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Feb. 8, 2013
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Jewish World Review
Oct 13, 2011
/ 15 Tishrei, 5772
Are Colleges Too Big to Fail?
By
Arnold Ahlert
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
By now most Americans are quite familiar with the concept "too big to fail." Yet most people assume that it is related to some large bank or corporation whose failure would lead to a cascade of economic consequences most politicians believe would be more than Americans are willing to bear. Yet there is one kind of entity currently flying under the radar where the government meaning the taxpayer is potentially on the hook for hundreds of billions of dollars, and I'm betting most Americans aren't even aware of it. As of right now, student loan debt is close to one trillion dollars, all of it government-guaranteed. This raises a logical question: are America's universities too big to fail?
One of the oldest adages in politics is "if you want more of something subsidize it." The "more" in this case is the cost of college tuition. Yesterday, the NY Post released a list of the ten most expensive universities in the country, and the numbers are staggering. In the number one slot was Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, NY. The cost of tuition, room and board, and other estimated expenses? $58,334 per year, meaning the cost of a four-year degree runs to $233,336.
A little perspective? Tuition costs have doubled since 2000, a pace which is not only far greater than the rate of inflation, but one which exceeds the rate of real estate over the same period. In other words, the housing bubble which crushed the economy and left millions of Americans underwater on their mortgages, was only the second worst bubble out there.
Perhaps the only thing more aggravating than that reality is the reality that the American university system is the home base of progressivism, in all its social justice, spread-the-wealth-around glory. Yet railing against income inequity, among other things, doesn't come cheap. In 2010, according to the New York Times, the average salary for a full professor was $109,843. Other average salaries? $76,566 for an associate professor, $64,433 for an assistant professor, $47,592 for an instructor and $53,112 for a lecturer.
College presidents? The median salary for public university presidents was $427,400 and nearly one hundred thousand dollars higher for presidents at private universities. And that was three years ago, according to latest data made available by the Chronicle of Higher Education.
The work load? From the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook 2010-2011: "Most postsecondary (college) teachers have flexible schedules. They must be present for classes, usually 12 to 16 hours per week, and for faculty and committee meetings. Most establish regular office hours for student consultations, usually 3 to 6 hours per week. Otherwise, teachers are free to decide when and where they will work and how much time to devote to course preparation, grading, study, research, graduate student supervision, and other activities."
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Flexible schedules certainly give one time to rail about, among other things, the cruelty of capitalism, the great divide between rich and poor, and the shortcomings of America in general, don't they? Especially when such high-mindedness pays more than a couple of grand per week for a full professor with summers off, in many cases.
How is all this possible? If you said government, go to the head of the class, as it were. The federal government guarantees to pay off all student loans, even if the students themselves default, which, unsurprisingly, they are doing in ever-greater numbers. In 2008 (the last year statistics are available) the default rate was 7 percent, compared with 4.6 percent in 2005.
Furthermore, when Democrats still controlled both chambers of Congress in March 2010, they voted to nationalize the student loan program. As a result of that change, the feds will allow student borrowers to cap their loan repayments at 10 percent of their income above basic living requirements, instead of 15 percent, beginning in July 2014. Government will also allow those students, if they keep up their payments, to have any remaining debt forgiven after 20 years instead of 25 years or 10 years if they are in public service, such as teaching, nursing or serving in the military.
And who gets left holding the (debt) bag for such forgiveness? The American taxpayer. Even the "clingy" G0d-fearing gun-toting types who never got the chance to sniff a college education.
But it's even worse. A lot of Americans don't know it, but one of the demands being made by many of the Occupy protesters across the country is wait for it "forgiveness" of their college loans. Why? Because college graduates are shocked that a sheepskin they borrowed a couple of hundred grand to acquire doesn't guarantee them a cushy, high-paying, self-actualizing job. In other words, despite four years of "higher" education, these anarchistic nit-wits remain insulated from the one over-arching lesson that any decent university should have hammered into their self-aggrandizing, self-entitled heads on the first day of classes:
The. World. Does. Not. Owe. You. A. Living.
Aside from the glaringly obvious however, Americans need to consider something else quite seriously. They need to consider whether a college education per se makes sense anymore. No doubt there are some fields where amassing more than two hundred thousand dollars of personal debt in order to get a job makes sense. But I'm betting courses like Comparative Literature; Film Studies; Ethnicity, Race and Migration; History of Art; or Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies every one of which comes from Yale University's "Subjects of Instruction" web page aren't any of them.
A two hundred thousand dollar loan amortized over twenty years comes to five thousands dollars a year plus interest. And for what? Maybe the smartest thing the protesters, and perhaps of lot of other Americans, could do would be to pressure businesses to stop making a college degree the ultimate criterion for getting a job. If one considers where the so-called "best and brightest" among us have taken this country in the last few years, one could make a compelling argument that a college degree is the most over-rated product on the planet.
In fact I just did.
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Previously:
10/11/11: Why aren't they upset when their child is mugged in school?
10/07/11: I Stand With the One Percenters
10/03/11: Can We Legalize Assassination?
09/29/11: Tim, Liz and Bev Equals Moe Larry and Curly
09/26/11: No Acknowledgment of Israel? No More Money
09/19/11: Jobbing America
09/16/11: Carville knows a few things about crazy
09/12/11: Contemptible Krugman
09/09/11: Solving the 9/11 Invitation Controversy
09/06/11: Our Progressive Economic Wrecking Crew
09/01/11: Summer Swoon
08/29/11: The Real American Fanatics
08/24/11:The Five Stages of (Progressive) Grief
08/22/11:The Inevitable Descent From Progressivism to Nihilism
08/22/11: Perry Stands Firm. Obama Stands Mute
08/15/11: Give Me a Flatscreen TV, or Give Me Anarchy!
08/11/11: Resign, Mr. President
08/08/11: Facts? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Facts
08/03/11: Manufactured Crises
08/01/11: Stay Healthy, America --- or else!
07/28/11: Existential Crisis, Part 2
07/25/11: Three-Out-of-Four Americans Are Radicals
07/21/11: What Does Two Plus Two Equal?
07/18/11: News Nuggets
07/13/11: The Write Stuff
07/11/11: Completely Expectable Unexpectedness
07/07/11: Organized Cheating
07/05/11: Stimulating Disaster
06/30/11: Progressivism Masquerading as Education
06/27/11: America: Greece With Better PR
06/23/11: NBC-ya Later
06/19/11: One Man's Conversation About Race
06/10/11: An Exhibitionist in an Exhibitionist Age
06/07/11: NAACP Betrays Black American Schoolchildren
06/02/11: For the First Time in My Adult Life . . .
05/31/11: If I Were President
05/25/11: California Dreamin'
05/23/11: On Wisconsin!
05/20/11: Obama's Farewell to Israel Speech
05/16/11: Krauthammering Amnesty
05/11/11: Bounce, My Backside
05/09/11: The Epicenter of Progressive Contempt for the Rule of Law
05/03/11: SEALing Osama's Fate
05/02/11: The Education plantation
04/24/11: The Bell May Toll for Jersey Toll Collectors
04/19/11: From Medical Dependency to Dependency on the Welfare State
04/14/11: Trumping the Debate
04/06/11: It Takes a Bigot to Expose a Death Cult
04/04/11: Charlie and Snookie --- and Barack
03/30/11: Disabling America, One Lawsuit at a Time
03/28/11: The MSM Kills the Kill Team Story
03/23/11: Another Military Scandal
03/21/11: Barry, Joe, Helen and Wisconsin Teachers
03/16/11: The Inevitable Viability of Conservatism
03/14/11: Progressives in Their Own Words
03/09/11: $61 Billion in Cuts --- Vs. $223 Billion in One Month of Spending
03/07/11: Bean Bag B.S.
03/02/11: A Green Catastrophe in the Making
02/28/11: Ain't Noting Like the Real Thing
02/23/11: Progressive Rot vs. the ROTC
02/21/11: Wisconsin: Progressivism in All its Ugly Glory
02/18/11: News reporters --- or Narrative Shapers?
02/16/11: The Presidents Budget Proposal: An Obamination of Progressive Profligacy
02/14/11: Only Another 9/11 Will Alter the Illegal Immigration Status Quo
02/10/11: Is O'Reilly losing his touch or is he just irresponsible?
02/07/11: Tossing Britain Under the Bus
02/03/11: Starving the World In Order to Save It
01/31/11: Walking the Middle East Tightrope
01/27/11: Small-scale Terrorist Attacks: Big Strategy?
01/24/11: Jeffery Immelt: A Crony Capitalist In Charge of Job Creation
01/20/11: An Intimate Prime-time Interview
01/17/11: Progressives: Always Angry, Newly Desperate
01/12/11: Twain vs. the Totalitarians
01/10/11: Politically Correct Passports?
01/05/11: Showdown at the Fiscal Corral
01/03/11: Reading the Constitution Aloud is a Good Start
12/30/10: Getting Our Moral Mojo Back
12/27/10: PC Airport Safety is an Oxymoron
12/23/10: Getting America Back On Track
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12/15/10: The President Who Wasn't There
12/13/10: Tech-No!
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12/06/10: The Unexpected Consequences of Progressivism
12/01/10: Leakers and Losers
11/29/10: We Won, Part One
11/22/10: Keep Your Hands Off My Constitution
11/17/10: Grope and Change
11/14/10: Taking Back Our Country, One School At a Time
11/11/10: Checks (and Balances), Please
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11/04/10: Last Chance, Republicans
11/01/10: By Their Own Words Shall Ye Know Them
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10/25/10: Shock, but more importantly, action: De-Unionize Public Schools now
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10/11/10: Dems: Running From Clarity
10/07/10: Hypersensitive Hogwash
10/04/10: Comprehensive Con Artists
09/29/10: Why Dems Are Going Down in November
09/27/10: The Unholiest of Unholy Alliances
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09/17/10: No More Lesser of Two Evils
09/15/10: Recovery Arms Race
09/13/10: Bigots in the Majority --- Again?
09/09/10: Giving Voters Something to Vote For
09/07/10: Irresponsible Dems, Incomprehensible Bills
09/02/10: War Weary Americans vs. Implacable Islamists
08/31/10: A Dream Debased
08/25/10: American Bigots Versus Media Propagandists
08/23/10: Recovery Bummer
08/19/10: An Unholy Alliance of Radicals
08/16/10: You've Lost America, Mr. President
08/13/10: The Twin Towers of Progressive Disconnect
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08/04/10: Ground Zero Mosque: Context Counts
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06/30/10: Calling YOUR Bluff, Mr. President
06/28/10: A Trifecta of Progressive Corruption
06/23/10: Plug the Darn Hole --- In Our Border
06/21/10: Our Empty-Suit-in-Chief
06/16/10: Betraying Our Children
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06/07/10: Politically Correct Warfare
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05/10/10: Greeks, Leaks and and Double-Speak
05/05/10: Twelve Million Illegals --- or Thirty?
05/02/10: Republicans: Playing Not to Lose Doesn't Cut It
04/28/10: Arizona: Progressivism's Waterloo?
04/26/10: Son of Amnesty
04/22/10: Mortgages and Moral Meltdowns
04/20/10: Bashing Christians Or Gays?
04/15/10: Personal Integri-tea
04/12/10: Fools, Tools and Ghouls
04/08/10: (Tea) Party On
04/05/10: The Triumph of Mediocrity
04/02/10: Two For the Road
03/29/10: The Innate Immorality of Liberalism
03/24/10: The Art of War
03/22/10: I Want My Country Back
03/18/10: A Perpetual Process
03/17/10: American Exhibitionists
03/15/10: A Light Bulb Moment of Clarity
03/10/10: Little Things Mean A Lot
02/03/10: Budgetary Fork in the Road
02/01/10: Liberal Economic Illiteracy
01/27/10: Roe-ing and Wade-ing Back to Reason
01/25/10: Arrogance When Up, Denial When Down
01/20/10: Connecting the Educational Dots
01/19/10: The Next Tea Party?
01/15/10: The Myth That Keeps on Giving
01/13/10: Airport Security Begins Away From the Airport
01/11/10: Secrets and Lies
01/08/10: Embracing Bigotry or Rejecting Bullying?
01/06/10: Hanging by an Ideological Thread
01/04/10: Our Wonderama Bureaucracy
12/30/09: A Day Off
12/28/09: Dangerous Myths
12/25/09: I, Me, Mine
12/23/09: A Very Harry Christmas
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12/18/09: The Party of Repeal
12/15/09: Privileged Exemption
11/30/09: Settled Science and Unsettled Children
11/30/09: American Sharia Law
11/23/09:The Trial (Travesty) of the Century
11/04/09: American Vampires and Their Political Enablers
11/01/09: Opting Out of Insanity?
10/28/09: Cell Phones Cause Brain Cancer. Brain Required
10/26/09: Communism: Nazism With Better PR
10/21/09: Just Asking
10/16/09: Cost Projections vs. Actual Costs, or Hope and Change vs. Reality
10/14/09: News you can use …
10/07/09: Incremental Insidiousness
10/05/09: MIA: Common Sense and Common Decency
09/30/09: Iran: Bad Options and Unpreparedness
09/21/09: Crying Racism: the Last Refuge of Scoundrels
09/11/09: 9/11 Cannot Be Sanitized
09/08/09: Truthers and Consequences
09/01/09: A Paper Trail Challenge for the Mainstream Media
08/31/09: Drowning in Amorality
08/26/09: The Republican Recovery Program
© 2011, Arnold Ahlert
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