Free college
In 1974, I graduated from high school. My parents couldn’t afford the $4000 it would have cost for me to go to college for 4 years, and there weren’t the grants and loans available like there are today, so I had to find an alternative, because with a $2 minimum wage that I was earning as new entrant into the work force, that wasn’t going to get me there. So I joined the Army and twenty years later, I graduated from college. I took college courses while I was in the Army at night on my scant free time and lucked out with an assignment to the University of Vermont which paid for six credit hours per semester, so I had three years of credits behind me when I retired and took three semesters at SUNY Oswego to get my bachelors degree.
Even though I was the same age as most of my professors, and despite the fact that I had tons more real world experience than most of them, I bit my tongue a lot to keep out of trouble. I understood my role as a student, and their role as a teacher. Unlike many of the students that I see on my television screen these days, whining about “safe spaces” and the universities’ responsibility to “protect” them from differing opinions and the free speech of others.
I’ll admit that I spoke up when my teachers were absolutely wrong about things I knew to be true, but mostly, I just played the student while they played the teacher. I knew that my goal was to graduate, that any “socialization” which they had planned for me would fail because I was nearly forty and knew how the world worked. I also knew that if I took a test, and if I wanted to pass it, I had to take that test from my teachers’ perspectives, not from the perspective of my real world experience.
I was subjected to the political biases of my fellow students as well as my teachers. I was a minority on campus, being a veteran and nearly twice as old as my student peers. There were no “safe spaces” for me. Even while I was teaching at UVM, I was called a “baby killer” as I crossed campus in my uniform. Some group of misguided souls threw a bucket of red paint on our door to symbolize the blood on our hands, you know, even though few of us had ever heard a shot fired in anger. The University moved our office off-campus because students and faculty were offended by our presence there (I see that the ROTC office is back on campus there now).
I guess my point is that the crybabies I see on TV these days haven’t been taught properly what their role is as a student. Their demands for everything from “safe spaces” to free tuition is intellectually vacant. I probably would have squandered my parents’ money if I’d gone to college in 1974, back before I found my place in the world – I was mostly an idiot when I was a teenager. Not much different than the parade of fools on the news channels today. Yeah, I wanted free college, but, nothing is really free, is it? I paid for my “free college” with my youth and my labor. I graduated from college in December 1994 debt free, but only because I’d paid for it up front.
Basically, I learned nothing in college that I didn’t already learn in high school twenty years before, mostly because the universities have become diploma mills, churning out graduates like manufacturers. College education is now a business because, for some reason, everyone thinks that they need a college degree and the schools are more than willing to rubber stamp students’ foreheads while turning out an inferior product. They have made-up degrees in Wymyns’ Studies and Underwater Basket Weaving, getting credit for classes that are more pornography than actual studies.
This bullshit about being owed a free college education won’t improve education in this country. As it is, high schools have pretty much stopped educating students because they pass on their morons to the university system. That’s why many college freshmen are taking remedial reading, writing and math courses before they’re allowed to take college-level classes – an extra semester that mom and dad have to pay for, which is good for the university, money-wise.
The education system in this country is badly broken, and one of the big reasons it’s broken is because the inmates think that they’re qualified to run the asylum. The universities caving to the students’ vacant demands aren’t helping – but they’re money-making machines, so what do they care?
Category: Dumbass Bullshit
SJWs Always Lie
http://www.amazon.com/SJWs-Always-Lie-Taking-Thought-ebook/dp/B014GMBUR4
Everyone needs to read that book. Seriously. The tactics on dealing with SJWs when they target you or yours is invaluable.
For those who’ve been asleep on watch, the SJWs (Social Justice Warriors) are the intended end result of the Political Correction agenda brought to the US shores during the 1930s by authors of the School of Marxism at Frankfurt combined with the tactics laid out by Antonio Gramsci on how to destroy a country from the inside written in the same period.
SJWs are exactly the same as the Red Guard of the PDRChina’s Cultural Revolution.
These are not just silly kids running amok. This is all scripted and intentional.
Whats wrong with the school systems in this country is the N.E.A. and their communist BULLSHYT! The dumbing down of America is an Agenda with those scumbags and its working!
You’re confusing cause with symptom.
The NEA is a result of the works started in earnest in the ’50s and then publicly announced in the ’70s by commiescum.
PCism and SWJism are direct outgrowths of that work by commiescum as well.
1974 ACE Hardware, working as a part-time 12yo stock boy @.69cents/hour for 4 weeks before I went to work on my Uncles farm. There I made $200/week picking vegetables. That’s what you got to do after you hoe’d the Tobacco, Fertilized the fields, fed the horses, chickens, goats, cleaned the barns (there were 5 of them,) Oh, did I mention the dairy herd you got the opportunity to milk every morning at 5 O’clock? But the pay was tonnes better than Ace. I always say, I never worked a day in my life after I left the farm, but the Carpenters Apprenticeship when I was 16 came pretty close, pay was better though.
I was in the Navy with a guy who grew up on a farm in South Dakota.
He was thrilled when the recruiter told him he didn’t have to get up until 0600…and he didn’t have to milk any cows when he did!
The call for universal college education is puzzling to me. Do we need college-educated bartenders? Cab drivers? Airport luggage handlers? What is the benefit to society when everyone has a college education?
Seems to me if anything we need more and better vocational education in this country. Unfortunately our education system only seems to recognize one model of middle-class success: Go to college and get a white-collar, middle-management job.
Vocational education is considered a poor-man’s consolation prize, only fit for those not “fortunate” enough to be college material.
I seem to recall that education was “free” in the former USSR, too. It didn’t help their economy. The only result of their “free” education was that you were likely to run into a store clerk with a masters in literature or a waiter with a PhD in astrophysics.
Because a college degree has been turned into a Participation Trophy. It no longer represents the work and study that it did twenty years ago. It used to mean that the graduate had some depth of knowledge and and a modicum of basic skills, no more.
Completed my degree at the age of 50 (GPA 3.9) with Uncle Sam’s help early on to get credits and later working for a company that offers 100% tuition assistance.
Had I gone to college when I was “supposed” to, I would have ended up being a seventh year freshman (GPA -3.0).
Nothing prepares you better for college than life, and unfortunately a lot of these little sniveling kids just don’t get it.
Employers don’t help either thinking that a 21 year old with a degree is worth more than a 40 year old with experience…
I got an A.A. degree in police science, but after listening the unbelievable bullshyt and incompetence of the instructors…I didn’t go any further, and just as well, that little slip of paper didn’t do a damned thing for me in my life! The years in law enforcement did…but not the certificate!
I clutch to my GED, cost me $52 and a couple of hours with a #2 pencil. I have no idea why people piss their life away with all this educational nonsense. I just need a few people that can count the correct number of pepperoni’s to put on a pizza.
Mike Rowe and a few others are big advocates for schools that teach trades that are in demand (construction, auto mechanics, welders, etc) – he also believes that not every kid needs to go to college.
Just look at how many HS’s are teaching those classes now… and how many kids enroll in them. It’s just another sign of how the education system is failing this country and has been for 50+ years.
There’s not much in the way of useful career education, especially the STEM and medical fields, that can’t be better served in a trade school system that focuses exclusively on the necessary knowledge and dumps that bullshit concept of “well rounded liberal ed” crap meant for social elites to appear witty and wise at social functions.
Shove the hobby shit off into a hobby school system.
This.
Higher education became a business when educators without real expertise decided to become “experts” at things that have no practical use, find ways to make them “required” or “required elective” and then leverage their “expertise” into higher salary.
The Scots who invented the modern world are turning over in their graves.
You can also factor into the equation the fact that colleges and universities pay for multi million dollar athletic programs that do little in the way of enhancing education, but make the college experience that much more, well, college. These costs are reflected upon the students in activity fees and increases in tuition costs.
Here’s what I dug up from the Census Bureau a while back. It’s been a few years, but it wouldn’t surprise me the numbers hadn’t changed much.
In 1960, about 25 percent of adults over 25 had a college degree. About 75 percent had a HS diploma. So the other 50 percent fell somewhere along the 0-4 year point.
Last I looked using 2010 census data, the percentage of those over 25 adults with at least a Bachelor’s was still around 25 percent. And the HS graduate rate? 78 percent.
That’s right, boys and girls, all that money for a 3 percent bump in the HS graduation rate. Actually, making it worse is the fact most of these kids are at best functionally illiterate. So let’s spend $100k or more and put them into debt for most of their adult lives for a degree that, as Matt Damon stated, “You could have got for a buck seventy-five in late fees from the local library.”
Education is important, but that’s not what is happening on college campuses these days.
I finished my first two degrees in 09. I went to college right out of high school. I have no regrets, but that first year I went from having a presidential scholarship to almost flunking out.
But I don’t want to lament my year of stupidity that I clawed back from (3.3GPA at the end. I’d like to point out something I saw when I was at college.
Tons of kids who shouldn’t be there. Kids whose only qualifier was that they had a combined SAT of 700 (back in the day when it was out of 1600) and who could get a loan for college. I had classes with people who were on the football team of our tiny division 3 school who passed only due to constant intercession of their coaches. Most of them work as car salesman or bouncers now. I had classes filled with people who couldn’t be bother to read a few pages in a week. And as my profs tell me, it’s only getting worse.
Graduated HS, three months later on active duty. Got about 30 credit hours while on active duty. Went to college after I retired. It’s not good for a 45 year old to be sitting in a class, that at the beginning of classes had 35 students. Then after the first week about half that many show up, except on Fridays to FAIL their weekly exam.
I talked with a few & gave them my opinion of them wasting their parents’ money and the professors time.
One 19 y.o. got all belligerent and cussed out a professor because he, the student had failed a mid-term. It just happened to be a day I wore my cop uniform & gear. Didn’t have time that day to run home & get dressed after classes and get to work on time. I asked the professor if he was offended by this guy’s remarks. He asked me why. I told him all he had to do was give me a signed written statement, just a paragraph or two, and I’d have him in jail. I thought this professor was going to shit himself because I had the authority, with a written complaint, to put the nimrod in jail.
And that’s one of the reasons we have such problems. No one held accountable for their actions.
“And that’s one of the reasons we have such problems. No one held accountable for their actions.”
AbsoFUCKINGlutely right! Give that man a kewpie doll!
And stay safe, brother (or sister)!
I put myself through college without taking out a single loan. I used FAFSA grants, the GI Bill, National Guard Tuition Assistance, and I worked my arse off for scholarships.
I got my first two years (Associate’s) in a community college where it cost a tenth of the cost of a university. I transferred into a Bachelor’s program for another two years, where I also worked while going to school to support myself and my wife while affording classes. Now, I’m in a Master’s program and taking advantage of scholarships and the VA college money.
Do I have debt? Yes. Is it from college? A little. Am I asking anyone else to pay because I made a choice to accrue this debt? Hell no! It’s called personal responsibility! These hippy asshats need to be learned a lesson in what it means.
Did any of you hear that little special snowflake that is enrolled school at Northeastern (Poli Sci Major who is a “community organizer” ) trying to organize a Million Student March? Here’s their goals:
– $15/hr minimum wage
– forgive student debt
– free college
When Neil Cavuto asked her about the groups goals and how they wanted it paid for, she sounded so lost, like he wasn’t suppose to be asking her those types of questions. Her standard answer was “tax the 1%” (where have we heard that before).
She and others like her are what the system are churning out… SJW’s that can’t think, but want all of the free stuff they can get, at everyone expense.
it was a awesome LAUGH…
talk about a robot that can’t think
I dropped out of high school the first day of my junior year, after failing Algebra and other classes and getting dropped from the school for “academically talented students primarily from minority and low-income families” I’d attended the previous two years. Drove to the restaurant I worked at for $5.00/hour (this was the mid-Nineties) and told them I wanted to be put on the schedule full time. Took my GED a few years later and scored decently (lowest percentile score was an 89 in math). Took my GED and scored an 84. Took it again two years later and scored the same (but two points lower on the General Technical score). Diddled around my first number of years in the Army, after inquiring about the old eArmyU laptop program and being blown off. Enrolled in a community college in 2008 and took a couple of history classes towards an Associate’s in General Studies. Got to recruiting command and realized how sad the education system is these days, but I enrolled in a four-year program and am now 15 semester hours away from a Bachelor’s, with over a 3.9 GPA. Education is important, but experience is much more so. Before I got serious about educational goals (mine is to earn a graduate-level degree before retirement from the Army), I used to tell people that formal education is a sham…and it is. If I earn my Master’s before I retire I’ll have two pieces of paper stating that I know something. As a Recruiter, I dealt with men and women who had completed both undergraduate and graduate programs but who were simply put, DUMB. I also dealt with motivated young men and women who had dropped out of school but who were highly intelligent. Attending college solely to earn a degree is the mark of ignorance. Attending college because you’re smart enough to know that having a degree is almost a requisite to attain decent employment is different. Shortly after I dropped out, I was able to secure a job working as an Apprentice Technician for a Cadillac dealership, without even a… Read more »
Second “GED” in the first paragraph should read “ASVAB”, damn autocorrect. OK, damn me.
People do not have a damn clue what is going on in college campuses or who is running them. I can assure you it sure as fuck is not the students. Or the faculty. And free tuition is becoming an issue because tuition has become insane. Tuition has skyrocketed. Especially in the last 15 years. In some states tuition is 9000% higher than it was just a few decades ago. In state tuition at the UC system is $14000 per year. When Gov Jerry Brown attended? $84. When you graduated high school in 1974? $600. The average tuition and fees for a 4 year public university in the US in 1976 was $1,100. By 2009 it was over $10,000. While some states have managed to keep funding their Universities most states have shifted from public to private funding of universities and the cost of attendance has subsequently skyrocketed. Education, dollar for dollar, is one of the highest payoff investments a government can make. It pays and saves more than it costs. But idiots in this country love to try to spin education as a individual investment that should only be paid by individuals. Let’s just ignore the impact of an educated population on innovation, the development of intellectual property, the job creation of entrepreneurship, and the reduction in crime and social problems, lower average long term health cots, the increased effectiveness of law enforcement and armed forces, not to mention the increase in average property values. Let’s just look at it from the perspective of the economy; We live in a global economy. Goods and capital travel essentially unrestricted across borders. Labor, however, does not. Which means that there are highly exploitable low cost labor markets the US labor force must compete with for jobs. In order to do that we have have two choice; allow US wages to float so low skilled US labor drops to a point that it is competitive with low skilled labor globally; around $8,000-$12,000 per year in wages. Or invest in the US workforce such that MOST of the US workforce is highly skilled… Read more »
Hmmm…..when does anti-China talk begin to fuck?
It is almost always fucked.
Usually assumes China is still communist and then gets more stupid from there.
*well paid high skilled labor*
“Or invest in the US workforce such that MOST of the US workforce is highly skilled and does not have to compete for wages agains highly exploitable low skilled international labor pools.”
That presumes that the US Government can produce skilled workers like it produces jobs. Which presumes that we can tax ourselves to prosperity.
Because I like you L. Taylor, I will give you free energy for life: A battery, and a battery powered generator to charge the battery. Don’t say I never gave you nuthin.
Lars,
Regardless of your theories on who is profiting from tuition hikes, Colleges, as they stand, are not a good investment.
Like any other business, if you throw government money at it and don’t hold it accountable its going to turn into a scam to suck the taxpayers dry and turn out the least acceptacle product.
That product now is a 22-24 year old who because of a piece of paper thinks he or she is God’s gift to the work force.
In reality 90% of what they spent learning the last 4 years has jack-shit to do with what their job will be, and there is another 24 year old with 6 years life experience at that job that is 10 times as proficient.
I was lucky. I grew up in a middle-class family, with parents who promised to pay my tuition at the local state university so long as I kept my grades up (which I did). But in those days (35+ years ago), in-state tuition was affordable for a middle-class family. My initial tuition was $230 per quarter. Today, at the same university, in-state undergraduate tuition is over $3500 per quarter! That’s a fifteen-fold increase over a period of time in which the overall cost of living has increased roughly four-fold.
Mike Rowe is right. Not everyone needs to go to college. Many students are racking up tens of thousands of dollars in debt getting degrees in subjects that won’t help them earn a living; those students would be better off learning a skilled trade that would provide them a nice middle-class lifestyle if they’re willing to work.
There is also a lot of negative views toward the “entitlement” of millennial.
That is complete bullshit. The Baby boomers essentially stole trillions from the millennials future generations. Racking up trillions in debt while simultaneously cutting funding for infrastructure and programs that provide and invest in opportunities for future generations.
Programs and funding that was available to them,
How much borrowing was done in your lifetime? Who do you think is going to be paying that off?
Millennials and future generations.
Perhaps Baby Boomers need to shut the fuck up about who is entitled.
I could give an economic history of the havoc baby boomer have perpetrated on our economy culminating in the 2007 financial collapse.
But what difference would it make?
Won’t change a single damn mind here.
You are correct again Lars, you will not change this Baby Boomers mind.
Since a ripe age of 10 in 1972 I have worked harder than any gen x or millennial could possibly imagine.
BTW: The global was 2007 and the US was 2008. The entire period was 2007 to 2009 … get your facts straight.
I do have my facts straight. You do not. Housing prices peaked and default rates started increasing in 2005-2006.
The warmup of pending collapse.
The subprime lenders started declaring bankruptcy in February of 2007. Twenty five of them them in the first wave. This was the starting gun. And the race to the bottom was on.
The US collapse PRECIPITATED the global collapse.
That is a fact.
It takes some serious delusional mental gymnastics to reverse the order of the collapse and blame the global collapse for the US collapse.
Hey Lars,
I don’t call you names!
You sure as hell won’t call me any.
BTW: You ought to consider that the individual you are speaking to may know much more than you!
But they don’t.
I got my BA in 2000 at the age of 38 and my JD in 2005 at the age of 43 and as much as I enjoyed college, if I hadn’t wanted to study law I wouldn’t have wasted my time. I rarely studied, just showed up for class and paid attention to the lectures (what a concept!) and was still able to graduate Phi Beta Kappa while working full time. It wasn’t hard, to be honest.
Now law school was a different story and I like to say that I graduated in the “top 2/3” of my class. 😉 Still, it was the first real educational challenge I faced.
By contrast to Jonn’s experience, I went to college at what is widely thought of as one of the most liberal institutions in the nation, CU Boulder, and the only overtly political professor I ever had was a poli-sci professor who was a staunch conservative Republican and who would harangue the class about the evils of the Soviet Union (to be fair he was Polish and had fought in WWII so the department cut him a lot of slack.)
Oh, I forgot to mention a third choice in dealing with the lack of competitiveness of relatively low skilled US labor.
We could open our borders and encourage all industrialized societies with labor protections, regulation on externalities such as pollution, and decent wages to do the same.
This would allow the global labor force to move. Why not? Goods and capital move freely, and you all claim to be capitalists don’t you?
Restricting the movement of labor to localized and exploitable markets is sure as shit not in accordance with a “free market.”
IF labor could move freely labor would leave markets where wages and conditions are poor and move to better markets. The would force improvements in wages and conditions due to wage scarcity.
The result would be an equalization of wages and conditions globally. Foreign worker wages and conditions would go up. And all workers, US and abroad would have more negotiating power in the marketplace.
You’ve heard the quip about mixing mud and ice cream? And you do know why you lock your doors at night, right?
Your worker’s utopia doesn’t exist, and never will. It would be nice, as a species, if we could all get along. However, the fact is, we don’t. And just like there are people who would walk into your house and take everything you have, leaving you absolutely nothing, including YOUR LIFE, there are people globally who would do the same thing to our nation. And I am truly tired of people who have no concept of that reality attempting to force me to make everyone else’s lives perfect at the expense of my standard of living, my taxes, my retirement, my safety, and my ability to live my life in peace. You can take your worker’s paradise and shove it right up your skittle shitting unicorn’s ass.
You are projecting you own delusions onto what I said.
Nutcase much?
Point out one thing I said that was delusion.
And I’ve been accused of being a lot of things in my life — ‘normal’ isn’t one of them. So please feel free to apply any term you like. I will ignore them.
Okay, Lars, I’ll accept your proposal, but let’s take political unrest any place into consideration. Not every society is as lenient as Western civilization, and not all workers like or want the demands of unions, which include requiring paying a fee – union dues – to work in a union shop but not be part of a union.
No one should be forced into that position just to work.
How do you propose to deal with that?
Not ignoring this question. However, I have a lot of commitments today and it is already noon.
This is a fantastic question and a fantastic issue for discussion. I would love to discuss this in depth in a few hours.
For now I will give a short answer devoid of context; because the supreme court has ruled unions are not allowed to negotiate for wages only for union members. This means that a union has to negotiate for wages on you behalf whether you pay due or not. This led unions into a free rider problem which gave them the leverage to gain legal precedent that made it a requirement that all members of unionized industry pay dues.
However, that has been challenged recently and the this conservative court has signaled they are going to rule against unions on this.
Now, I wish to return and explain to you how the strength of unions in the US has correlated directly with political power for individual voters, and economic growth. And inversely correlated with wealth disparity. Meaning unions strengthen America’s economy and democracy while weakening the oligopolistic influences. That is an empirical fact.
There is also strong ethical arguments for unions under the principles of capitalism.
Most people’s understanding of unions comes from highly misleading anti-union rhetoric.
I was in a union for 7 years. Journeyman pipefitters.
All they did with my dues was send me colorful flyers telling me to vote democrat across the board.
When 90% of the non-hispanic workforce was laid off in 2011 they weren’t anywhere to be seen.
Misleading rhetoric? Oh, sure. I worked in the printing industry for 10 years in prepress production. I think I know something real about union shops, which without your having been there and done that – and you have NOT BTDT, Lars – you have no understanding of unions at all. Labor unions are about money. Nothing else. They dislike and do not want ANYONE who is NOT in the local union working in a union shop, period. The right-to-work law in Wisconsin put a chill on that crap. What the labor unions (AFL-CIO) do is negotiate themselves and their members right out of business. Capitalism (in case you hadn’t heard) is about PROFITS, NOT LABORERS. Without profits, a company can’t expand, innovate, improve production methods, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Unfortunately, labor unions see profit as an evil, nasty thing because it means that the company can do exactly what I said: expand, improve production, innovate, etc., as well as add new equipment, and keep people employed. As it is, the automobile industry was run right out of Detroit and into bankruptcy in THIS country and most of the cars on the road in THIS country are of foreign origin, even if they are produced here. Got that part? Fiat, an Italian company, now owns Chrysler. Kia is a foreign entity. Toyota, Honda, BMW, Mercedes, VW – ALL FOREIGN ENTITIES. Only Ford Motor Company and GMC are actually American any more, and GMC may go up for grabs one of these days. That means that the profits made by these companies go to foreign companies, even if Americans own shares in them. The furniture industry, the garment industry, textile production industry, computer & electronics production industry – all produced overseas with cheap non-union labor. Would you care to go over that ‘labor unions not evil’ fable again? In fact, in foreign countries such as India, it costs approximately $.50 to produce a blouse in a garment factory that sells for $35.00 off the rack in this country, and that is from textile production to stitching. You’re full of shit.… Read more »
Please explain how the South Asian high tech industry helps the world? They get to live at home or, if in the US they send almost every penny home. They take your money and live in a place where $10k a year puts them in the top 1%. US citizens actually live in the US economy and cannot compete. How is this a good thing?
Oh,I almost forgot: that higher minimum hourly wage of $14.50/hr for jobs requiring zero skills? Well, those jobs, such as serving food at McDonald’s, are being replaced with machines that do not require vacations, medical benefits, retirement accounts, sick days, child care centers, health insurance, employee bathrooms, lunchrooms, PAYCHECKS, etc.
When I finished my BA in 1972, my tuition was $3,200/semester. Now my alma mater charges $29,850 plus $10,000++ room and board, plus additional per credit hour fees.
It’s a private school, so they get no tax money, and the programs are aimed at getting graduates into the work world, not pseudo-intellectual twaddle.
The local county college here charges $107 per semester hour (up to 18 hours), plus fees. It’s a state-supported school, also aimed at putting people in the work force. They offer what used to be called vocational ed, which used to be what you got in home ec and shop classes in high school, for free.
Times certainly have changed.
Ummm, Larsy, what color is the sky over there?
College was just a vehicle I used to pursue my real love. I was a baseball player first, a student second. If I wanted to play I had to make grades. In the beginning I was a a average student at best. After being drafted and serving, I returned to school, played my last season. My grades improved. I didn’t study any harder, maybe I could just bullshit better. I don’t know if getting a degree helped me or not. I was self employed from twenty seven till I retired.
I do know this, going to college was a blast. My parents were not in a position to help. I think my mother gave me a hundred bucks once.
As for the trillions I was involved in stealing, I’m not sure what happened to it. I don’t remember getting it, let alone spending it! Smile
Dear Mr. 3/17 Air Cav,
This is a courtesy notice to let you know that, due to unforeseen financial reversals, the trillions you stole and invested with us now has an effective account balance of $0. Unfortunately, such an amount does not meet our minimum balance guidelines, and we are sorry to inform you that we are forced to suspend your account effective immediately.
Should you acquire additional trillions at some future date, your account suspension can be lifted by submitting a modest management fee to our numbered account in Zurich.
Best regards and have a great day,
Your Friendly Investment Banker
Amherst students demand crackdown against free speech
http://www.campusreform.org/?ID=6981
No snip. The whole thing needs to be read.
I noted also that Ithaca College students are demanding the same things, which is dictatorship, IMHO.
I think the alumni of Amherst, Ithaca, and whatever other colleges and universities are allowing this crap to go on should stop sending contributions to those schools. They are private schools, and a great deal of their funding comes from alumni gifts.
I get those ‘gimme, gimme, gimme’ requests all the time. My response is ‘stuff it’. I paid for my education. My alma mater gave me a piece of paper in exchange for my money.
This is why I drank away all of my kid’s college money. He’s gotta career job paying better than half of these little snots will get – if they graduate.
IMHO, if we can pay for so much of the stupid our government pays for already, we can find the money to make college and higher education/training more affordable if not free.
I would much rather pay for my neighbors education than his incarceration or lack of education.
I cannot, however, see loan forgiveness. You signed for it, you took the money on good faith and used it, you can pay it back. However, I believe a student should be able to refinance loans, just as you can with any other loan…
There is something that you should know: if you take out a government loan for college and defer payment or try to write it off, then when you apply for Social Security and Medcare, the government will deduct a monthly from your Social Security retirement income until the debt is paid.
So, NO, you cannot get out of it. You still owe Da Man.
This is what baby boomers are finding out, and what these spoiled brat millenials will also find out, to their deep dismay.
I would love to be around when their squawking and screaming hit the fan.
That’s why I say, you signed for it…you can pay it back. Interest rates should be comparable to loans big business gets from Uncle Sam, but that’s another story…
Why stop with just giving out “education”? Why bother? Why not just give out free degrees? Give everyone a PhD! While we’re at it, why not give every enlisted guy the rank of CSM, and give every officer 4 stars!
There’s a reason your neighbor is incarcerated. It’s called “choices”. If you don’t like the way the government deals with it, prepare to be impressed as they “tackle” education much like they have effected affordable health care.
Word. +100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
And then some.
I spent last weekend on a camp out with other families from my son’s Montessori school. Among the parents was an over representation of public school teachers.
Why would public school teachers enroll their children in a private Montessori school? You might ask.
Well, from the horror stories I heard around the campfire, the answer(s) seemed obvious. Kids in public elementary schools are entitled to a free education, and in most cases, a free lunch. The teachers job is to keep them coming to school. They do not assign homework because it will not be done. They have a quota of how many kids they are allowed to fail. The kids are “entitled” to be there and, as a result, they place no value on being there. Any learning that takes place is incidental. The public school teachers that I was camping with seem to not want their kids to participate in this goat rope, instead preferring to allocate their resources towards private school tuition.
That’s my bitch about this whole “free college” thing, economically (looking at you L. Taylor), when you make something available “free”, you debase it’s value to the point that, ultimately, it has none.
When I was in 1st thru 12th grade, the education in public schools was quite good. Lunches were not free. My high school did not have a cafeteria, so you were on your own. Of course, that was more than half a century ago, so things have obviously changed. Private schools that charge tuition and fees are getting higher and higher enrollments because the public schools do not meet educational standards. The kids from the public schools are barely literate, and many public schools are charging for meals, but the meals are so dreadful, a dog wouldn’t eat them.
Nice to see my tax money at work.
Well, Jonn, you’re definitely a better man than I am attending a brick and mortar school. I did mine online. I wouldn’t have been able to stand the campus atmosphere at the tender age of 50.
Way back around 1971 when I was a sophomore in HS, my old man asked me if I intended on going to college. “Sure, I said,” secure in the knowledge I would have his undying support.
“Well, I hope you get a scholarship cause I can’t afford to pay for it,” he said.
My father was like that. No one ever helped him get anything. My brother and sister had screwed up their opportunities big time (both flunked out in freshman year) and he sure as hell wasn’t going to repeat that mistake.
Best thing he ever did for me. I got a full SUNY scholarship to pay for the ridiculously low tuition of $650 a year (!). Unlike my brother and sister, I made it through 3 plus years then quit.
I finally finished at 50 years of age. I realized quickly that this college thing is a scam. Ridiculously easy and a waste of my money.I learn more reading on my own.
So….they want free tuition and cancellation of their loans?
Clearly these young people are not students of economics; neither do they understand the concept of personal responsibility or accountability.
Has it ever been different for Bolsheviks and other forms of useful idiot?
Slovenia has free college tuition….
Lets see
1. Free college to the masses
2. No more need for G.I Bill
3. No more need to join the military
4. Word peace is achieved.
Jonn, I’m sorry you had to put up with crap from the chicken shits who didn’t join the military.
No one will ever say I’m prejudice against anyone, BUT, they have grants for Hispanic, African Americans, and other races. If they had a grant for Caucasian people only, it’s a racist thing.
There are people here on student visas and they get grants, live at the dorms etc. They either apply for citizenship or return to their country without a student loan hanging over their heads.
After a injury, I had to go back to college via Workmen’s Compensation and they footed the bill. I graduated with honors, only because I have a law enforcement background and I interned at any attorney in the classes I took. I learned more from hands on training then I did in class.
The professor for my criminal law class was a idiot. My first assignment was MIRANDA vs ARIZONA and a monkey could do it. He had the balls to give me a C- disagreeing with me on several points’. I told him to read it again and same grade. I went to the dean and complained that I could teach the class better then the professor. He was great and read my paper, then passed it to his attorney friend who said “ALL of the points professor said was incorrect was in fact absolutely right.
We had a meeting in the deans’ office and the professor was pissed that he was over ruled and I got a A. He said IF YOUR SO DAMN SMART, YOU TEACH THE CLASS. The dean said great idea and I had my first class later that night.
I see the professor at the Federal courthouse in the BANKRUPTCY court and he never looks my way. Jonn, you did a good job serving our country and got your degree. That’s all that matters is you did it, your way. Congratulations’!