Imo you're wrong. Subject to the caveats below, two generations ago it wasn't necessary for colleges and universities to perform remedial education for matriculating freshman. To the extent time and resources are now devoted to remedial education within the same four year time frame there is simply less time and fewer available resources for substantive higher learning. This is true in the liberal arts. Much less so in certain business fields. And probably not true with regard to engineering and the hard sciences.
The functions and responsibilities of the Federal Government are carefully enumerated in our Constitution. Everything else is left to the individual states. Again, the Federal Government has no business whatever getting involved in providing loan funding to individuals for education or anything else not enumberated in the Constitituion. And, if we don't like it, we are free to amend the Constitution... everything else is unconstitutional....
YOU think I am wrong based only on your anecdotal theories which have nothing to do with the issue, rather than the well-known effects what inflation has done to workers wages, especially at the low end, and college tuitions, books, and living costs? Oh, puhl-lease! These few tech items are the ONLY items that have gone the opposite direction of inflation (except the BMW - Daddy bought that!). A phone and the size of your television have nothing to do with being able to afford and get a degree solely from working. The MASSIVE increase in college tuition, books, rents, and the cost of food without a concurrent increase in wages is the problems for kids getting a degree working like Pollycy claims. The government paying for college is the NATIONAL investment almost every OTHER industrial nation makes ROUTINELY! That investment in their "intellectual infrastructure" PAYS OFF! It is no wonder the USA is losing the economy race!
For about half of all students, technical degrees are a better choice than academic ones. If you get a technical degree, you're much more likely to get a decent paying job straight out of college than with a 4-year academic one. As long as we continue to push a mostly one-size-fits-all academic system, a lot of students will end up with often useless degrees like art history or music. If we were more practical about steering students toward engineering and other math, science, and tech fields, there would be higher employment rates among exiting college students and fewer issues with loans.
PISA tells me that you are wrong. There is no getting around comparative failure. http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pisa/pisa2006highlights.asp [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKTfaro96dg"]Waiting for Superman Official Trailer - YouTube[/ame]
fiddlerdave, Check this out: http://shanghaiist.com/2010/12/08/shanghai_students_beat_us_students.php
These previous two posts make no sense. We were talking about college costs and how much high student loan debt is. We had the "in the good old days we worked hard 24 hours a day and paid off our college and got straight As!!" comments. Then there were the "Now, all the kids have BMWs!" comments. Now, the Right brings in high school programs? In Shanghai? The issue is simple. Most other modern countries charge little or nothing for qualified students to attend college, and simply do not have this problem. Further, when they graduate, they are free to start a business without being saddled by enormous debt. And thus the USA is falling behind. Indeed, our educational system has not fallen apart, but nobody else is dealing with a economic failure from "college loans". How about we stop invading OTHER countries and invade our OWN country and start building and paying for colleges for Americans.
Bottom line is that American public schools can't produce students who have the skills to compete in a globalized world. We aren't going to build anything. Your side and my side will wage a twilight struggle until the world overwhelms the country. There isn't going to be peace between us. You and I both know how this is going to end for America. The difference between us is that I accept the country's fate.
That is sort of silly thinking. America rose to power when most if the industrial world was smashed into oblivion. Of course we're no long going to be the world's single supper power any more.
Won't Barry pay off the student loans??? Then there is the mortgage and gas. You know if you have free college you can hire all the Marxist professors to indoctrinate the chilren.
What you've posted is a partial truth. The Eastern Roman Empire was able to cushion its decline and become the Byzantine Empire. What is coming this way is the experience of Qing Dynasty China. Total collapse. You and I represent mortal threats to each other. No society can exist when it is riven with divisions of this magnitude. If you tell me you don't see me as a mortal threat I will respond that you don't know your enemy.
Back on the education department's payroll after misleading borrowers... Student loan collection agencies fired for 'misleading' borrowers back in business March 24, 2016 -- Two Department of Education private collection agencies once blacklisted from collecting student loans are back on the department's payroll, documents show.