Category: Education

Peter Wood, a professor at Boston University, weighs in on Senator Kerry’s proposal to make college more affordable. I’m posting this because of the comments on my post about the “giant sucking sound” coming from universities siphoning people’s money from their wallets. He confirms my thesis that higher education is expensive because of government intervention:

Why is college so expensive? Why does federal aid never really succeed in making college more affordable? These shouldn’t be deep mysteries. For over a decade I participated in university meetings aimed at determining my university’s annual tuition increases. The only real question was, “How much can we get away with?” And the only real worry was that, if we overreached, we might move to the dreaded top of the list for largest increases. Most years, it fell to me to draft a letter to parents from the Chairman of the Board explaining that the tuition increase reflected this or that combination of new construction projects and programs.

I recall visiting George Mason when Steve Schultz was going there in the early ’90s, when Virginia balanced its budget by modest reductions in spending. The university president decided that if the state was going to reduce its subsidy, he would endanger the safety of his students. He didn’t quite phrase it like that, but he did order the facilities department to start turning off random street lights for several hours a night, as a “cost-cutting” measure. He could have fired a useless administrators and that would have saved as much money, but instead he wanted to make sure young women would walk around in dark areas so they might be more easily assaulted.
Wood includes an ominous possible explanation for high prices:

But maybe we have just decided that high prices for a college education are a good way to organize our society. Those prices are high enough to discourage large families and to provide a strong incentive for both parents to work.

…which means the price of a college education is another manifestation, not of capitalism run amok, but of the Culture of Death.

Thanks to the happy 7 people who visited this blog and then took the Pepsi survey. My team got an A on the project, in large part because RC helped me with some statistics concepts on Friday evening. Sorry for making you miss “Murder She Wrote” reruns on TNT, RC. :)

So I just registered for my thesis “class,” which in reality is just a way for George Mason University to extract money from me for the privilege of talking to the three professors on my committee. No hard feelings, though — their time is valuable. Now I can finish the Open Source Shakespeare project and get my M.A.
It’s taken me almost five years to finish since I was admitted to the Professional Writing and Editing program (you there! stop laughing!). When I took my first class in 1998, before I was admitted, the total cost was about $540. That includes the various fees for things everyone uses (the library) and fees for things I will never, ever use (the pool, the student union, the gyms, the movie theater, etc.)
Today, taking my three-credit “class” will cost me $772. That’s an increase of 43%, or more than 6% a year during a time when inflation was less than 2%. It’s becoming increasingly clear that education has become yet another excuse for the government to extract money from productive people and give it to a class of people (educators) whom it favors.

One of the things that has been occupying my time lately is a travelling program we’re having at my school in March. It’s called Challenge Day. It’s quite expensive (of course), and it’s being touted as the best thing to have ever come down the pike. The video introduction to the program called to my mind tent revivals in the South, complete with tears, hands in the air, and other signs of emotional breakdown.

It seems to me that those children would have been better off going to confession.

I don’t know how many readers we have who are in the education business, but I’d appreciate hearing the reaction of somebody who has witnessed this program first-hand before I start recommending students to stay home that day.

There is an interesting article in yesterday’s Washington Times about the effects of too much praise on children.
In the past several decades, the effort to respect, protect and even puff up children’s self-esteem has resulted in a generation of children who expect to win, whose feelings are never hurt and who believe they are the best.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is most commonly known as the Middle School Model, and it’s ubiquitous in the public schools of this country. The idea is to find something good to say to each individual each day, even if it’s something like, “That surely is a nice pair of eyebrow rings you’ve got, Maribeth!” in hopes of increasing students’ self-esteem.
(There’s nothing wrong with being civil (even pleasant, although I have yet to try it) to students, but it should not be mandated.)
I believe that self-esteem is raised through true accomplishment, don’t you?