degree in Comparative Asian Transgender Archaeology until they graduate. Colleges know this and pretty much charge what they want knowing that whatever they charge, the average student will pay through a government program of some kind that will adjust as tuition increases, meaning, essentially that “we can charge what we want because you’re not paying for it yet anyway.”
Think of it in terms of medicine, which is in a similar situation. It’s heavily subsidized and it’s very expensive. The same rules apply.
The cost of college can come down, but it isn’t only on the backs of schools to bring it down. If we stopped handing out so much free money to kids and encouraging them all to get overeducated, the reality is that the schools would have to lower their prices or they’d face semester after semester of empty halls.
Simple.
Never trust any analysis of college costs that doesn’t factor in the amount of subsidies given to students to attend those colleges. It’s simply not complete without it.
Zachary’s parents apparently have never heard of the idea of making your kid his own fucking lunch.
I honestly don’t get the outrage that parents keep expressing over the quality of the food in public schools. If you don’t like the food they serve, send your kid with a bag lunch. You know, like you most likely had?
Jesus, parents have become such a lazy helpless bunch of twats these days.
“Mayor Bloomberg can be a cascading fountain of unsolicited advice, gushing with wisdom about everything from dieting tips to iPhone safety to Wisconsin. On his WOR radio program yesterday, he gave some heartfelt advice to average people about the realities of education and debt: “The people who are going to have the biggest problem are college graduates who aren’t rocket scientists, if you will, not at the top of their class,” he said. “Compare a plumber to going to Harvard College—being a plumber, actually for the average person, probably would be a better deal.” —
For once the piece of shit is right. Not everyone belongs in college (not that the 80% of the illiterate graduates of NYC Public High Schools could get into a real college anyway), and we definitely don’t need someone graduating with $100,000 in debt and a degree in Women’s Studies or Ancient Languages, which prepares them in zero real ways for the job market.
Bloomberg’s Advice To Average People: Skip College And Become A Plumber: Gothamist
IRS Asks for Reading List, Tea Party Group Sends Constitution - ABC News -
Why the fuck does it matter what a group reads?
You know, it’s starting to become really apparent that being calm, respectful, and operating inside the system is no longer the answer because the system in and of itself is what’s broken.
(Source: libertarianjames)
[video]
WWF Gets Into Bed with Oppressive Dictatorship | NoFrakkingConsensus -
Unsurprising. Environmentalists love cozying up to dictators and despots because they can force their green crap down their people’s throats.
(via antigovernmentextremist)
(via Cyanide & Happiness #3175 - Explosm.net)
[video]
Burger Coasters!
http://lgno.me/17GgmDr (aff)
WANT
(Source: aids-trees, via imenstruatedonit)
(Source: cascentric, via themightyduckling)
[video]
Sorry but none of you (allegedly) afflicted with it are more credible than this guy.
The alarmed critics of the Ritalin disaster are now getting support from an entirely different side. The German weekly Der Spiegel quoted in its cover story on 2 February 2012 the US American psychiatrist Leon Eisenberg, born in 1922 as the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, who was the “scientific father of ADHD” and who said at the age of 87, seven months before his death in his last interview: “ADHD is a prime example of a fictitious disease”
(Source: worldpublicunion.org)