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Wednesday, December 03, 2008
Dunce Nation?
The annual report from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education suggests that the United States is well on the way to making college affordable only to the rich: "...college tuition and fees increased 439 percent from 1982 to 2007, adjusted for inflation, while median family income rose 147 percent."
Want an honest-to-God official plutocracy (rather than just the unofficial one we have right now)? Keep on this path.
In the meantime, let the public schools wither away in favor of private academies, and pretty soon we'll have George Orwell's worst nightmare ... education as the exclusive preserve of the wealthy few, while everyone else is permanently anesthetized into stupefaction, sucking in television "reality" infotainment, along with their junk foods.
"Already, we're one of the few countries where 25- to 34-year-olds are less educated than older workers," said the president of the center that issued this report.
Less educated and, even IF educated, saddled often with crushing debt just from having attended college.
If Congresswoman Virginia Foxx had her way, American college students from low-income families would get ZERO help, even with interest payments tacked on. In 2008 Madam Foxx voted against the Higher Education Act Amendments and Extensions which raised Pell grant ceilings, among other provisions meant to keep the cost of education down. She also voted against HR5715 "To ensure continued availability of access to the Federal student loan program for students and families." (Oh, what's the use of this endless iteration of the Madam's miserable voting record? You can go see for yourself her sorry history.)
We can thank God that Foxx's people are no longer in charge ... at least for a while.
Want an honest-to-God official plutocracy (rather than just the unofficial one we have right now)? Keep on this path.
In the meantime, let the public schools wither away in favor of private academies, and pretty soon we'll have George Orwell's worst nightmare ... education as the exclusive preserve of the wealthy few, while everyone else is permanently anesthetized into stupefaction, sucking in television "reality" infotainment, along with their junk foods.
"Already, we're one of the few countries where 25- to 34-year-olds are less educated than older workers," said the president of the center that issued this report.
Less educated and, even IF educated, saddled often with crushing debt just from having attended college.
If Congresswoman Virginia Foxx had her way, American college students from low-income families would get ZERO help, even with interest payments tacked on. In 2008 Madam Foxx voted against the Higher Education Act Amendments and Extensions which raised Pell grant ceilings, among other provisions meant to keep the cost of education down. She also voted against HR5715 "To ensure continued availability of access to the Federal student loan program for students and families." (Oh, what's the use of this endless iteration of the Madam's miserable voting record? You can go see for yourself her sorry history.)
We can thank God that Foxx's people are no longer in charge ... at least for a while.
Labels: higher education, Virginia Foxx
Thursday, July 03, 2008
Big Shifts
1. NYTimes profiles the demographic change now underway in American higher education, as the old lefty-pinko-commie crowd of the 1960s begins to retire from faculties across the country ... replaced by new faculty who weren't even born when Nixon gave up the presidency. Look for college campuses to return to the somnambulance of the 1950s.
2. The Guv's wife Mary Easley gets a $79,700 pay raise from N.C. State University this week. So guess who's buying lunch.
3. North Carolina's two Catholic bishops say they're uniting to set up a lobbying effort in the NC legislature for Catholic issues. They're upset that that NC House passed a bill permitting stem cell research under limited circumstances last summer.
2. The Guv's wife Mary Easley gets a $79,700 pay raise from N.C. State University this week. So guess who's buying lunch.
3. North Carolina's two Catholic bishops say they're uniting to set up a lobbying effort in the NC legislature for Catholic issues. They're upset that that NC House passed a bill permitting stem cell research under limited circumstances last summer.
Labels: higher education, Mary Easley, North Carolina Catholics
