Onto the battlefield of Social Delusions this morning as we take on the Higher Education Lobby.
There is no reason why we – as a country – can’t offer free, government-paid four year degrees to all citizens. Anyone hear of “online?”
Except for the simple reason that we all too often say one thing and then happily go off acting in a manner completely contrary to our vocalized wishes.
A few headlines and than off to the shrink’s couch we go as we examine the pros and cons of a free federal online degree program.
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George,
I really appreciate your work both on Urban Survival and on Peoplenomics (which has paid for my subscription many times over).
I was trying to understand why HRC would have any security clearance at this point. Not a political statement, but I fail to see the “need to know” in her current role.
Thanks
People can have clearances and have no role, or need to know. When/if they do get one, then they are already cleared, possibly subject to a quick background update.
Since that female has failed entirely in her duty to protect classified info(among many other things), her clearance can and should be immediately revoked. It could be reinstated if the authorities were absolutely convinced that clearing her would be of greater value to the nation than keeping her clearance revoked(LOL).
One way to think of a security clearance is like a driver’s license. It is good for a certain amount of time and then expires. It is either renewed or allowed to lapse. You brought up ‘the need to know.’ That is the other part of the classified equation. One must both be properly cleared and have a need to know to access classified information. In HRC’s case, she still has an active security clearance, but no longer has a need to know as a private citizen. She therefore no longer has access to classified as it is. The investigation is now about whether to revoke her active clearance. Something of a formality at this point, but would be an additional hurdle for her to return to a high level position in the public sector.
My thoughts also!!
Thanks to the smartest bunch of readers around for answering my security clearance question
I have a couple of disputes with your “free” federal education concept, although I agree that on-line is where things will mostly end up in education, aside from those skills that need “hands on”.
“The role of the FedGov is to lead…”
No, it’s not. The states were supposed to act both as incubators of new ideas and to solve their own problems locally. The Federal government’s role was to physically protect both the nation and the rights of individuals….that’s IT. The idea that “Fedgov is supposed to lead” is what got us were we are now.
If you want to improve education, the first job would be to straighten out the abject disaster that is K-12 in this country. And the first step is getting the fedgov out of K-12 and returning to local control. The second step is busting the teacher’s unions so incompetents can be removed.
“Germany’s higher education system is entirely publicly funded and its 2.4 million students pay absolutely nothing in tuition fees.”
I know you know better than this George…the German students may not pay as students, but their parents pay via taxes and once out of school, the students will pay as well. As I’m sure you saw with your own children, kids do not value “free stuff”, only when they have to work for things do they start to value things.
Hi George,
Today’s article was superb! I do think the option of such a program is quite overdue. There’s no reason that this idea can’t be extended to areas such as medicine, law, and engineering for four of the five work days. The other day could be on a local campus doing lab work.
The lecture style of teaching seems to be going out of favor these days, being replaced with small group activities and collaboration. Much of this can also be done online, though the instructors will push back against it.
Some universities are charging extra fees for online courses. UNM has a $100.00 fee per course extra if it’s offered online rather than on campus!
WTF?
You might want to check and see what the enrollment limit is for the online classes as opposed to the traditional courses. Many traditional courses have a contractually mandated enrollment cap that is much lower than those for the online courses. The extra fee could be to offset TA costs to help out the primary instructor.
I believe you may have overlooked 2 C, International Students, who pay an obscene amount of money for a degree from an American university. This source of revenue has become extremely problematic these past few years as some foreign governments have revoked sponsorship of students wanting to study abroad. It’s hard to predicate a budget based on a revenue source that suddenly dries up.
The troublesome Powerpoint content was likely generated not by the instructor but from a textbook/content provider. I’d wager the instructor was an adjunct who was trying to piece together an income across teaching assignments from several institutions and took the easy way out. Personally, I would have gone to the deans and/or provost and raised holy hell, but then again, I’ve never been interested in the easy “A.”
I can’t disagree with you about the American educational system being profoundly broken, I just don’t think the failure can be redressed with a one-size-fits-all solution. In my opinion, today’s secondary education has more to do with socialization and assimilation than with classroom learning. You can’t achieve that when students never have to come into direct contact with one another.
I’ve talked with a number of students who were home-schooled, then completed distance learning degrees for their BA’s/BS’s and master’s. Nearly all of them were seeking a distance learning doctorate program with the goal of teaching face-to-face in a bricks and mortar school. To me, this demonstrates a profound lack of understanding of the dynamics of the system. They may well have been able to meet their degree goals, but I sincerely doubt any of them would have been able to successfully integrate into a traditional teaching situation. Even if they made it through the interview gauntlet, they’d find themselves out of their element with the f-to-f lectures, departmental meetings, and campus committee work. Adjunct instructors are fungible. The good ones need every advantage they can get to hang onto a position.
Oooops. That should have been “post-secondary education.” Sorry.
Mithral –
Bad excuse re: Powerpoint
I have 4 graduates from 3 that attended 4 universities (UofH, NTSU, Texas A&M and UT). They went through school from 2002 until 2015 and I paid for it all. Powerpoint is THE goto for teachers across the board. Mine have come into class and seen a PPt running without an instructor several times. Each of them had teachers that gave lectures of 2-30min and then assigned them a PPt to watch as homework. I purchased several ‘textbooks’ that were little more than bound laser copies with rampant grammatical and spelling errors – all nearly or just over $100. Most of them have PPt slides as an appreciable portion of the content.
I appreciate if you are a current or former educator, but you are very wrong in assuming that PPt reliance is some lazy grad student or TA – it is what is used today. Some of these “textbooks” have Youtube references in them, likely because they are only good for a semester?
I went back to school a few years ago, and was baffled as to why it costed MORE to take online classes. My tuition was already subsidizing tons of on campus stuff that, as a non-traditional student living 30 minutes from campus, I had no use for. Yet, if I took an online class, I had to pay the same tuition, helping pay for the new fitness center and such, as well as paying additional “technology fees.” What a crock!
We do have that problem as to who pays for “hobby degrees” that produce nothing. Perhaps a limitation to STEMA (add Accounting) would be useful. The other possibility is “no Federal student aid for non-veterans”.
Perhaps you should amend your last sentence to no federal aid for people who are non-veterans or not going into the medical field/teachers/emergency workers like police or fire fighters, in deprived communities . . . people should be ‘encouraged’ to help the less fortunate to succeed. Helping/saving people is a noble goal!
I love this idea. The best way I can think of to put the liberal indoctrination machine out of business. With strict testing protocol, this could actually work.
It would drive the haves and the have nots further apart, however. Those with a “real” degree would get preference over the “on-liners” in some fields. But the overall advantages are too big to ignore. Lets start a movement.
Writer Shayne is correct as far as ‘putting the liberal indoctrination machine out of business’ being a fine idea. However, the people that have led us to the current situation work hand in glove to with the turncoats in Washington that have been supplying the muscle to keep things as they are. They aren’t elected power brokers and they are way up on the GS ranking and are pretty much fireproof from losing their positions. Appealing to them so far has fallen on deaf ears. There is just too much money involved in maintaining the status quo. Power has corrupted-absolutly
All ya gotta do is read jon’s rants and you know what we are up against, pure unmitigated globalist sell out filth with no concerns for the citizens well care.
http://www.blacklistednews.com/US_Gov%E2%80%99t_Proves_Love_for_ISIS_as_Bill_to_%E2%80%98Stop_Arming_Terrorists%E2%80%99_Gets_Only_13_Supporters/59259/0/38/38/Y/M.html