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College endowment hoarding


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#1 stocks

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Posted 19 January 2008 - 09:03 AM

Many Senators seemed shocked to learn the sums colleges and universities had accumulated.


Dr. Gravelle has addressed the issue of how little additional endowment spending would be required to halt tuition hikes. I will not add to those remarks except to say that stopping tuition increases now is not enough.

Tuition has been going up so rapidly for so long it has reached nearly ungraspable levels. So let me put today’s tuition cost in concrete terms. Senators, what would your constituents say if gasoline cost $9.15 a gallon? Or if the price of milk was over $15? That is how much those items would cost if their price had gone up at the same rate that tuition has since 1980.

I believe that skyrocketing tuition is undoubtedly the biggest “access” problem in higher education. What can possibly be more discouraging to a capable student whose parents are not wealthy than a school with a $45,000 price tag on the door?

Here’s another concrete comparison. The total worth of the top 25 college and university endowments is $11 billion greater than the combined assets of the 25 largest private foundations — including the Gates Foundation, Ford, and Rockefeller.
Private foundations have fewer assets and, in part because they give away more of their money, are growing far less. Yet they are spending more—their payout averaged 7% in 2005 even though they are legally required to spend just 5%.

Yale law professor Henry Hansmann has said that “A stranger from Mars who looks at private universities would probably say they are institutions whose business is to manage large pools of investment assets and that they run educational institutions on the side…to act as buffers for the investment pools.”

Senators, our colleges and universities need to be reminded that they are education institutions first and foremost—and that that is why they receive the enormous tax breaks they do. Their practices, including their handling of endowment monies, should reflect their priorities as educators.

http://collegeafford...t-hoarding.html
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#2 stocks

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Posted 20 December 2010 - 10:59 AM

The disposable academic

Why doing a PhD is often a waste of time

One thing many PhD students have in common is dissatisfaction. Some describe their work as “slave labour”. Seven-day weeks, ten-hour days, low pay and uncertain prospects are widespread. You know you are a graduate student, goes one quip, when your office is better decorated than your home and you have a favourite flavour of instant noodle. “It isn’t graduate school itself that is discouraging,” says one student, who confesses to rather enjoying the hunt for free pizza. “What’s discouraging is realising the end point has been yanked out of reach.”

But universities have discovered that PhD students are cheap, highly motivated and disposable labour. With more PhD students they can do more research, and in some countries more teaching, with less money. A graduate assistant at Yale might earn $20,000 a year for nine months of teaching. The average pay of full professors in America was $109,000 in 2009—higher than the average for judges and magistrates.

Indeed, the production of PhDs has far outstripped demand for university lecturers. In a recent book, Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus, an academic and a journalist, report that America produced more than 100,000 doctoral degrees between 2005 and 2009. In the same period there were just 16,000 new professorships. Using PhD students to do much of the undergraduate teaching cuts the number of full-time jobs.


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#3 stocks

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Posted 26 December 2010 - 05:37 PM

16 Shocking Facts About Student Debt And The Great College Education Scam

Since 1982, the cost of medical care in the United States has gone up over 200% but that is nothing compared to the cost of college tuition which has gone up by more than 400%


Today each new crop of optimistic college graduates quickly discovers that there are simply not nearly enough jobs for all of them. Thousands upon thousands of them end up waiting tables or stocking the shelves at retail stores. Many of them end up deeply bitter as they find themselves barely able to survive and yet saddled with tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt that nobody ever warned them about.

There are 365,000 cashiers in the United States today that have college degrees

In the United States today, 24.5 percent of all retail sales persons have a college degree


Read more: http://www.businessi...t#ixzz19GBTTosN
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UNTIL the status quo self-destructs from its own corruption, and the reformers are free to build on its ashes.
 

#4 stocks

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Posted 12 January 2011 - 09:19 PM

Is Law School a Losing Game?

“I think the student loans that kids leave law school with are more scandalous than payday loans,” says Andrew Morriss, a law professor at the University of Alabama

“Avoid this overpriced sewer pit as if your life depended on it,” writes the anonymous author of the blog Third Tier Reality — a reference to the second-to-bottom tier of the U.S. News rankings ... “Unless, of course, you think that you will be better off with $110k-$190k in NON-DISCHARGEABLE debt for a degree that qualifies you to wait tables at the Battery Park Bar and Lounge.”


... many law school professors privately are appalled by what they describe as a huge and continuing transfer of wealth, from students short on cash to richly salaried academics.


“You’re beginning your legal education at an institution that is engaging in the kind of disreputable practices that we would be incredibly disappointed to discover our graduates engaging in,” he says. “What we have here is powder keg, and if law schools don’t solve this problem, there will be a day when the Federal Trade Commission, or some plaintiff’s lawyer, shows up and says ‘This looks like illegal deception.’”

“Most of us either went to the wrong law school, which is the bottom two-thirds, or we were too old when we graduated,” he said. “I was 32 when I graduated, and at 32 you’re washed up in this field, in terms of a shot at the real deal. They perceived me as somebody they can’t indoctrinate into slave labor and work to death for seven years and then release if they don’t like you.”


Law School
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Defenders of the status quo are always stronger than reformers seeking change, 
UNTIL the status quo self-destructs from its own corruption, and the reformers are free to build on its ashes.
 

#5 stocks

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Posted 17 January 2011 - 05:20 PM

But universities have discovered that PhD students are cheap, highly motivated and disposable labour.


The Simpsons - Comments about PhDs and Grad Students



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#6 Rogerdodger

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Posted 18 January 2011 - 09:55 PM

While we are b-i-itching about it:
Univ of Colo student pays $14,300 tuition with $1 bills...

Last semester, my grandson's class never used the book they had to buy for Psychology AND the teacher must have needed treatment herself because she canceled class about 20% of the time (and she didn't know how to tweet the students to inform them of the cancellation).

So what I found interesting was this comment from a reader:
"It costs the student $65 to miss a class? I have two children, one just graduated from St. Mary's (San Antonio, Texas) and the other will in December. Now, if a student misses a class, that's their problem. However, and this is the big thing here. If the Instructor fails to show and there is no one to give the class, or the instructor cancels a class. WHY ARE THE STUDENTS NOT REIMBURSED?

The school has reneged upon their contract. Here the student has paid up to hundreds of dollars for a book, paid thousands for an instructor and the school has failed to supply the instructor. Therefore, the school should refund each student who's class was canceled (except in emergencies where the entire school was closed) and that is the way it should be.

I have counted in my own two children's case over $20,000 in missed classes. St. Mary's runs about $100,000 for a four year run, and they are paying with loans on their name or co-signed by us. But does the school care? No. They have the money and far be it for any 'Institute of Higher Education' to have any morals or ethics."

Edited by OEXCHAOS, 19 January 2011 - 12:24 PM.
late typo correction fbo Roger


#7 stocks

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Posted 05 May 2011 - 08:12 AM

Education bubble, education taboo

“A true bubble is when something is overvalued and intensely believed,” he says. “Education may be the only thing people still believe in in the United States. To question education is really dangerous. It is the absolute taboo. It’s like telling the world there’s no Santa Claus.”

Like the housing bubble, the education bubble is about security and insurance against the future. Both whisper a seductive promise into the ears of worried Americans: Do this and you will be safe. The excesses of both were always excused by a core national belief that no matter what happens in the world, these were the best investments you could make. Housing prices would always go up, and you will always make more money if you are college educated.

Like any good bubble, this belief– while rooted in truth– gets pushed to unhealthy levels. Thiel talks about consumption masquerading as investment during the housing bubble, as people would take out speculative interest-only loans to get a bigger house with a pool and tell themselves they were being frugal and saving for retirement. Similarly, the idea that attending Harvard is all about learning? Yeah. No one pays a quarter of a million dollars just to read Chaucer. The implicit promise is that you work hard to get there, and then you are set for life. It can lead to an unhealthy sense of entitlement. “It’s what you’ve been told all your life, and it’s how schools rationalize a quarter of a million dollars in debt,” Thiel says.”

This coming from Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal who had some rather good timing on the tech bubble. The Federal Reserve has enabled many to become addicted to this boom and bust bubble culture. I find it interesting that few of the economics or financial courses ever examine historical bubbles or look at the Fed’s hand in creating these bubbles.

Ed bubble
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Defenders of the status quo are always stronger than reformers seeking change, 
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#8 stocks

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Posted 04 June 2011 - 09:11 AM

What is a college education really worth?

Executives at U.S. companies routinely complain about the lack of reading, writing and math skills in the recent graduates they hire. Maybe they too will get tired of using higher education as a credentialing system. Maybe it will be easier to recruit if they don’t have to be concerned about the overwhelming student debt of their new employees.

Employers may decide that there are better ways to get high school students ready for careers. What if they returned to the idea of apprenticeship, not just for shoemakers and plumbers but for white-collar jobs? College as a sorting process for talent or a way to babysit 18-year-olds is not very efficient for anyone involved. Would students rather show their SAT scores to companies and then apply for training positions where they can learn the skills they need to be successful? Maybe the companies could throw in some liberal arts courses along the way. At least they would pick the most important ones and require that students put in some serious effort. Even a 40-hour workweek would be a step up from what many students are asked to do now.

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#9 stocks

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Posted 08 June 2011 - 07:59 AM

Humanities Degree and Unemployed

"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket."
— Eric Hoffer


Higher education has become a business and a bubble, pure and simple. One only has to look at the million-dollar president and coach salaries, the ever-increasing ranks of highly paid deans, the rise of adjunct teaching and the disappearance of the tenure-track, the construction of flashy dorms and gyms instead of new academic facilities, the fealty to USNWR, the construction of foreign campuses in socially and academically restrictive lands so as to get specie from those sweet, sweet sovereign wealth funds, and so on.

The hard truth of the matter is that in this age of the free-market, $55,000/year, university-corporation as supposed incubator/training facility for the corporate grind, well, the humanities have precious little place. If they did, we wouldn't see so many articles about sociology majors and such who come out of such notorious greed-traps as NYU and BU with $200,000 in student loan debt and 0.0% of paying it off, much less be able to raise a family, own a home, or partake in whatever little American Dream is left to the ostensibly educated middle class. I would ask all who read this to think of all the other countries where procuring a higher education may require a plurality or more of one's lifetime earnings, and then ponder how such onerous costs will affect our future economic health.

It will be very bleak for the Millenials, I fear, but at least it will mean there are no shortages of Plato-spouting gardeners to work on Sallie Mae CEO Al Lord's private, 244 acre golf course-estate located less than an hour from DC.


Dept. of Education breaks down Stockton man's door


Over student loans
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#10 Rogerdodger

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Posted 08 June 2011 - 08:48 AM

You beat me to it!
Personally I think it's just a bit excessive, but many here seem to support such extreme State powers with little if any limits, unless you are an actual terrorist, then they show respect.

SWAT TEAM BREAKS DOWN MAN'S DOOR -- OVER STUDENT LOANS...

"I look out of my window and I see 15 police officers," Wright said.
Wright came downstairs in his boxer shorts as a S.W.A.T team barged through his front door. Wright said an officer grabbed him by the neck and led him outside on his front lawn.

"He had his knee on my back and I had no idea why they were there," Wright said.
According to Wright, officers also woke his three young children ages 3, 7, and 11 and put them in a Stockton police patrol car with him. Officers then searched his house.

As it turned out, the person law enforcement was looking for was not there - Wright's estranged wife.
"They put me in handcuffs in that hot patrol car for six hours, traumatizing my kids," Wright said.

The U.S. Department of Education issued the search and called in the S.W.A.T for his wife's defaulted student loans.

"They busted down my door for this," Wright said. "It wasn't even me."

Edited by Rogerdodger, 08 June 2011 - 09:01 AM.