Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not surprising, too many bullshit colleges costing $$$

Amen!

I breathed a sign of relief when my kid decided against a smaller uni that costs $80K a year. It's a good school, but it's not an 80K a year school. Whoa.

It's not a divide of vocational/white collar: even the selective colleges are/need to be more "applied": they are offering internships/opportunities to do research/focus on real applications of knowledge. And vocational schools need to be more rigorous...

Very interesting article. I grew up in a small town that is home to a small, liberal arts college. Many of the issues the article brought up, I do wonder about my hometown.

The college is the last "prestige" employer in my town. Industry left back in the 80s but the college remained. The college has declining enrollment - what will happen if the college also closes? Who would buy the campus? My town is not exactly desirable anymore.

It is a red county but what will not having a college mean? The few educated/liberal people will leave leaving the county/town more red and more economically depressed.

Anonymous wrote:The gouging that colleges do needs to be clawed back. It’s criminal what they do to young people with their racket. Starting lives deep in debt. Shows how socialists are even greedier and less caring than heartless corporations. With technology, advanced education costs should be plummeting but noooooo… that must be stymied.

The administrators and policy-makers who have driven and enabled the skyrocketing cost of college are not "socialists". In many cases, they are straight up capitalists who have been brought over from "heartless corporations" for the express purpose of running colleges and universities like profit-seeking businesses. In other cases, they are simply elitists who have used their position to benefit themselves through steadily increasing salaries and connections to wealthy donors and vendors.

If you want to see socialism in higher education, look to actual socialists in Europe, where college is free for most students, even at the most elite insitutations. Especially at the most elite institutions, actually -- the idea is that if you have the grades and test scores to get into the most selective schools, it is in society's best interest to ensure you access to that education since you are likely to use it to the benefit of society.

Actual socialists would never charge anyone 80k a year to attend a university, that's insane. That's a capitalist at work, comrade.