America- Care to Explain? version- Education System

Originally posted by danneu89
I'm one of the few who graduated with a degree, immediately got a job in my field with good pay, and am pretty close to paying off my student loans, while also paying off a house and car.

I'll never understand for the life of me why the government doesn't put any focus into education. Specifically, higher education. It seems like they could cut 0.5% of funding across the board and it would be enough to send everybody who's willing through a university program.

If we don't figure out something pretty soon, China will be the one outsourcing #ty jobs to American sweat shops to fill their ChinaMart stores.

The government is the REASON that higher education is so damn expensive; it used to be rather simple, the schools charged what the average (middle class) person could pay, which was a few thousand dollars, at most, per year. The government stepped in and rolled out federal student loans in an attempt to make college a possibility for the lower class. What ended up happening, of course, is that the schools, knowing that the government would loan out whatever amount they charged, began buffing up the price of tuition.

This is why it's an economic bubble; the government basically loans out whatever the schools charge and it all falls on the student. $200,000 for a degree that isn't even guaranteed to land you a job is not worth it, whatsoever.

Get rid of student loans and you get rid of these ridiculous tuition prices. Schools can't charge 40-50 grand per year if nobody can pay them, and prices will become very affordable. The presidents of colleges will get paid less, but there are worse things in the world than college presidents making less than $5,000,000 annually.

There is no end to 9gag's scumbagness, this was originally posted in owsposters on reddit.com

Never ever say something original comes out of the potty hole of the internet.

owsposters.tumblr.com...

on a lighter note, I love Nordic countries, their nature and people :]

reply to post by el1jah


OP, that graphic was beautiful!! I had to save it and pass it along to my colleagues. What a clear representation of what we face with education today. We're putting college graduates in the poor house when they should have their eyes on a successful career and starting a life of their own.

Young adults are strapped with enormous tuition costs and debt. How many students transfer to a different college and find out some of their classes they spent a lot of money on don't transfer!!! This has been going on for years, and it's nothing more than a sham for colleges and universities to take advantage of increased revenue! Yet our politicians continue to allow these colleges and universities to take advantage of students.

Students are being targeted with ridiculous living fees, lab costs and outrageous book charges. Some universities won't even allow students to post their last semester textbooks for resale in dorm lobbies. With e-book technology, you would think universities and colleges would change to e-books to save students money and push publishers to make books available in e-book formats. Maybe colleges should stop dumping money into their sports programs and campus construction projects and focus more on reducing tuition costs.

High schools are also making students feel that college is their only option. Many ignore trade schools, entrepreneurship, and 2 year colleges. The mentality that anyone who gets a college degree will find a successful and high paying job is simply BS. There are many trade schools out there who have developed entrepreneurs and highly skilled craftsmen that demand top dollar for their skills. Most of these schools by far, charge much less in tuition than 4 year colleges. Some graduates have earned more than doctors and lawyers. From my own experience, having attended both a university and a post secondary trade school and receiving a degree and associate degree from both, by far my trade school experience was much more rewarding and opened more doors.

It's simply a lack of insight and pure ignorance for politicians not to hold education as a priority. It's what sparks motivation, innovation, creativity, improves the economic stability and strength of a country, and promotes rational and competent thinking. It reduces the number of people on welfare roles, and in the long run improves the life style of many. You can have the most technological military on the planet, high tech machines and computer technology, but if you don't have enough competent people to use them, they're worthless.

So you plan to pay for all the future students college ed with your paycheck once you get a job? Multiply that 30,000 times every eligible student and what do you get? You either pay for your own or you pay for everybody else's. Didn't anyone ever explain there is no free lunch anywhere? Someone pays the price.

I recommend taking some math once you get there.

By the way, OWS is the protest arm of the Obama administration. It is just the protest version of community organizing. Of course, naturally being a Socialist administration, it's community organizing protest arm is going to demand Socialist programs like having everyone else pick up the tab for one's college ed.

reply to post by DestroyDestroyDestroy

Get rid of student loans and you get rid of these ridiculous tuition prices.

Interesting point. So if everyone just pays for their own, then the govt won't have to step in and then the colleges can't jack up the prices. That would be real equality wouldn't it?

As an american, i absolutely love it.

You are laboring under a very incorrect assumption. The education system in the US for the past 100 years is not about education, it is indoctrination. this realization becomes obvious from studying the key players involved in its creation, from marxist john dewey, to the involvement of mega capitalists like carnagie and rockefeller. the case is laid out in excruciating detail in "the deliberate dumbing down of America" by c. iserbyt.
www.deliberatedumbingdown.com...

the education system was designed as a combination of complacent worker drone production, and social engineering. the goal is to create a controllable society with just the minimum skills and thinking ability required to serve the elite, but not enough to pose a threat.

raising the barriers to entry into college furthers those aims. only those most determined and sufficiently conditioned enter. and of those, many are forced into debt servitude to ensure their allegiance to the system. it is difficult to lead a life truly challenging the establishment in any meaningful way, when your conformity and support of that system is required to work off your indebtedness.

Originally posted by el1jahLet's hear about where you are from, have you gone to a post secondary institution? Is it free? Did you get the job you always dreamed of? did your highschool teachers teachers tell you if you didn't go to university you'd most likely be a bum?

I was told left and right that I had to goto college and I did. I managed to space it out over several years so I didn't have debt, I even managed to get three degrees. Currently I'm stuck in a small town working under the table for someone at below minimum wage. I'm unemployable around here, companies aren't interested in what I'm majored in (computer science, game design, 3d modeling), and the only companies around here that hire people want unskilled labor. I would actually be in a better position if I didn't have an education... I could land a job at McDonalds then.

What I find just mind blowing now,
And yet I was once in the same place,

Is how we Americans don't register in mind the concept of how the well being of one influences the well being of the whole,
And vice versa!

LIke the issue of paying for other peoples education, or healthcare does nothing for themself- it is paramount to throwing their money out the window.

It has become undeniably evident to me that a country with a well educated and healthy population makes the whole nation better off- all individuals within benefit from that.

But at one time, I guess I was like so many that consider each man an island; disconnected, detached and uninfluenced by the state of my countrymen.

This may have been somewhat true when America was being founded and people were setting off west to settle in isolated lands, with little interdependancy, perhaps that is where this idea started? It is just not valid now, in modern civilization.

The American education system, or the lack of a viable educational system, is the reason that explains the dearth of American-born doctors. And no, it's not like one state produces all these American-born doctors while the others do not... The problem is shared with all of the states... The common link between all the states is the Fed. Gov'mnt.

See this short ATS Thread for more info.

reply to post by el1jah


I'm often left to wonder the same thing myself.....still paying off student loans, eight years later.

reply to post by Bluesma


Bluesma.

How did you do it, when did you do it? How old were your children when you moved? We want out so bad..not necessarily because of one thing..we just want to live life..maybe I can U2U sometime? I will keep you in mind if I have questions..I hope you don't mind if I ask you..France is one of our picks of places we would like to move

reply to post by el1jah


WAT?

reply to post by Cabin

To be honest, I believe American people have more role in the dumbing down than the government itself, as why does government start policies? Votes.

You really think Voting matters?

reply to post by Neopan100


My first child was three when we moved. In about one month he was speaking french. It took me several years though. Immigration is not complicated here, it is easy to get a "carte de séjour"- the right to live and work here.
To get the nationality is not hard either (and it is not true that you lose your american nationality if you take another, as many people told me!).

It is not easy to adjust to such a different life though, I wouldn't recommend it lightly. It makes you more accutely aware of how american you really are.

You can Pm me if you ever wish to. No problem.