Education Fix, Guaranteed to Work

[Eagle-Keeper]

@lulubee

Some won’t stay in business. Colleges are forced to close every year because of declining enrollment and small endowments. They rely on tuition to keep them afloat.

The rich elite schools have massive endowments, but enroll just a tiny percentage (1%-2%) of all college students. And most who apply, even with outstanding stats/EC’s etc. do not get accepted. In addition, approx 40% of these students come from families that can pay the full tuition without blinking an eye.

Imo, people need to vote for state representatives who support fully funding their state’s higher education system. Many legislatures have been cutting off funding and now many state schools (for example PA - where COA is now $35k+ at Penn State) have to raise their COA to make up the difference. Wisconsin is another state that has drastically reduced their state university system.

Keep voting for Republican State Reps, Senators and Governors and it will only get worse.

This is one area I see things differently. This is another article I found regarding the issue of funding for higher education:

“The rapid disinvestment by states this century in public higher education happened not because of one event, but a confluence of factors that has made it more expensive for students and their families to attend most state colleges. First, funding levels failed to keep up with the influx of students to public campuses last decade because of the rising numbers of high school graduates.”

“At the same time, spending in other parts of state budgets started to crowd out higher education. Public colleges and universities have long been known as the balance wheel in state budgets. Lawmakers know, for instance, they can always raise tuition for students and their families to pay for higher education, but they can’t do the same for prisoners when it comes to corrections. In the last decade, lawmakers used higher education as a bank for other needs, mostly state and local public welfare programs. “State Medicaid spending is the single biggest contributor to the decline in higher-education funding at the state and local level,” according to Webber.”

First point the number of students going to college went from less than 10% in the 1960’s to over 34% today. Taxes would have to more than triple to keep up with those figures. Look, I don’t know where you live but in NJ taxes haven’t been going down because of cuts to higher education. In other words taxpayers haven’t been living high on the hog because of these cuts.