President Obama makes colleges rethink tuition hikes

I have long ranted about how colleges abuse their monopolization on education by forcing unnecessary tuition hikes year after year.  It had come to the point that I actually touted them as holding our lives for ransom under degrees that are often overestimated in worth and exaggerated in need.

 

This may seem completely contradictory to my love for learning and ascertainment that “Knowledge is power,” but it simply is not.  One can easily teach themselves how to do virtually anything in our media millennium.  Unless it’s surgery or piloting a plane, & yeah ok, I’ll concede a few other ambitions, most specialties can be honed at home.

While society is a long way from bowing to my point of view, degrees are nearly a prerequisite – although not a reassurance of – employment for now and the future.  Given this, I have already informed my children that 1) yes, you’ll go to college, but 2) there’s no way your father & I can afford it.  At least they have no misconceptions ahead of time and realize that effort, diligence, and scholarship (probably multiples, in fact) will be expected.

However, President Obama did just step up for a startling reality check to the higher education industry:  control your tuition or lose federal funding.  It parallels quite *nicely* with doctors and hospitals overcharging in 1 form or another simply because they know Medicaid/Medicare will cover the cost.  Of course they have to be extra sly, so they will push or exaggerate certain diagnoses like mental illness, diabetes, and heart disease into receiving treatments that have actually been proven to make the problem (or others) worse.

President Obama also addressed the abuse of inflated interest rates on student loans.  I never would have thought when I was in high school that any bank or lender could possibly legally take advantage of someone via student loans.  Thank God I never made it an option for myself, because stories abound of people going bankrupt — yes, bankrupt — for having done so.

Taxes, child support, and student loans are the 3 types of debt that cannot be wiped off your credit report for non-payment.  So naturally when you put this fact together with federal funding, subsidized tuition via grants like the Pell Grant, a workforce that no longer trusts itself to train its workers (read — too cheap to train their own workers), & tuition rates set by the very people paid the highest within an institution of higher learning, then of course abuse would be rampant.

Netflix offers an excellent revealing documentary “Frontline:  College, Inc.” discussing this very matter.  A well-versed viewer gives it 3 out of 5 stars & then comments:

A narrow expose that does not address the broader problem and its root causes. The factors driving the growing demand for advanced degrees – of any kind, from any university – deserve scrutiny. What was once a cost-benefit decision is now a foregone conclusion: You must get a college degree. Like all bubbles, the college bubble has been pumped to excess by societal and market failures. Among these: the societal failure that for many, a public high school education is often inadequate or irrelevant; and the market failure created that distortions in the market for a college education – principally, tax-payer funding – has produced an artificial demand for it and facilitated its costly supply. (In an environment where super-loose monetary policy already encourages malinvestments in education, fiscal distortions are the last thing you need.) This documentary could have focused on the common problems affecting the entire advanced education complex, but instead simply focused on the failings of the latest entrant, the for-profit sector. It could also have cited studies that show that much of the performance gap among sectors is due to differences in demographics. To be fair, this narrow expose still allows an open-minded viewer to see a broader problem and diagnose a common cause. He or she would have been able to (a) compare and equate problems afflicting students and institutions in the private sector system with analogous problems in the public systems, and (b) conclude that misplaced State-involvement appears to be a growing common factor in both systems. Yet, the documentary does not attempt to broaden the discussion or to explore common causes. Worst, in an attempt to speculate about a solution to the problem of private sector colleges, the documentary appears to suggest…even more taxpayer funding funding for Community Colleges. Is this what being educated without learning is about? Humh. Watch instead CATOs online panel Profit from Ivory Towers of 11/30/10.

More information:

Obama to High-Priced Universities: ‘You’re on Notice’

Logic Stage Vocabulary

For a full introduction or review on how to approach vocabulary, visit this article.

The logic stage introduces vasts amounts of complicated text, giving the student ample opportunity to keep an ongoing log of ever-developing vocabulary.

The best method is to dedicate a notebook to vocabulary from any subject.  As the student reads something scientific and takes notes in their science notebook, they should include any words they do not understand or do understand, but have not seen before.  These words should then be transferred over into the vocabulary notebook.

Dedicate every other day to vocab/spelling & every other day to grammar.  This is in addition to any fiction/non-fiction writing exercises or foreign language (including Latin).

Grade 5 should be able to handle 10 word parts + 20 new vocabulary words each week.  Remember, any old words that they are not proficient in should be added to the upcoming list the following week.  So naturally the number of words on their list will vary from time to time.

At any point they have 20 old words they have not mastered, an extra week should be taken to sear these into their minds rather than add on new ones for that week.

This pattern should continue throughout the logical stage, adding 5-10 more words expected each week with every year of age or grade level.  A good general rule is to comb through all fiction & non-fiction material while adding any questionable words.  Usually if this is done, the amount will naturally increase with age as their reading not only becomes more complex, but the quantity itself increases.

I like to give my sons the benefit of the doubt until I peruse their list and find it lacking.  The more you do this, the better you will be at spotting a trifling effort on their part.  This becomes an exercise in not only vocabulary, but integrity and humility as well.  It also gives clues as to their general trustworthiness in other arenas of study and aptitude.

Any & all vocabulary notebooks should remain accessible to the student in later grades.  When a 1 subject notebook is filled, it’s a good idea to have them review its entire contents before beginning a new one.

At this age, memorization exercises are best taken in 15-30 minute intervals, 2-4 times a day.  The shorter the attention span, the more often the material should be studied.  Flashcards are a very simple yet profoundly effective tool.  Hole-punching index cards & then binding them with a single large binding ring is a great way to have them ready for road trips or running errands.

More ideas will be discussed in our lesson plan forum, but in general the logic age should be handwriting definitions at least 3 times/week amongst other efforts.