Quote: President Barack Obama has declared that his administration aims to make college affordable to everyone by greatly expanding government aid to middle class families. The Washington Post says that Obama's higher education proposals, which include creating a brand new Pell Grant entitlement, "could transform the financial aid landscape for millions of students while expanding federal authority to a degree that even Democrats concede is controversial."
But what if President Obama has it backwards? What if America is sending too many people to college?
A recent study found that "Nationally, four-year colleges graduated an average of just 53% of entering students within six years." If 40 percent of students who enter college drop out before graduation and over 50 percent of students take six years to graduate, perhaps Obama is focusing on the wrong issue.
Reason.tv's Michael C. Moynihan sat down with Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and the American Enterprise Institute's Charles Murray, author of the recent book Real Education, to analyze how Obama's higher-education plans will impact the economic and cultural future of the United States.
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But the backdrops peel and the sets give way and the cast get eaten by the play, there's a murderer at the matinee, there are dead men in the aisles
And the patrons and the actors too are uncertain if the show is through and with sidelong looks await their cue, but the frozen mask just smiles
Posted: 17 Jul 2009 20:05
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You know if everybody went to college would there be anybody to do labor jobs? __________________
Lucas McCain the Rifleman: A man doesn't run from a fight, Mark...but that doesn't mean you should go running *to* one, either.
Posted: 18 Jul 2009 21:32
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Yes, all the graduates who couldn't find jobs in their selected professions. __________________
But the backdrops peel and the sets give way and the cast get eaten by the play, there's a murderer at the matinee, there are dead men in the aisles
And the patrons and the actors too are uncertain if the show is through and with sidelong looks await their cue, but the frozen mask just smiles
Posted: 09 Nov 2009 17:16
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It should be noted that the efforts to further education actually focused much more on two year skill degrees than four year classical degrees.
As such we wouldn't have a Randian world where the U.S. produces nothign but English Lit majors, and no one takes out the trash, or fixes the toilets.
You will always have a mix as, where the money is, so to flow the workers. If you produce 100 MBA's the price per MBA goes down. If you produce 10 plumbers, the price per plumber goes up. Young people looking for a carreer see this and make adjustments accordingly.
You may find some lag here and there as people find themselves at the end of their educational quest with a degree that pays far less than they thought it would as more and more people got that same degree, however with what ever skill set they earned they should still be able to find some form of work with an education better than one could without one.
If nothing else, the intangables you learn in an educational envrionment, how to speak, to write, and to carry yourself in an educated fashion likely goes further than any specific education to land you a job in many fields.
