From CNN Money (h/t) more about the increased costs of college.
The numbers confirm what most middle class families already know — college is becoming so expensive, it’s starting to hold them back.
The crux of the problem: Tuition and fees at public universities, according to the College Board, have surged almost 130% over the last 20 years — while middle class incomes have stagnated.
And for better or for worse, a college education is becoming more and more a stepping stone to the middle class in this country. As we’ve moved the factories and other lower skill middle class jobs out of the country, there is a greater and greater premium on post high school education. If we’re no longer going to have a manufacturing economy, the least we can do is to prepare the next generation for the economy we will have.
Of course, there’s so much more to an education than just job training. Hopefully, people come out of college more well rounded and better thinkers, the kind of people we need around the state. Maybe some will create the next industry, maybe someone will find a passion they never had before but maybe some will just be better able to help their kids with homework or become smarter, more well rounded, more engaged citizens. The state shouldn’t short change itself of that, either.
Is becoming? People have been graduating strapped with debit for at least the last decade! Is becoming, my ass.
We have the third largest manufacturing economy on the planet. But, those are no longer low skill jobs and we don’t want them to be low skilled jobs as low skilled work is low paid work. We need a better educated population to do high paid, high demand, manufacturing work. Anyone can sew a shirt or make a salad shooter.
@2
ya, but it takes real skill to fabricate a custom Slap-Chop!
Yes so typical liberal think. Increase the tuition 20% per year, to fund the massive salaries at these universities, and less people sign up so revenues actually drop. Lets look next year and see what the attendance rates are once UW and WSU raise the tuition 15%-20%.
The Post office tried this with postage rate increases, everyone moved to pay-online. PO’s are running Billions in debt.
We need a Wisconsin Governor here, to reign in these public costs.
@4 proves home schooling doesn’t work — its graduates are no smarter than the parents who “taught” them.
Petra Ecclestone didn’t go to college and she just bought a house for $150,000,000. You don’t need no college eddication; all you need is the right parents!
@2 You don’t make money in this country by doing work, skilled or unskilled. You make money by owning stuff. Any 10-year-old kid can make a million dollars a year if he has enough apartment houses. Just ask Donald Trump.
Okay, so Republicans don’t want the children of Democrats to go to college, because they don’t want their kids to have competition. Republicans want a society in which everything is determined by patrimony.
@6
Asking price was $150M, but she got it for $85M.
Yet another reason for an estate tax: fewer annoying, useless, rich people. It sounds like her daddy actually worked, took some risks, and earned his money.
4 No Roger I have a MBA, and I know you cannot spend twice what you take in without massive financial consequences.
And both my kids have the GET program, purchased for $51 per unit or tuition of $5100 per year. 11 years of it in the bank…
keep raising those tuition rates at 20% per year, and telling me home schooling doesn’t work.
@7
Actually, I have a buddy that works as a manufacturing engineer and he’s making pretty good money.
@8
Been telling you the Republicans want a neo-feudal state.
7. Yes it is a wonderful thing to own real estate. Especially realizing it has depreciated 33-40% in Obama’s reign
Almost everyone who bought real estate did so to lose money
@13
Duh, they bought it in a bubble. A bubble that the good-old-boys in the Bush Admin could have stopped from taking off, but didn’t.
So what do you consider QE1, QE2, and QE3 and QE4 if they are not just stop fixes to the collapse of the dollar, and the US economy, the cost of commodities rising, and the added costs to all businesses (now outsourcing jobs like crazy)?
Kicking the financial can down the road does not accomplish anything worthwhile, if all it causes is outsourcing of more jobs.
14 Say what? http://www.realpolice.net/foru.....2003-a.htm
@15
Dude, you’re talking to a commercial fisherman’s kid. The QE2 was a boat! But, even I with my shitty and limited education could see that the housing market was a bubble. Why couldn’t all you fancy educated types see that?
We have a binary political system, it’s either a D or an R. If you’ve been paying attention I’m not overly thrilled with either choice right at the moment.
Here is a school that offers a degree that is fairly reasonable http://www.londoninternational.....ndex.shtml. Now I am not going to figure out what 3384 pounds are worth in dollars, but maybe this is the model of the future.
Link doesn’t work for some reason but you can google it.
@16
Um… That link comes up page not found.
Those banks that went belly up and Lehmans Brothers that went belly-up? That wouldn’t have happened in a propperly regulated system. That wouldn’t have happened if the Bush folks at enforced the rules and laws that were on the books.
Of course, there’s so much more to an education than just job training. Hopefully, people come out of college more well rounded and better thinkers, the kind of people we need around the state. Maybe some will create the next industry, maybe someone will find a passion they never had before but maybe some will just be better able to help their kids with homework or become smarter, more well rounded, more engaged citizens. The state shouldn’t short change itself of that, either.
———————————————–
Right, there isn’t much point in job training without jobs to fill, we need more well-rounded art majors. Hopefully, the money to pay for it will fall from the sky. Hope and change is always the answer.
http://www.realpolice.net/foru.....003-a.html
@21
See #2
[Deleted — see HA Comment Policy]
A college degree is a door-opener for opportunities. However, it does matter what one studies in college. Having a degree does not necessarily a lucrative career. Just ask the French literature major that made your latte this morning.
Technical and scientific fields are where the jobs are, and, to a lesser degree, in the accounting and finance areas. {And I don’t mean “business administration” when I talk about accounting and finance.}
The hard stuff is hard because that’s where the jobs are. If you are having a kid start college soon, advise him or her to skip the touchy-feely stuff and major in something where he or she can actually get a job!!
I any of you really care about this issue, I have posted an awful lot over at The Ave.
Here are some key issues:
1. Privitization: America’s public universities are ranked as the best .. by far .. in the world. Now they are being privatized. Costs for an IN STATE UW undergrad, from a family earning five figures, are two to three time HIGHER at the UW that at Princeton because Princeton’s endowment subsidizes tuition.
2. The University as a Diploma Mill: Our state legislature has now added “Western Governors University” as part of the Washington Higher Ed system. WGUW BRAGS that can issue diplomas even though it does not meet the standards of most WA state community colleges. Worse, through an end run around WA law, WGUW claims to be able to train Highs School Science Teachers without offering the usual courses in .. science!
3. The UW as Remedial College Even our best Universities are now being expected to offer remedial courses because incoming students are not prepared for college. When Cliff Mass tried to address this at KUOW, he was fired.
4. Is the BS in B a BS Degree? 50% of students now take business as a “major.” What the hell is “business?” Many of these kids are getting extended training in such classroom feel good behaviors as leadership and teamwork that it is hard to see who will be doing the real work needed for a productive community.
It seems to em that we need to consider renaming this state. Warshingtun is too hard to spell, I suggest WI SSI SSI PPI.
@10: Uh huh, LD has an MBA!
What cut-rate on-line diploma mill did you get it from?
For someone who can’t write a coherent argument – you sure are over-educated.
What an idiot LD is – you keep posting the same stoopid crap about the deficit – but you fail to understand the reasons FOR the deficit.
AND – you have been unable to defends any of your pathetically simple-minded views.
So your MBA is…worthless.
@26
Spot on.
If you need remedial work, go to the F’ing community college.
@27
I think some right-wing think tank pays LD 8 bucks an hour to type drivel. I’m going to start ignoring him.
@9 Really? I hadn’t seen that in the news. What I saw is Candy Spelling adamantly refused to lower her asking price. Real estate prices are soft everywhere, it seems, including at the very top of the market.
Well, my bad; I made fun of a 22-year-old failed fashion designer for paying $150 million for a house that is only worth $85 million. Let this be a lesson to you in due diligence and fact-checking, Roger Rabbit!
I guess that undercuts the whole moral of my story. A 22-year-old paying $85 million for a house just isn’t the same as a 22-year-old paying $150 million for a house! I’ll bet 20-year-old Bristol Palin got a deal on her house, too!
It just goes to show you that any kid with ambition and drive can make it in America if s/he works hard enough!
Anyway, my point is neither Petra nor Bristol has a kollidge eddication and you don’t need no frikken collage edification if you’re smart enough and have the right parents.
The UW’s proposed tuition increase must be putting smiles on some Jesuit faces. It means that it’ll cost just about the same to attend either institution. Furthermore, like most private, not-for-profit* colleges SU is better prepared to help obtain financial aid–their average per student is over two-thirds of the total.
* This is to differentiate “real” private institutions of higher learning from the plethora of sleaze-bag for-profit “universities” whose purpose seems to be to suck as many student-loan dollars as possible into their coffers while actually teaching their victims–er, “students” as little as possible.
You forgot rich parents, straight teeth, and nice tits.
While it can be argued that more students should choose more courses in the science and math fields, people need to realize that the opportunities in those fields go through cycles just like field. What is in short supply today, may not be when they graduate. It is far better to have a well-rounded education that includes courses that improve creative thinking. Creative thinkers are the ones that will be able to think up the next wave of the economy. People trained to be cogs in the current system are trained to be obsolete.
@33 The Koch brothers have nice tits??
Bub, I’d just as soon not think about that.
@34 In recent history, when we’ve heard the hue and cry about “not enough engineers”, it’s actually been code for a push to either offshore technical jobs or issue another pile of H1B’s.
# 34: I would settle for having college graduates that understand enough history, geography, and philosophy that they can be well-informed voters who aren’t misled by the Republican noise machine. After that, they can learn any trade they want.