Geiginni wrote: Sun Oct 09, 2022 9:57 pm Instead of “Defund the Police”, perhaps “Defund College Administration”, needs to be the new chant everywhere. Tuition didn’t become burdensome until schools decided to bloat themselves by hiring all the grads that aren’t fit to teach or want to go into the private sector, Those admins all need nice new offices to compete with the country-club facilities they feel they need to provide incoming undergrads.

It is likely a bit more complex than that, but yes it is a huge chunk of it. Also factor in the changes in state funding. And while you are at it, defund a bunch of football coaches and pay college athletes. A shocking number (a majority? can't remember) of big ticket athletic programs operate under the myth that they make money for universities and provide jobs, when they don't cover their own expenses. I've seen this wreck havoc on more than one school I attended. It is similar to the way major league sports teams can leech off of local cities under the goodwill of local identity and the misleading impression that they bring money and jobs for a net benefit for the public. I could get into it, but this is way off topic.

I also think it's ridiculous we make/cajole kids into going to college right out of high-school. As John Mulaney aptly put it in one of his bits: "I made the worst financial decision of my life at 17 years old, without an attorney present! How is that legal?!!".

I think it would be more appropriate to require either 4 years of civil service or military service out of HS. You get the choice: armed forces, or 4 years of helping to re-build civic infrastructure and assisting to build environmental and social safety nets - things that carry no profit motive, nor should.

well it shouldn't cost so goddamned much, for one thing. even do full public funding.

Geiginni wrote: I also think it's ridiculous we make/cajole kids into going to college right out of high-school. As John Mulaney aptly put it in one of his bits: "I made the worst financial decision of my life at 17 years old, without an attorney present! How is that legal?!!".

I think it would be more appropriate to require either 4 years of civil service or military service out of HS. You get the choice: armed forces, or 4 years of helping to re-build civic infrastructure and assisting to build environmental and social safety nets - things that carry no profit motive, nor should.

So you're going to make kids rebuild the civic infrastructure or fight communism for four years and then they will be mature enough to pay for their college? I'm not sure if this will get much traction. The US are the only country in the world (as I know it) that purposefully bankrupts those who pursue higher education. It won't change because it functions as part of the golden-ring-grab fallacy that the consumer culture mythologizes, but I would recommend everyone stop supporting it.

“Red on the head like the dick of a dog.”

zorg wrote: Wed Oct 12, 2022 8:18 am So you're going to make kids rebuild the civic infrastructure or fight communism for four years and then they will be mature enough to pay for their college?...

Maybe after four years away from mom & dad and the pressures of a college-prep education, they'll realize college isn't for them and may not be a wise financial decision. Maybe they'll be able to look at college as a return on investment, instead of the obligation they must blindly march into. Germany seems to have a good system, and there sure is a lot of demand for work in the trades and skilled labor forces that's not being met.

An IBEW master electrician card or master plumbers license is a guaranteed six figures. I can't say the same from most bachelors or masters degrees. Perhaps, with fewer students using college as an assumed pathway to financial security would free up resources so college could function as it once did: pure academia, research, and educating capital "P" professionals?

Geiginni wrote: Wed Oct 12, 2022 12:43 pm

zorg wrote: Wed Oct 12, 2022 8:18 am So you're going to make kids rebuild the civic infrastructure or fight communism for four years and then they will be mature enough to pay for their college?...

Maybe after four years away from mom & dad and the pressures of a college-prep education, they'll realize college isn't for them and may not be a wise financial decision. Maybe they'll be able to look at college as a return on investment, instead of the obligation they must blindly march into. Germany seems to have a good system, and there sure is a lot of demand for work in the trades and skilled labor forces that's not being met.

An IBEW master electrician card or master plumbers license is a guaranteed six figures. I can't say the same from most bachelors or masters degrees. Perhaps, with fewer students using college as an assumed pathway to financial security would free up resources so college could function as it once did: pure academia, research, and educating capital "P" professionals?

There's a really good string of tweets by FM Steve on this which I entirely agree with. I don't think there should be a contradiction between pursuing financially lucrative training for a trade and getting a degree in whatever, be it art history, sociology, or whatever. The fact that the quality of american public schools have been and are increasingly choked dry of critical thinking or cultural enrichment is a problem. Keeping access to the one place there's a trickle of that still running unacceptable is not the way to go, even if a wider array of solutions is needed. Decoupling college education from affluence and career incentive is necessary unless you are fine with it being one more resource to be hoarded by a few. Trades are good, and no one should have to learn french literature to make a good living, but this Mike Rowe reactionary bullshit doesn't help anyone. Back to the tech room for me, I guess.

Perhaps a less radical move might be simply going to community college, and earn credits until you decide what you might wish to do. Or if you just simply can't resist live at a party school and not enroll.

So the idea of mandatory civic service during the formative years of adulthood is anathema to you?

What civic obligations does any citizen owe their society anymore?

Has the lack of trust in public institutions and notions of liberty that are nothing but self-serving obviated any individual accountability or responsibility under the Social Compact?

How can a society bear any responsibility to its citizens when those individual citizens refuse to be obliged to serve that society in a selfless meaningful way?

Yeah, that kind of thinking went out with JFK’s frontal lobe.