I have this silly idea, common when my father and uncles and mother and aunts went to High School its called a Vocational Track you know its funny to think about you focus most of the education on learning to be employed when you get out both general courses and employment skill set specific usually in the upper end. See you decide the bare minimum of courses outside of employment based and have maybe a quarter of the units those for example in the basics like civics and English why not a year applicable to the workplace over term papers. Science a two course overview is enough. And then the rest of the time general courses applicable to the general workplace, industry more specific and lots of job related hands on and classroom courses for at least a type of work and specific certifications. Its stupid if only 20% of students are likely college material to not track them into Academic High Schools and then the rest employment education is far better. And the bottom performers should get less than this why not for low IQ people and yes some disabled persons shouldn't even go to High School maybe a year or two of employment training or something if they seem motivated but why waste more than of eight years of education on someone not likely to benefit its a waste of money and time. Sorry but for me the biggest issue is not accepting peoples limits a person with an IQ of 70 isn't going to college and might not benefit from High School fully and the top most motivated students who have the skills should go to college and yes it should be affordable. And I don't care if some average Joe is good at football I would ban sports scholarships and insist students get into college at least a public one based on likelihood of graduating. The rest should get top notch employment tracked education, demanding and training people to be flexible re-trainable and trainable workers for the labor force.
The military offers a substantially better option over traditional education because it encompasses everything in life. A poor kid goes to college and there's very little he learns in regards to life. The military teaches you everything-from how to tie a tie to financial management-that forms the bedrock of your social status. Not to mention that it's like joining a giant fraternity. If I was looking to hire someone, the college grads would all have their resumes end up in the trash. I don't run an adult daycare, and prefer men who can accomplish tasks with little to no supervision.
Having people tell you what to do and obeying automatically commands "encompasses everything in life"? Not in my book and not by a long-shot. The ultimate freedom is the ability to choose knowingly amongst various options and try to succeed. If you don't, try again. There is no military organization on earth that allows you that freedom. In fact, "freedom of action" is anathema in any military organization with a command-structure. To an extent, any organization imposes a "command-structure" to some extent, but if you don't like to do what your manager tells you is your job-objective, then you can always walk away and find other work. At least there is an ability to negotiate (though constrained in context) ...
Oh, come off it. They learn how to cope in various situations based upon the education/training that they have obtained. Your telling me that education is not a necessity, and I am telling you that if one wants to succeed in life professionally, they would do best to study and obtain a degree. Earnings determine more or less (if not happiness) at least a level of well-being for one and their family, and the key to success is education in a country that is entering the Information Age. To wit: Beyond just earnings, education also greases the wheels of any civilized society. But, that is a matter on an entirely different level ...
Median earnings are completely worthless. According to median earnings not a single American family lives in poverty, yet here we are spending a trillion dollars a year on anti poverty programs. The military teaches you how to succeed in society and the absolute basic skills for success, foremost among them management. I'm 28 years old, dropped out of high school, and have 3 YEARS of senior corporate management on my resume. I ran the entirety of operations for a regimental level unit(which is normally 1,200 men), to include training, certification, logistics, and securing training sites. Coordinated with numerous government agencies, dozens of civilian contractors, and handled a $5 million annual budget. That led me to sit on the local chapter boards of 4 major, nationally recognized non profits, and half a dozen civic/government organizations. Which moves us to the real question of economic benefit. Does a company hire a 20 something college graduate with zero experience beyond getting coffee for the office, or a man who has proven himself to get **** done and handle monumental responsibility? My local veterans club has about 30-40 members who work for Microsoft and it's contractors. The manager who brought them all in was pretty much begging me to take a 6 week course on computers/coding so he could hire me on as middle management. A college degree doesn't mean a *******n thing.
A college degree can be essential for less assertive people than yourself. What worked for you will not necessarily work for everyone.
What is worthless is your above comment because you are ignorant of the existing factual data regarding poverty. Keep you personal history references to yourself - they are worthless on the national level. You are living in a vacuum ...
PLUTOCRACY What can you do? Some people here think that what's happened to them has happened to the world around them as well. Otherwise known as Economic Myopia, which is well worth discussing in this "Economics forum". Such naiveness has encapsulated American thinking as regards poverty for most of the past century. Which is why, compared to a fair Social Democracy, what we have in the US effectively (as seen by factual historical data) is a PLUTOCRACY* - largely effected by the manipulation of electoral rules since the 12th Amendment passed in 1804 and gerrymandering that was first employed in Massachusetts in 1812. So, this form of "voting maliciousness" goes back a long, long time - in fact to the very beginning of the nation and has plagued us ever since. And, still, Americans think theirs is the Greatest Democracy on Earth. Wakey, wakey ... *Plutocracy = Government by the wealthy, a controlling class of the wealthy
You wanted more affordable college in the USA they should never have done the student loan system, we used to have excellent and largely affordable public colleges that were solid schools maybe not the prettiest or had tons of frills compared to the private colleges but they generally got the job done at a cost largely born by State taxpayers. This changed with free money being added into the system if you give businesses and colleges are businesses more money without controls on cost increases the government would allow in these amounts why wouldn't many of these schools ,once very inexpensive, take the money raising tuition and housing costs to add tons of frills to their campuses? The University of Ohio's campus should not try or ever tried to compete with Yale the second they decided to the costs for tuition and other things would shoot up and much unrelated to academics or the higher goals of teaching student-scholars and training them to be leaders of society based on a sound education to benefit Ohio in this example.
Yeah, so why don't we apply the same yardstick to the DoD, that's swallowing whole 54% of our National Discretionary Budget! Education is NOT a higher priority than Defense at a time when there is NO WAR!?! The lack of sufficient education is the reason we are providing H1-B permits to foreigners enticing them to come work in the US? The US issues 65,000 such permits annually. They all fill jobs that a nation like the US should not need be filled by "foreign help". Not if we knew how to put our own people through the necessary schooling and it did not cost an arm and a leg ... Other countries are supporting the costs of Tertiary Education. If we are such a rich-country then why cannot we do the same ... ?
WHAT IS THE PERCENT OF TOTAL EDUCATION COST THAT THE STUDENT CARRIES? For an idea of the Individual Cost (to students) of a Tertiary Education go to this link: OECD: Education at a glance. There are three columns of data, and the most pertinent is the third, "Share of private expenditure". Select "Share of private expenditure" to see the percentage each students pay of the total by country. Note that in the Nordic countries of the EU, the student's share of tertiary-education cost is in the single-digit percentages of the total. But not in the US, which is at a whopping 33%. Which is not the highest in the list, which is that of Chile. But it is one of the only 3/4 countries where the cost is a third or more. Is this sort of achievement that "makes American great!" Methinks not ...
IMO too many of our wealthiest have become accustomed to overly simple, society-destroying ways to increase their wealth.
My argument stands you give out tons of money to state and private schools they will jack up prices to get more money like any other business, State Schools used to be affordable for typical working class people if the children could get into the school, my uncle left medical school through the University of Wisconsin system with $1500 in debt in 1950 to a bank. His family helped and he worked summers and that paid the rest. So what happened the Federal Government handing out money and the States reducing funding a lot since the loans were there, stepping on average people. Simple.
The free market always delivers a rapidly expanding middle class and higher standards of living. You're "social democracies" have free markets. And obviously a nation where voting was restricted to white males who owned 500 acres of arable land wasn't a "democracy". Democracies always fail
Well, they can function badly but they rarely fail altogether. The worst modern "democracy" on earth was that of the Nazis in Germany who were duly elected into office by the German people in the early 1930s. They went on to annihilate millions of Jews right under the noses of the German people. (Anyone near a concentration camp could not ignore the odor of burning flesh.) And yet, right up to a year before the war's end, the Germans in general thought sHitler was not such a bad guy. The awakening was very rude ...
Nope - post-secondary education is not failing because of a lack of money nowadays. It needs far better teachers nonetheless. Incomes are up so people spend more and the states rake in the sales taxes that pay for secondary-education. (The Federal Government spends 54% of its budget on the DoD, and only 6% on Education most of which goes to post-secondary educational loans and not grants. See here.) That is recent, however. History lesson: After the Replicants took control of the HofR in 2010, they refused any augmentation of the budget. It was a tactical manoeuvre to defeat Obama in 2012. Didn't work, did it? Nonetheless, whilst unemployment was descending from 10% (in 2010) to 8 then 5 and then finally to 4% nowadays, some states did shed education-workers. The HofR Replicants refused any increase in compensational funding nationally of state secondary-schooling. (And they still do. The DofE budget remains fairly constant.) What is preventing kids from getting the sort of advanced-education that will obtain them a decent standard-of-living is the cost of Tertiary Education. At 20K a year, the cost at a state-supported post-secondary degree is outrageous and forbids most of the poor from entering. The result is that about only half even try to get an advanced degree and far too many fail (for a variety of reasons, money-cost being the most likely). The Federal government (Dept. of Education) WAS NOT HANDING OUT MONEY. The DofE offers loans - you know, like taking out a loan to buy a car. You pay it back! The DofE does offer some "grants", which are mostly dedicated to DoD-personnel who died in a foreign war, so the parent no longer exists. PS: Get a handle on the facts, will you! They are out there. Go look for them!!!!
They get tax breaks to entice them to give unlimited money to the Replicant Party so that it can win elections. That unlimited political-funding works well-enough in a PotUS election decided by the manipulation of an Electoral College*. In a court case, it has been sanctioned by the the majority of Replicant judges on the Supreme Court. You wanna stay away from the polls because it all disgusts you? Then you are handing over political control to the Replicants who vote! And your taxes go to a Replicant PotUS who uses them as he pleases ... *Which is how a minority-vote PotUS gets elected in America, and why Donald Dork sits in the White House.
Democracy in Germany ended the day the Reichstag burned. When someone declares themselves dictator for life, democracy is gone.
The poverty rates are substantially higher in the U.S. than in Europe, so paying for collectivized things like education or healthcare ultimately involves more wealth transfer. That is probably one of the main reasons the U.S. doesn't have these things.
We also need to stop subsiding useless degrees. Student aid should only be available for viable majors like STEM, Business, Economics, Law etc. If you want a useless degree then get it on your own dime.
Nope. Perhaps on the moon, where you live. But, I live in Europe and they do pretty well here. No gerrymandering. Money for electoral candidates restricted to a reasonable amount. And Donald Dork is universally disliked here - except by Putin. (BFD!) Free healthcare (or nearly so). Free Post-secondary schooling - actually a school fee that is less than one-tenth that which is paid in the US. And higher-taxation (than the US) to pay for it. But, so what. Money isn't everything. Except the US, where it is taken as Badge of Courage & Success. Get a life ...
