Thursday, March 5, 2015

Barack & Michelle Obama: University Shills

Not that an education wouldn't be a good thing...it just doesn't pay any more.
[September 2011] "Just getting into college isn't enough," Obama said in his speech at Banneker High School. "You need to graduate."

Obama said the United States is ranked sixteenth in the world for the number of young people with college degrees. He urged students to continue their education after they graduate high school.

[...]

Obama only mentioned his efforts at making college affordable one time during his speech. Instead of discussing students' financial obligations, Obama touched on students' academic responsibilities.

  CNN
[January 2014] Pretty much all of the Democrats want more people to go to college, just like they wanted everyone to buy a house and we all know how that worked out.
Michelle Obama will take on an expanded role in promoting the administration’s college-attainment goal during the rest of her time as first lady, she said at an event for educators and others who work with high-school students on Wednesday. 
  College Insurrection
[F]inancial firms [...] are holding high-interest student loans that total more than the nation’s credit card debt, and more than the total income of the poorer half of America.

[...]

Of 15 for-profit colleges investigated by the Government Accountability Office, 13 were found guilty of deceptive marketing, with false job and salary guarantees. The 15 companies got a stunning 86 percent of their funding from the public, in the form of student loans and grants.

Worse yet, a Senate report found that they spend about a quarter of their revenue on marketing, and take 20 percent in profits, while spending only about 17 percent on instruction.

After all that, only 22 percent of students get a degree after six years.

[...]

[On the other hand, for traditional colleges to] pay all the administrators, tenure-track teachers have been eliminated, and underpaid part-timers have taken their places. Adjunct and student teachers, who made up about 22 percent of instructional staff in 1969, now make up an estimated 76 percent of instructional staff in higher education, with a median wage in 2010 of about $2,700 per course, and with little or no benefits.

[...]

The unemployment rate may be going down, but the available jobs are well below the skill levels of college-trained adults. According to the New York Federal Reserve, 44 percent of recent college graduates are underemployed, holding jobs that are normally held by high school graduates.

[...]

As recently as July of 2014 the Federal Reserve of San Francisco wrote that recent college graduates “were and continue to be hit hard.”

   Paul Buchheit at Bill Moyers & Company
So, after we get to the point where, as in the country's distant past, only the rich can afford to be educated, we'll be just where we need to be.  The rich will rule, and the rest of the country will be their armed forces and servants.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

No comments: