gall
http://www.boston.com/news/local/breakin…
AMHERST — Hundreds of students at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst boycotted classes and surged into the school’s administration building today as part of a two-day strike.
Student leaders had called for students and graduate student teaching assistants to skip classes today and Friday to protest increased student fees
Someday, we should have a taxpayer’s strike, where we boycott paying for 2/3 of the education classes of spoiled UMass babies.
Police eventually blocked more students from entering the building
That’s a good start.
Where’s Janet “The Butcher of Mt Carmel” Reno when you need her?
Because I’m thinking a dangerously flammable concentration of tear gas in an enclosed space would resolve this standoff.
November 16th, 2007 at 3:12 am
Couldn’t tuition fees generally be considered a fairly prudent investment by governments? The short term cost is significant but I’m sure the longterm increase in earning potential among post-secondary graduates more than justifies the investment when one considers the number of students who couldn’t afford to attend without being subsidized.
If you want the economic benefit of a large proportion of your population having a post-secondary education the only alternative I can think of is having students do something like pay the university 1% of their annual earnings for the 10 years after graduation.
November 16th, 2007 at 9:26 am
1. Paying tuition for students is only an “investment” if the government somehow gets back some of those increased earnings — likely through taxes. However, if the student does not stay in the state after graduation, your investment’s gone. I don’t know how that affects Massachusetts, but the universities I’ve lived nearby have pretty much all had this problem.
2. If financial aid money were not in the mix, I would expect that tuition inflation wouldn’t occur as much as it has over the last decade or two. Nobody expects to pay full price for their tuition, and as such tuition costs are often overlooked when picking a school. If universities had to compete on price, things would be very different.
November 16th, 2007 at 10:26 am
[quote comment="103517"]Couldn’t tuition fees generally be considered a fairly prudent investment by governments? [/quote]
For some courses of study, perhaps.
I doubt that an English degree (as horizon expanding, or interesting as it may be) delivers much value to anyone.
[/quote]
The short term cost is significant but I’m sure the longterm increase in earning potential among post-secondary graduates more than justifies the investment [/quote]
I’m not convinced. I believe that Americans are, on average, over educated.
[quote]
If you want the economic benefit of a large proportion of your population having a post-secondary education.[/quote]
There is a correlation between people having high incomes and degrees, but (a) it’s not entirely causal; (b) in so far as it is causal, it does not mean that at the margin, one more person going to college is going to cause their own incomes to go up…especially if they major in women’s studies, or English, or somesuch.
[quote] the only alternative I can think of is having students do something like pay the university 1% of their annual earnings for the 10 years after graduation.[/quote]
Better yet, why not repay the actual cost? Why should we punish those who are more productive, and reward those who are less productive?
November 16th, 2007 at 2:23 pm
Then again for English departments the only cost is the time of English professors :)
For the arts I agree that the economic benefit is probably negative, though possibly justified through the creation of a more “enriched” culture.
The for disciplines such as science, math, and to a lesser extent business, I believe that a university education can have a significant effect on their earnings.
At first I was going to make an argument based on smart poor people.
Then I realized one that might appeal to you more.
If the university’s compensation is 1% of their annual earnings for the 10 years after graduation the university now has a huge motivation to maximize those earnings.
How many women’s studies courses do you think a university will offer if they’re dependent on the income of those students?
November 17th, 2007 at 12:58 pm
Interesting idea. Very feudal.
What is the purpose of college?
Certainly, it does NOT prepare you for a job. I had an interesting conversation with my husband over why he would prefer a college graduate for a secretarial position… his point was that someone who had been to college had demonstrated a degree of motivation/ organization that was lacking in many of the non-baccelaurates that had applied. However, most people do not go to college to become secretaries, so…
What’s wrong with vo-tech schools? If I was hiring a secretary, I’d want someone who could type, file, word process, show up on time and not threaten to kill fellow employees (at least during work hours). I don’t see how going to college teaches you do any of these things.
You go to beauty school, and you can become a beautician. You go to Dental Hygiene school, and you can become a dental hygienist. You go to college… and you become in debt.
College seems to be more about a desire of the individual to become better educated… but not in a targeted way. More like the ability to have access to a constant smorgasbord of information, along with a compatible peer group to share it with. It is a social experience, an opportunity to decrease your number of things that you didn’t know you didn’t know.
But is it necessary? No. I’d say it is a luxury of people who have both disposable income and time. And to say that only people who have spent four years of their life in this way can have a job is a bit classist. It’s like saying only people who own a rolex can apply for a job (well, they HAVE to get to work on time, right?)
My point is that the students protesting the nickels and dimes of their invaluable/ valueless diploma make as much sense as haggling over the price of a rolex. Either decide you want one, and pay up, or decide that it’s overpriced and give it back.
November 17th, 2007 at 1:11 pm
And another thing:
Broad based, liberal-arts education can kiss my arse. If you want it, you should be able to pay for it. If you want education that will actually prepare you for the working world, you should be able to pay for that, too. But it doesn’t make any sense that applicants with the former degree should be preferred over applicants with the latter.
I think that, if you have decided that you have a pile of money and four years to kill, then you go to college. If you would rather start earning a living, it should be easy for you to obtain the education that is necessary for you to get one. It should also, in turn, be easy for a member of the first group to sample stuff from the second group, and vice versa. Joe getting his liberal arts degree to satisfy his intellectual curiosity and fit into the upper middle class mindset, should be able to take a typing and filing class so that he never has to say “you want fries with that?”. Jane, going to the local vo-tech so that she can get that job in industrial welding, should be able to take “The household economy in edwardian england”, should she choose to do so.
Who knows? Perhaps joe drops out, realizing that he’d much rather pull in overtime in his shift as an ER clerk and settle down with his high-school sweetheart, and jane decides that small-scale economies are so intriguing to her that she scales back on the welding, takes some tax law classes, and starts a business commune specializing in hand-made items.
November 17th, 2007 at 10:54 pm
is point was that someone who had been to college had demonstrated a degree of motivation/ organization that was lacking in many of the non-baccelaurates that had applied.
That was the point of the CIO who interviewed me. He also said he’s happily take my eight years in the Marines as proof of motivation.
College seems to be more about a desire of the individual to become better educated… but not in a targeted way. More like the ability to have access to a constant smorgasbord of information, along with a compatible peer group to share it with. It is a social experience, an opportunity to decrease your number of things that you didn’t know you didn’t know.
But is it necessary? No
Hunh. ‘smorgasbord of information, along with a compatible peer group to share it with.’ sounds like the internet.