We've crossed the line when the majority of the unemployed also have college education. And it is accelerating, because the community colleges are packing them in, and forming waiting lists. So it is a simple fact that in the majority of cases and education equals unemployment.
The cost is not what an education costs, the costs reflect school spending, which is wildly out of control. The second largest reason California is in trouble financially is likely its college system. The first is its prison system. The first arrests people for smoking dope, the second arrests dupes for trying to be not dopes.
Now the schools are not expanding to meet need because they must suppress demand for education. But by charter the community colleges must accept all registrants. How do they manage these conflicting goals? First, they keep the classroom size small, so fewer people can actually take the classes. The result is it takes more years, approaching 3 and 4, to get into all of the classes necessary to get your AA degree. Second hire gypsy instructors to teach at $30 an hour. These are people with PHDs, but never got tenure, and to whom it has not occurred to find other work. Why only gypsy instructors? They never get enough teaching load to qualify for bennies, so the state can keep the cost down.
Some of these teachers go all entrepreneurial on the system like they think they are self-employed or something, and manage to get a full load, three courses in one quarter, by picking up one contract to teach one class at Community College district A, another contract to teach one class at Community College district B, another contract to teach one class at Community College district C. The three districts are independently managed, but all within driving distance of each other. After three quarters of this, the scheming instructor shows up at the State Community College offices to enroll himself, as required by law, onto the benefits rolls. Ka-ching!
Now the schools make gypsy instructors sign affidavits that they are NOT teaching anywhere else. I will say though, having had a daughter who just blew through an AA degree and then went into an major university, she said she often found community college instructors superior to the university instructors. A full phd teaching 30 students at a community college can be far superior to an ABD teaching 300 students at a university. Since I come from a family of academics, and happen to have an MA in Ed Admin, the stories she tells me reveal that the politicians are making the shortfall felt in the classroom where the students are. It is standard operating procedure for state, when faced with budget shortfalls, to point the knife at the heart and not the fat. With the knife poised at the heart, the state tells people, "raise taxes or we cut the heart out, there is no choice." Never, ever, do they say, "well, we can cut some fat, like the EXIMBank." Never. The reason is the voter never catches on. Never. They ever fall for the false dilemma.
Student loans are feeding the "private colleges" so the colleges are flush keeping people off the unemployment lines. If you are in school you are not unemployed. A very self-serving way the state counts things.
Mish Shedlock offers a five-point plan for reform.
1. Kill federally funded student loan program entirely. Student loans do nothing but drive up the cost of education.
If we deregulated something, anything, all those people would be employed instead of contributing to the downward spiral of our economy and society with it. Deregulate education, medicine, wall street... anything.
I have two .pdfs I am happy to send to anyone. One is a biz plan for a billion dollar business that would reform education. Feel free to steal my ideas and make a billion. The second is an an outline on how to teach and write your way to paid publication, that is to distinguish yourself as a teacher and a write. You do not need a degree to teach noncredit classes at the college level, and the pay is about $100 per contact hour. Email me if you want more info.
Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
The cost is not what an education costs, the costs reflect school spending, which is wildly out of control. The second largest reason California is in trouble financially is likely its college system. The first is its prison system. The first arrests people for smoking dope, the second arrests dupes for trying to be not dopes.
Now the schools are not expanding to meet need because they must suppress demand for education. But by charter the community colleges must accept all registrants. How do they manage these conflicting goals? First, they keep the classroom size small, so fewer people can actually take the classes. The result is it takes more years, approaching 3 and 4, to get into all of the classes necessary to get your AA degree. Second hire gypsy instructors to teach at $30 an hour. These are people with PHDs, but never got tenure, and to whom it has not occurred to find other work. Why only gypsy instructors? They never get enough teaching load to qualify for bennies, so the state can keep the cost down.
Some of these teachers go all entrepreneurial on the system like they think they are self-employed or something, and manage to get a full load, three courses in one quarter, by picking up one contract to teach one class at Community College district A, another contract to teach one class at Community College district B, another contract to teach one class at Community College district C. The three districts are independently managed, but all within driving distance of each other. After three quarters of this, the scheming instructor shows up at the State Community College offices to enroll himself, as required by law, onto the benefits rolls. Ka-ching!
Now the schools make gypsy instructors sign affidavits that they are NOT teaching anywhere else. I will say though, having had a daughter who just blew through an AA degree and then went into an major university, she said she often found community college instructors superior to the university instructors. A full phd teaching 30 students at a community college can be far superior to an ABD teaching 300 students at a university. Since I come from a family of academics, and happen to have an MA in Ed Admin, the stories she tells me reveal that the politicians are making the shortfall felt in the classroom where the students are. It is standard operating procedure for state, when faced with budget shortfalls, to point the knife at the heart and not the fat. With the knife poised at the heart, the state tells people, "raise taxes or we cut the heart out, there is no choice." Never, ever, do they say, "well, we can cut some fat, like the EXIMBank." Never. The reason is the voter never catches on. Never. They ever fall for the false dilemma.
Student loans are feeding the "private colleges" so the colleges are flush keeping people off the unemployment lines. If you are in school you are not unemployed. A very self-serving way the state counts things.
Mish Shedlock offers a five-point plan for reform.
1. Kill federally funded student loan program entirely. Student loans do nothing but drive up the cost of education.
***Great investment advice.***
Anyone can get a student loan because the loans are guaranteed and cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. The beneficiaries of this horrendous setup are teachers and administrators, not the kids receiving loans.
***Poor analysis... teachers and admin have eaten their seed corn, and the granaries are empty. They face a grim future as the very politicians who so readily sold the gullible taxpayer down the river will now repudiate the debt.***
2. Kill state aid to colleges as well
*** Great investment advice.***
3. Increase competition by accrediting more online universities, even foreign universities. This will drive down costs immensely.
***Lousy policy advice. They already have accredited more online universities and foreign schools, and this made matters far worse and costs far higher. Accreditation is the Berlin Wall of education. A four year liberal arts degree superior to anything Harvard of Stanford offers would cost no more than $24,000 over the four years in a free market. Therefore no accreditation is even needed to parse out to whom taxpyer slush may flow, and studenmts need no loans since anyone can come up with $6K a year for education.***
4. Public unions are a huge part of the reason for driving up teacher salaries, so collective bargaining (collective coercion actually), must end.
*** Yes, PUBLIC unions are house unions, and house unions are to labor what naked short selling is to the stock market: criminal self-dealing that is accepted in practice. I think a teachers union would likely be necessary if there was a switch to the free market in educaiton, but since the state would be out of education, a house union is not feasible. Problem solved.***
5. High school counselors and parents must educate kids that there simply are no realistic chances for those graduating with degrees in political science, history, English, art, and literally dozens of other useless or nearly-useless majors.
****Arrrrgggghhh.. dead wrong! Mish seems to have the evil state conceit that the point of education is to get a job. The state is relentless in this becaise it wants drones paying taxes. The point of an education is to be happy, to live a fuller life. I have three daughters, each faced my wrath when they suggested getting an educaiton that would lead to work. The eldest has a comparative religion degree, the middle is a latin scholar, and the last is an english major. All three are employed and have standing offers for work, while their peers, with their business, science and computer degrees are unemployed adults paying for food with their EBT cards. And sweating student loan defaults. My children have no student loans, another suggestion that meets with my wrath. Parents ought to go ballistic is a child suggests they want to waste 4 years preparing to work. Those years should be spent learning about the bigger world, so the life of the mind grows ever more large and wealthy.***
If we deregulated something, anything, all those people would be employed instead of contributing to the downward spiral of our economy and society with it. Deregulate education, medicine, wall street... anything.
I have two .pdfs I am happy to send to anyone. One is a biz plan for a billion dollar business that would reform education. Feel free to steal my ideas and make a billion. The second is an an outline on how to teach and write your way to paid publication, that is to distinguish yourself as a teacher and a write. You do not need a degree to teach noncredit classes at the college level, and the pay is about $100 per contact hour. Email me if you want more info.
Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
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