Very few universities are over funded, but there are some. The biggest problem in education is too much teaching, as opposed to making students learn. I suspect at least 80% of the course material in an university is standard stuff, and that learning could be done in standardized courses without a professor to teach. Tutoring help is needed in some cases, and a few new courses would need to be developed, but that is a small fraction of a good education.

I note my daughter's (and my) reaction to her HS Honors English course coming up. She describes it as a way of taking all the joy out of reading. She will be required to take 4 years of English, most of it devoted to English as an art of fiction, rather than a useful tool to understand dealing with facts and opinions on real issues. Why is this so? Well, all those English majors need a job, and that is what they know. The number of bullshitters in the educational establishment is amazing.

USAn

I never suggested that free education = poor education. In fact, as I stated earlier, there is no such thing as free education. The only variable is who pays. What I do suggest is that requiring the student to invest at least some of his/her own money in the education process might increase its value to the individual, on the hypothesis that the things we value most are things we had to sacrifice in order to get. Actually, I'm not at all sure if it works that way or not, it was a speculation on my part. The speculation was actually based my own experiences and those of friends and colleagues who taught in German universities, where they experienced occasional motivation problems on the part of students, brought on (in their opinion) by the fact that they were not personally 'on the hook' for any of the cost of their education. One colleague in particular actually thought US students were more motivated and worked harder, because they were all paying at least some of the cost themselves. It would be interesting to do the study you suggest, but a very hard thing to measure.

On another topic, can you tell me what an 'average European' is? Norwegian? Greek? Albanian? Serbian? Russian? Ukrainian? French? Polish? Swedish? Italian? The differences in educational attainment among these people is vast. There is a germ of truth in what you said, but you really need to qualify your rather sweeping, axiomatic statement, else you fall into the same trap as the libertarians you critique.

dgoodin remarks are the typical capitalist way of analysis -

From Adam Smith onward, these capitalist "libertarians" make sweeping axiomatic laws about human nature and society based on hypothetical, ahistorical, even flippant remarks. Even their most rigorous Nobel-Prize winning mathematical economics sit precariously on intellectually lazy assumptions of social and individual behavior that have very little support from empirical observation or an accurate analysis of history.

dgoodin, I won't ask you can you provide a peer-reviewed study that feee education results in poor education, even an anecdotal example will do.

I'll give you one that suggests the opposite! European universities are largely free, and an average European's level of educational attainment is vastly better than the average US student who gets $100K in debt.

I agree with the others here. Maybe Rall should stick to critique of the so-called war on terror.

Tutions in public universities and colleges are going through the roof because of lack of public funding, and Rall is calling for even less public funding. How idiotic!

Midblu:

Believe or disbelieve as you choose, but the number is accurate. And to clarify, "my" university is not in debt. In fact, universities in "my" state are prevented by law from going into debt. Instead, what's happening is that only the most critical "maintenance" is being done on the buildings at "my" university. What would you suggest for budget restructuring? What should we get rid of? Stop paying salaries? Maybe get rid of the art department? Stop mowing the lawns? Maybe stop shovelling snow in the winter? How about closing the cafeterias in the dorms? Heck, how about closing the dorms? Students can sleep in their cars! Maybe we can shut off the phones or the internet? For that matter, who needs lights? I know, we can fire all the office staff! They don't really do anything important, do they?

Or, we can raise tuition, because that's what education really costs. Anything else is like the current proposals to artificially reduce the price of gas -- it just transfers the cost elsewhere. I am not in favor of tuition hikes. Hell, I was a college student for 11 years -- you don't think I'm sensitive to what it costs? But let's face facts, here, running a university is very, very expensive and no amount of restructuring is going to reduce that cost. If you want the price of higher ed to go down, pester your congresscritter/senator about restoring funding to federal granting agencies, so we can compete for a larger number of awards, and our institutions will benefit. ASk your state to direct more revenue to its colleges and universities. Ask them to (Gulp!) raise taxes -- see how far that idea goes.

Sorry to vent spleen on you, but this is a complicated problem that goes well beyond simplistic notions of "re-structuring." What originally raised my ire with this article was the willingness of its author to throw out an opinion based completely on assumptions not founded in reality. Unfortunately, this behavior seems to come just as naturally to progressives as it does to conservatives. Rall is as bad as Horowitz and I feel caught in the middle, and writing this shit is really causing me to tilt. So I'm not going to write anymore -- you get the last word.

dgoodin, you stated "My (public) university has over 100 million dollars in deferred building maintenance costs".
Are you quite serious? Even if we are to believe this astronomical, fantastic sum, can we appreciate this as a valid reason for raising tuition(s)? It would seem that if "your" university is presently in debt to the tune of $100,000,000.00 for "maintenance", you need to consider some critical budget re-structuring measures.

College and University education is a sad joke. When you consider that about half the students are enrolled in no-study degrees like business or management then you get some idea of what a waste our institutions are. I live in a college town and I can assure you the least likely group to show up at a lecture on climate change are the students. Ditto for any cultural event that doesn't get air-time on MTV.

I doubt most of them are even functionally literate. Try and find a college-aged person in a used bookstore; no the person working the register doesn't count.

The US has turned into an idiotocracy where the stupid rule and anybody who complains gets crammed into overcrowded prisons to rot.

Today it was announced the governor of California was proposing funding the state by means of a lottery. A lottery? WTF? The seventh largest economy in the world has to fund it's government by selling lottery tickets? Of course funding our government by means of taxes on commercial property would make too much sense. Why tax wealth when you can tax stupidity. Wealth is limited while stupidity appears to be infinite.

I say we give Ted Rall's program a go. My local university appears to be nothing more than a four year degree program in binge drinking and date-rape and could find better use as a chicken house. Lord knows there is no learning happening there.

MomO May 14th, 2008 5:59 pm "I have taught for twenty-one years in a public community college that has done everything in its power to hold down tuition costs. Even the baccalaureate degrees we offer cost less than $5000 a year for tuition–these days, a bargain."

From '68 to '71 I borrowed $4000 over 4 yrs under NSDL on a 10 yr note for 3%, worked part time, earned another $1000/yr for the remainder, the books, and supplies - for a Jesuit education at a private university in SF. You couldn't touch that for 10 times the amount today. Why? Because University is ONLY for the richfilth animals and their spawn and the ones who want to be Overseers for the Richfilth and their spawn, "Anointed By Yahweh to Rule in His Name". Fucking Jesuit pederasts.

Peasant serfs don't need education. Just chains and orders.

Your future and the future of your children because America has learned to kiss the whip and bend over on command. They like being submissives. Degraded. Debased. Degenerate.

Don't need education for any of those. In fact education gets in the way.

I never went to college or university.

I went to a trade school when I was 40 years old to start a new career, and learned the basics of joinery and cabinetmaking. That career has since stalled due to the collapse of the US sub-prime mortgage bubble, which has cut significantly into home improvement loans here in Canada.

But i am doing far better that the vast number of college and university grads who are working at McJobs FAR below their training and education level, because the people who are presently in those occupations rarely leave them before mandatory retirement or death.

So you have vast herds of grads asking 'Would you like extra foam on your latte?'

As a further note, university educations are going back to what they started as during the Renaissance; a way for wealthy parents to get their kids out of the house and have something to brag to the other elite about.

Free education sounds good on the face of it, but it has some very real downsides. First of all, there is no such thing as free. Someone, somewhere has to pay. Even more important, when something is given away for free it tends to lose its value in the mind of the one receiving it. I think this is one of the problems with our public primary and secondary education systems. In our (very noble) attempt to educate everyone for free, we have created a system that few people value or feel invested in. This is not true in many parts of the world, where even entry into secondary schools is competitive and involves cost. I have a good friend from Germany who notes that one of the consequences of the free education system there is a lack of seriousness on the part of many students. Nothing makes us more aware of the value of something than having to sacrifice financially in order to get it. I would rather keep our current fee system, just make it easy for students to get financial backing.

Mr. Rall has some interesting ideas.

I work at North Carolina Central University law school. NCCU is a small historically black university. Last year, in an annual survey by preLaw Magazine, NCCU was ranked as the top value among the nation's law schools.

The criterion for this ranking was based on cost of tuition, bar passing rates, and job placement.

Across town, just a few miles from NCCU, tuition for the past year at Duke University law school came to a total of $42,337. Tuition for North Carolina residents at NCCU law school, for the same academic year, came to $5,700.

I'll leave it to you, and Mr. Rall, to consider which law school would be harmed most by what Mr. Rall is proposing.

The issue of free education in some countries like sweden has created an imbalance of sorts. University education is free to everyone and should benefit that country, however many graduates take that education and come to this country where they can make a better salary. (an unfair competition for students here that will be indebt to have the same service). Medical doctors are another example where foreign students are favored because of money. I guess that is the real education one recieves in college.

I do get the author's point.... though I disagree with the oversimplifacation about universities being "awash with cash" and I would have liked more supporting evidence for that claim.... I am glad to see some writing about College PREDETORY LENDING, which is currently overshadowed by the housing crisis.

Another suggestion for easing the tuition burden: Make College Shorter!!!!

I went to a decent high school, and yes I know there are a lot of primary schools that don't produce the 'quality student' like mine did, but I went to state university and city college.... I ended up basically taking my high school courses over again for TWO YEARS at college. My first thought... WHAT A RACKET! Basically I paid twice as much as I should have. And I went to state & city so I wouldn't have to take out loans!

Not that I have any asnwers, but I support a new direction in our learning methods in primary and college education. I still see the 'factory system' and 'babysitting' in every school.

Every year local and federal funding dries up. Every year predetory lendors increase their rates. Research? Please. People don't really need to go to college for a Liberal Arts undergrad. One possibility might be to shift the focus on these non-research students and faculty to a learn-and-earn approach...

Selling more and more College does not make College better.

"The economy may suck, but the last thing the nation's colleges and universities need is more money. There are exceptions, but most are awash in cash."

Mr. Rall cannot distinguish between Harvard and your local community college. I can assure you sir, that public schools are feeling the economic crunch. Lumping together public and private colleges destroys whatever credibility you had in this article.

It's not about market forces, it's about letting middle class Americans have an education. Stop trying to destroy America's public colleges with neo-con market rhetoric. Believe it or not, certain parts of government, like student loans, are helpful for society.

Is this article supposed to be satirical?

'human potential' and it's development are what is killing this planet...humans must de-evolve, de-potentialize, if you will, if we, or any other life forms on this planet, are to survive our very own existence...we must return to living as, and in concert with, animals...there is no intellectual solution to the physical, death-delivering certainty this industrial illusion of educational progress creates...

It's time America stopped confusing capitalism with Democracy and insatiable greed with success.

I'm afraid that's one thing America will never do; for that is the heart and soul of this country . . . and it will also be the cause of our destruction. Most Americans want to be Donald Trump or John Gotti or the winner of American Idol, not Abraham Lincoln or Herman Melville or Jonas Salk. The success of the Republicans for the last generation has been entirely based on this. Take everything away from Americans, leave them naked in the gutter with the rich having fled with their wealth to other countries, and this is still what most of them will want. The last thing they'll see before they die will be dollars floating in front of their eyes.

Wouldn't the forced recognition of the new market reality cause higher education institutions to focus even more narrowly on job training and reduce the universal aspect of educating a human being to near negligence? If the only thing that matters is buying and selling, then what good is a university education anyway? I don't know. Maybe collapse could result in a benevolent rebuilding of the system, but it could just as easily lead to the permanet loss of the potential of those millions of middle and lower-class kids. It's not like you can just put them in a state of suspended animation for an indefinite period, and then unthaw them when we get everything fixed. The choices they make while living in a state of frustration will have consequences for this world. So much for punditry.

I agree with hazmat, but the problem is not just in the US. I taught a semester at a Canadian university and it was the same. A colleague there once asked one of his large classes how many of them, if given the opportunity, would simply write a check for their total tuition then receive a degree without ever attending class. Well over half indicated that they would. I've also taught in several developing countries and it's not much different. It's too bad that the university degree has become such an important credential. So many of my students would be much better off if they pursued a trade, or some field where higher education is not necessary. But because there is such a glut of people with the BA/BS, employers have some to expect, even for jobs where it's not really all that necessary. Pity.

FVHorn: My compliments. Your commentary narrows it down. Well said!

FVHorn and Doom n Gloom have grasped the kernel: education in the USA has devolved into the credential/industrial complex, wherein fools like shrub are vetted and prepared for positions of power (affirmative action for the rich, white and feckless), while children of the working class are shunted off onto a track toward minimum-wage oblivion.

here in the end-game of gangster capitalism, it would be suicidal for the rulers to allow the working class to develop true learning and critical thinking skills, or to be in historical touch with its revolutionary heritage.

My father's education was close to free, on the GI bill. My education was cheap, mostly work-study for a public college graduate degree. That was a while ago.

Yes, I fear the way the top colleges are run.

"Tenure" is an ideal. Many administrators are trying to kill it dead, so as to turn instructors into low-paid brainless flunkers. Good professors are generally worked like Hades. Some tenure! If you want to work to death, you might as well be an army grunt.

Whenever you have that much money floating about at the top institutions, you attract all manner of administrative thieves who want to glorify themselves. We will see, soon enough, the Vegas-style endowment investors, the faculty union buster presidents, the political appointee presidents, big-time football as a tulip craze, and the wildly shallow college degree. These all cheapen colleges.

Praying for an economic collapse so that big time colleges will suffer is like praying for high oil prices so that Exxon/Mobil will go out of business. It's the little guys who will get the ax.

Whose is Nellie Mae? Gee, does Sallie have another brother or sister out there?

How about making "college" free for all students? Any increase in the well educated citizen will be a benefit for society at large.

I don't care how much this would cost.

Although it is worth attempting to understand, the economic and political environment in the U.S. is so complex that it is difficult to comprehend with accuracy, and therefore more difficult to extrapolate the proper policy direction for Education. We have chosen to misrepresent the truth in economics for political reasons, and now find ourselves groping with problems utilizing cooked numbers. Policy makers who are navigating in the fog tend to seek a comfortable economic cushion to protect their institutions. Steep tuition increases seek to establish that cushion. It's a "me first" economic environment and Education is not exempt. I believe that the blunt instrument of rapidly rising tuition will soon result in significantly declining enrollments thereby exacerbating the problem, and require further tuition increases. This process does not appear to be sustainable and will probably necessitate innovation for institutional survival. We are witnessing the effects of rapid change on institutions ill equipped to manage it. Ultimately creative minds working in a management architecture designed to thrive in an environment of hyper-change will produce the needed innovations. There will likely be as many creative answers as there are institutions, with each one uniquely positioning itself to achieve it's unique mission. Rapid change spikes complexity. This is not easy stuff.

As I look at the pack of highly-educated lawyers in Congress, I wonder what has all this higher education really meant to America. As I look at the vote counts, I wonder where has all the higher education gone to in this nation? As I look at the POTUS, I say Thanks a Lot, Yale!

Learning and Wisdom are NOT the same thing. Education and Ignorance sometimes coexist. Witness the Hoover Institute at Stanford

At times it seems The State pays through the nose for students to get educated enough to get license to be able to go out and screw the people of The State over. Business Schools in particular seem to be especially good at turning out these types. And they are booming in Bush League America. Education is being taken over by the philistines and moneychangers and right-wing extremists.

Gee, and I thought universities were meant to give 'Liberal' educations (but say that and get pilloried by right-wing neanderthal conservatives and Horowitz-hypocrites). I thought 'universe'-ities were meant to give people the wisdom of ages, the science of the cosmos, the knowledge and experience of the wider world, tolerance and independence of thought, and a view of humanity as not just an Economic Statistic.

But now universities themselves are caught up in the mindset of the Neo-Con capitalist free-market paradigm, justifying their funding with 'job creation' and 'student corpse counting' and 'ass kissing' to the powers of the day, and not in the preservation and dissemination of wisdom and knowledge and enlightenment. So to my mind they have gone right off the rails, and no longer deserve as much support.

College is now advertised as 'The Way to Get Ahead of The Other Guy in the Every Man For Himself DogEatDog Rat Race this world has become', to make its ticket price worth it. Its graduates, for example, lawyers, no longer serve justice, but Mammon, and justify this by intimating, "well looky at all my edjicashun whut I gotta pay back the loans on."

We must now endeavor to free higher education from the trap of greed and moneygrubbing. It must obtain autonomy from the commercial world, or it will continue a downward spiral into degeneracy and irrelevance.

Meanwhile, the high schools are neglected and their degrees are now not worth the paper they are printed on. The elementary schools are crowded and starved, as they are under-appreciated as well. These facts underlie the horrendous drop-out rates of America today; because students do not get proper foundations at school or home, nor hope of getting through the expense of college, they give up trying.

We need to stop using colleges and universities just to sop up people. We must put value back in elementary and high schools again, making the 'high' school degree mean something. We must quit marking everyone for college. Many are not meant for it and even thrive outside its structures. We must make the total education system expense-free and free-of-interference right through advanced degrees and post-doctorate education, but also maintain different paths to a good life for those who may not flourish in a college setting.

This will take some of the crowding out of colleges, and so relieve the pressure to build and expand at great expense. This will inspire more people to stay in high school. This will take the debt load off higher education and thus much of the greed motive during and after higher education.

And teaching at any level must obtain the respect it deserves as the noble profession it can be. Education must now be saved from the purgatory of commerce and the grubby money world. For it makes the future as almost no other endeavor does, and the centuries-long free and universal and liberal education system of this country is what has given it the greatness it has.

But right now, the foundations of all levels of education need the labors of a Hercules to clean out the noxious Augean mess of Republican, fundamentalist, right-wing, and commercial interference, moneylust, and corruption.

College is FREE FREE FREE in Sweden, Norway, Germany, France, Denmark, Switzerland... I could go on. And all of those countries kick our american asses on every aptitude test known to educated man.

"Danish Education:
The tuition-less system

Because the politics of Denmark are based on a welfare-state model, almost all educational institutes in Denmark are free.
To further assist students in Denmark, all Danish citizens (and many others meeting certain criteria) are offered a bursary, called "SU" (Statens Uddannelsesstøtte which translates to The State's Educational Support), which totals about DKK 2,412 monthly if you live with your parents or former guardians, and about DKK 4,852 monthly if you live away from your parents or former guardians. The bursary is considered income and a high tax has to be paid resulting in a maximum bursary of DKK 3,600 monthly.
Literacy in Denmark is approximately 99% for both men and women.

German Education:
"All courses at the roughly 250 classic universities and universities of applied sciences are - like any school in Germany - are free. One might also say the government offers a full scholarship to everyone."

Swedish Education:
"Higher education is free of charge, both for Swedes and for foreigners."

Norwegian Education:
"Public education is free....Higher education in Norway is offered by a range of seven universities, five specialised colleges, 25 university colleges as well as a range of private colleges. Education follows the Bologna process involving Bachelor (3 years), Master (2 years) and Doctor (4 years) degrees."

French Education:
"Students in France have the right to be admitted to a university in the academy in which they passed the baccalauréat.
Higher Education
Another characteristic is the low tuition costs. Since higher education is funded by the state, the fees are very low: the tuition varies from 150€ to 700€ depending on the university and the different levels of education (licence, master, doctorat). One can therefore get a Master's degree (in 5 years) for about 750-3,500€. Additionally, students from low-income families can apply for scholarships, paying nominal sums for tuition or textbooks, and even getting a monthly stipend."

I appreciate the authors efforts at putting a cap on tuition... but you gotta admit the United States is just a second world nation... slipping towards third world gas station nation status.

People are already learning more from the Internet than they do in school. You will see more Internet based schooling offering degrees to reduce both the high cost of the education as well as to reduce the carbon footprint (with the high cost of oil and prices more people will want a good education without having to travel the distance, pay for parking, spend time in traffic, etc. Schools will have to offer courses through the Internet and a person will be able to choose the course(s) that suits him/her best from a variety of schools whether public or private (or a possible mix of the two depending on the professor and popularity of the course). Schools will be forced to do this with the current prices, inflation, and economic decline for the middle class. Everyone wants to better themselves, the answer is what is the best education at an affordable cost. If overhead is costing so much than Internet based facilities will be the new paradigm while allowing for the close social interaction while using cameras to connect to others worldwide (thus providing the multicultural and global perspective), and video and Youtube etc. This is already happening for those who are unable to afford the high cost of higher education and combined with a public library this can be an affordable and sound education incorporating writing, language, technology. The class could even be taught while trekking in woods with satellite while doing an environment. I believe Universities as we know them will be forced to change....free and accessible technology is changing the model. Necessity is the mother of invention.

Poet Says:

"I congratulate you on both your scholarship and occupation."

For which I thank him/her,

and asks:

"I will assume for the present that you are one of those professors who actually teach",

To which I answer "yes",

then goes on to say:

"Sadly, there are many with your title who use graduate assistants to do much of their teaching work while they work on their next book or other research publication.

Others are using their access to the University community to coordinate their research projects, (often funded by grants from private business or government grants)."

And I would have to honestly say that I am also one of those to whom you refer. However, the facts are a bit more complicated than that. The myth of the non-teaching prof is often just that, a myth. Except for a small number of faculty who hold research appointments, all faculty at my uni teach regularly, and even those in research appointments usually teach one course per year. My contract is 50/40/10 -- which means I am to allocate 50% of my time to research, 40% to teaching, and 10% to professional service. This is a very common profile for a professor at a research university (which I am). Faculty at teaching oriented institutions probably have different profiles and teach more courses, but generally everyone is expected to do both teaching and research.

And yes, grad students do teach. In my department, they teach all the labs and some of the lecture classes. This is done for three reasons; 1) as part of their apprenticeship, so they will know how to teach when teh time comes for them to take a faculty position, 2) so we can offer more courses in our department, and 3) because we pay them, and teaching is how they earn their salary. However, no grad students ever teach 'my' classes -- I teach those. True, I do occasionally miss class for a variety of reasons, mostly travel to meetings or for research purposes, and when I do I sometimes ask one of my students to fill in for me. I would NEVER require a student to teach my entire course for me, though. This is extremely unethical. I won't say that it never happens elsewhere, but I know for sure its rare. In fact, it seem that whenever I try to call my colleagues, seems they are either in class, or preparing for class.

And yes, I do receive considerable amounts of government and private funding to support my research. My work involves studying the effects of environmental changes on health and disease. This is not the sort of thing that most corporations will pay for. In fact, since the closing of Bell labs, there are almost no private sector entities left that truly support basic research. They want applied research, not basic science. Even the bucks they ship to campus are usually for development of some specific thing that they can use to make money. Nearly all basic science work done in universities (in the US that is, it's different elsewhere) is paid for by federal agencies. Grant getting is extremely competitive -- only about 10% of all grants are funded. I need about $250K per year to run my very modest lab. An average grant in my field is about $500-$1000K, which I usually need to share with two or three other investigators, not to mention the 46% my university takes off the top in order to pay for lights, electricity, infrastructure, office staff, phones, etc. etc. (this rake-off, by the way, provides about 40% of the total operating budget of the university when you consider all the grants on campus). Simple arithmetic would suggest that I need to submit about 20-25 grant proposals every year to keep up. Each grant proposal is essential like writing a short story -- about 50 pages long when you count the description of the project, background of the investigators, budget, etc., and I am a little fish compared to the big guns in chemistry and physics. In the meantime I also have to write research reports and papers for publication, supervise my students (and help them get published), serve on committees, teach classes, attend meetings, review other peoples papers and grants, and occasionally even give talks about my work to politicians, who (especially if they happen to be republican) quite often ask me in a very supercilious way what I do with my time since in their opinion I only 'really' work for the six hours per week that I am actually in class. Do you begin to see why we get a little touchy about this subject?

Again, enough with the ranting. Recycle 1 -- no offense to Madison, it's one of my favorite places. To be honest, I have had three international trip this past year (work-related) so I am not really in a position to complain, even though I do it anyway.

I think there has been some unfair broadsides against Ted Rall in this forum. Ted Rall is hardly expressing contempt towards education, or claiming that educators are greedy or corrupt.

What he has primarily highlighted regarding the increasing corporatizing of universities and colleges is essentially correct. This process began in the earnest from the trickle-down Reagan years, and has gone on unabated since.

I too have been a university faculty my entire career, and have observed the enormous decline in open-ended education, and intellectual exchange that ought to be the goals of higher education. Even in the very early '80s, I would still find free discussions on college campuses on matters of national and global interest. Corrupt politicians and rogue governments would be ridiculed, satirized and indeed taken to task through a variety of forums.

Since the arrival of the neo-fascist neo-con government, which has co-opted all branches of government- discourse on college campuses has become nothing but a hushed silence. It is either compliance or silence, driven by fear. Fear precisely of the likes of David Horowitz, and the Big Brother spy machine. I find it disturbing that one correspondent places Ward Churchill (perhaps an academic equivalent of Jeremiah Wright) on the same platform as David Horowitz. By that token, I suppose there are those that see no difference between a Martin Luther King, Jr., and a Joseph McCarthy.

Colleges are indeed being largely run as for-profit corporations, and in many instances the administrators are behaving as CEOs. As Rall correctly alludes, particularly suspect are the so-called prestige schools. These have become significantly lobby-driven, unprincipled, and in many cases, mouthpieces of the government.

If Lee Bollinger's public performance at Columbia vis-a-vis a head of state of a sovereign nation was any example- it is amply clear how political lobbies and the college CEOs are in bed together. The price of education in this country, where the prosperity of the nation ought to have made the highest education readily accessible to its poorest and most needy (much the same way that it would find the means of providing lifelong healthcare for its citizens- before selling the great American name brand before the entire world)- has become nothing short of a disgrace. It is true that the infrastructure and facilities are crumbling at many, many educational institutions (especially the public ones). But it is not these that Rall is railing against.

What Rall exposes as scandalous is the CEO-style running of this country's education system (especially post-secondary). This is the same scandal that has plagued its failed CEO p-Resident and the fear-mongering imperial tyranny run by that individual and his many enablers. Several of these, incidentally, conveniently assume (or previously held) - lucrative university posts (John Woo, John Sununu, Donald Rumsfeld, well, almost; the current Secretary of State- to name just a few) at high profile universities, and continue to influence destructive policies of profit and plunder worldwide. These things have absolutely nothing to do with education and enlightenment. After all, is it not ironic that universities actually put out the welcome mat for political ideologues that actually profess that intellectualism is some kind of disease (a favorite of the intellectually deficient right-wing noise machine)?

I have been a college counselor and adjunct instructor at a mid-sized, four year 'state' college for the past sixteen years... and frankly, Rall does not know what he is talking about. Believe me, NO college likes raising tuition but we are increasingly faced with circumstances that are unprecedented. In the face of rapidly declining state support, we are at the same time seeing skyrocketing numbers of students coming to college with serious mental and physical illnesses. Today's parents demand high levels of attention and assistance; we are expected, in fact, to serve as surrogate parents. It is simply not possible to provide adequate medical and psychological care without staffing, and that costs money. If we have even a one-week 'wait' list for counseling, the students and their parents raise cain about it.

Today's parents and students want only the best, and yet no one wants to pay for it. That's the problem. Not to mention the fact that there are serious ethical problems with admitting increasing numbers of students who have a history of serious mental illness if you're not able to provide the services they need to keep them safe. We now have more crisis situations in a week than we used to have in an entire semester back when I first started working in the early 90's. College students are a volatile, crisis-prone group, and the level of suicidality is astounding. We are constantly fighting a battle to stay 'on top' of the large numbers of at-risk students in our school. And that's just ONE issue.

If you want tuition to stay low, I have a suggestion. Have the kids live at home and commute; in other words, get rid of all the 'support' systems that students and their parents depend on (because they cost money) and provide nothing but classes. Or go to 'online' education, that's even cheaper. Of course, then the students would miss out on the priceless growth experience of living on a campus, but hey... it's your decision to make.

And believe me, none of us is making a bundle. I can't believe there is anyone in this country who actually thinks college professors earn high salaries. Maybe a few superstars do, but the vast majority of us live very modestly indeed.

This article disappoints me.

I actually do think there are potential silver linings in economic collapse but I think it is weird that Mr. Rail has singled out student loans to make his point.

A collapse of economics as we know it could provide multiple silver linings.

Price fixing might be one reason.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101970317-137412,00.html

"For years a group of America's most influential schools traded data on tuition policies. Penn, Harvard, M.I.T., Princeton, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth and Yale shared information about future tuition rates and fees, agreed never to grant aid solely on the basis of a student's academic merit, and met to negotiate how much need-based financial aid should be offered to individual students accepted by two or more of the member institutions. Ostensibly the goal of this "Overlap Group," dismantled in 1991 after a two-year federal antitrust investigation, was to equalize the amount of money a given student's family would be required to contribute and thus keep price from clouding the student's decision. In practice, by liberating schools from price competition, the arrangement may have allowed them to boost tuitions to artificially high levels and, thanks to imitation by others, drive up tuition throughout the country.

Surprisingly little of what went on during meetings of the Overlap Group ever made it into the press, but documents generated by the federal investigation challenge the popular view of academe as a bastion of high-minded collegiality. At regular intervals, financial-aid officers met to compare the aid packages each planned to offer individual students. When variances arose, the group agreed to split the difference. In one case, M.I.T.'s assistant aid director found himself compelled to increase a family's contribution more than 30%. Next to the student's name, he wrote, "Don't like it, but..." then went ahead and raised it. The cost to a school of defying the group was simply too high. A Dartmouth official fretted, "We would effectively be out of the Ivy League, and this would have a serious impact on our applicant pool."

The Overlap arrangement, says Keith Leffler, a University of Washington antitrust economist who testified for the government, allowed member schools to raise their gross tuition (now often called the "sticker price") to very high levels without scaring off talented low-income students. The wealthiest students would come no matter what, and might even be attracted by the high prices. Says Leffler: "There's no doubt [Overlap] artificially inflated tuition prices."

One issue of course is that CPI is simply a lie, so tuitions are rising faster than inflation, but inflation is not what we are told it is.

The other issue is that when credit becomes too easy, people don't worry as much about the price. When I went to university in the 70's the limit was 7,500, the rest was paid out of pocket unless you qualified for financial aid. I got another 1,500 in financial aid. So I paid 6000 out of pocket from working. I owed money from my last semester, they refused to give me my diploma until it was paid (I found that out on graduation day when instead of a diploma I received a notice to pay up), but Volcker had just triggered a recession and despite getting an engineering degree, jobs were scarce, so I bounced a check, got my diploma, and they sent a collection company after me, and I eventually paid it off after working out a payment plan with the collector who took his cut, and the university took a loss as I would have paid them directly on my own. Today this university charges in one year twice as much as the entire 5 year program cost me from 77-82, or 10 times. CPI says it would have went up 2.65 times, if tracking inflation per CPI (actual inflation is 7.32 times per shadowstats).

John Freeman:

Excellent! I certainly agree with your remarks about the dumbed-down society. One case in point but it could be multiplied into the millions. I was in the Army during the sixties and seventies (eight years) and a young good ol' boy from Kentucky in my platoon came down on levy (orders-reassignment) for Germany. He said, "Sarge, how far is Germany from Europe? I'd like to take leave and go there." I gave him a fatherly look, and asked him to repeat the question. He asked the same thing. Paternal instinct and all, I said (I won't use his name) "Soldier, one of them is a country and one is a continent. Which fits into which?" His eyes crossed, he scratched his head as if I asked him to explain 'Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principal' and he said, "I remember learning about it in school, but that was a long time ago." I knew his age but asked him anyway. ""22, Sarge," he replied. True story!

Galen: Right on!

John F. Butterfield: Very good! I remember a segment of '60 Minutes', many years ago about Norway and how they didn't mind paying high taxes because the money was put to good use and accounted for. They couldn't understand why Americans worship millionaires and billionaires, especially by people living week to week.

Balakirev: Also good comments.

Most of our best minds in science and engineering are employed by the death and destruction industry. That's where the big bucks are. And almost as bad are the overpaid, glorified "pencil-pushers' with their MBA's who have done an outstanding job of destroying the infrastructure of the United States and have carpetbagged our manufacturing base abroad, using exploited labor. These executive types have no allegiance to the country or the public and make sure they smear their palms with Crisco before shaking hands with the politicians who legislate for "them."

Higher education or the much neglected trade schools of the past should be totally funded by our tax dollars. No student loans, period! Slash the military budget by two-thirds and re-allocate that money for schooling, starting from kindergarten through post-graduate school and for our "disapearing" trade schools. We can learn a lot from the Germans on that one. And, something dear to me and to many of you. Help organic farmers with our tax dollars to grow the healthiest, nourishing foods possible, free of all this GMO crap! Survival 101> You don't eat, you don't live. Even Bill Gates and Warren Buffett can't digest their "legal tender." They need food like the rest of us!

dgoodin wonders:

And I ask:

What indulgent lifestyle are you referring to here? I am a tenured full professor at my university, which means that among the faculty I am on the highest rung. Granted, I'm not exactly headed for the poor house, but I make less than half of what a close colleague I know in the private sector makes. Among faculty in the humanities, it's even worse. Many are forced to share offices and live on salaries than many graduating students with MBAs or BSEs would laugh at.

***************

I congratulate you on both your scholarship and occupation.
I will assume for the present that you are one of those professors who actually teach.

Sadly, there are many with your title who use graduate assistants to do much of their teaching work while they work on their next book or other research publication.

Others are using their access to the University community to coordinate their research projects, (often funded by grants from private business or government grants). (Think of BP Berkeley controversy)

Still others are part of the revolving door where government service leads to university positions, leads to think tank or foundation fellowships, etc. (John Yoo, Doug Feith, and John Ashcroft to cite but three of many examples)

Then there are the big shot athletic coaches and sports programs that are actually minor league training facilities for pro sports leagues. Many of the student athletes who participate in such programs have no business in a college setting academically.

This is why I said if athletic coaches want to prepare young adults for careers in pro sports let the pro sports teams fund their acyivities.

If others want to do cutting edge research then let them hire on with some R&D department of some multi-national corporation.

Political hacks ought to have their own little gilcded cages where (like debutauntes of some bygone era) they can be political ladies-in-waiting for their debut into politically correct society or their next big extravaganza of a government appointment.

My point is that most of that has no more business in a university setting than ROTC recruiting.

I might as well own up: I am another one of those tenured full professors living off the fat of the land. Here I am, driving around in my 15-year-old car, living in a house without a dishwasher or air conditioner, playing Russian roulette with Priceline, Hotline, etc, so that I can get airfare and hotel rates that I can (almost) afford to attend conventions. (I stayed in a student hostel at the last one).

I don't really mind it all that much that after a BA two MAs a PhD and a post-doc at a world-class university and 25 years on the job I earn ALMOST what someone with a 4-year business degree does. After all, if there weren't people like me on the job willing to work for laughably low wages, the fools on Wall Street would be even more illiterate, and might even come up with even more vicious schemes than the sub-prime fiasco.

What I do mind is that self-declared pundits like the fool who wrote this piece don't have a CLUE about what is going on....or the grace to keep their ignorance and misplaced resentment of the better educated to themselves.

"Public schools are nearly as greedy. Over the last five years, they've hiked tuition 31 percent faster than inflation. According to the AP, it's "the worst record on college prices of any five-year period covered by the survey dating back 30 years.""

Well, that might have something to do with the fact that since George Bush has been President of the United States, Federal grants and spending to states has seen serious cut- backs leaving states to foot the bill for everything that assists the safety and welfare of citizens in this country. In fact, I just heard that Governor Duval Patrick of Massachusetts is borrowing some $3 Billion dollars just to fix the hazardous bridges in that state to prevent unecessary deaths that would occur if the bridges collapse.

It's the "private institutions" that increase tuitions because they "can", while "public institutions" increase them because they "must" if they are to survive.

What will the colleges and universities do if the fool who wrote this gets his way?

What many of them have already begun to do: cut positions (and entire departments)in areas that do not make money for the universities through grants from big pharma, DoD contracts, 'private' money for profitable genomic and biowarfare applications, etc. Philosophy departments, language departments, religious studies and classics departments....all have suffered huge budget cuts. Another 'useless' (i.e., not corporate money-making) subject is English; here, too, there have been serious cutbacks....despite the fact that the literacy of Americans continues to decline at a frightening pace.

The LAST thing we need to do in this country is starve education. (Well...maybe the SECOND to last: the dumbest may be not maintaining the infrastructure.)

Dog-in-the-manger thinking is NEVER the solution.

dgoodin-we live just outside of Madison, my husband is with UW-Extension. Quite the jet setting pace you're keeping.

Here in Wisconsin, we are mostly a manufacturing, blue collar state. I'd like to see more emphasis on getting HS kids to do trades if that is what they are interested in. Hard to outsource electricians and plumbers. But that would require parents and public schools to stop with the "college is the best post HS experience" rhetoric.

I went to 2 large uni's - one public and one private. The amount of waste at both places was shocking. After these experiences, my attitude is that higher education is a scam. The five year return on investment for most careers after a college degree is actually negative because the cost of education is so high. More money from the state, feds, or gi bill will just go into more waste not better education. The educational system is not run for the benefit of the student, it was created so people with connections to money and power would have low stress sinecures. The lie is that you need a college education to get a job and unfortunately that lie has spread to the point where you need a 4 year degree to get an entry level $500/week job. I say let the universities starve and the absurd job requirements corporations demand nowadays will whither.

Poet Said:

"So after coleges and universities can't shakedown middle and working class kids to finance their indulgent lifestyles, to whom will they run to support them in the manner to which they have grown accustomed?"

And I ask:

What indulgent lifestyle are you referring to here? I am a tenured full professor at my university, which means that among the faculty I am on the highest rung. Granted, I'm not exactly headed for the poor house, but I make less than half of what a close colleague I know in the private sector makes. Among faculty in the humanities, it's even worse. Many are forced to share offices and live on salaries than many graduating students with MBAs or BSEs would laugh at.

Repob Said:

"The big money boys have bought off enough of the academics to get their way. New cars, granite countertops and jet set vacations are what's important to way too many PhD's these days..."

And I ask:

Can you please tell me where I can get a hold of one of these Big Money Boys? I just bought a new truck last week to replace my twelve year old, 125,000 mile clunker after its engine seized. The new one is costing me about $23K, every frickin' dime of which comes from my pocket. My new counter tops are Corian, and my last jet trip was to Madison, Wis in the coach section of the plane. I need about $500K to hire students, update software licenses, and buy some faster computers, all to complete some (rather modest) research projects. Also, my lab could really use a ceiling, so if you know some addresses, could you please spill?

tj -- I hear ya. Hang in there...

Rebel Farmer -- Well said.

Barak Obama and Jim Webb ought to be a done deal as the Democratic national ticket to win and to deserve to win.

In my state(PA)we had PHEEA, now they are bankrupt? Why, because they were stealing money from funds for our childrens education. My daughter, the 30 yr old, wento Loyola in New Orleans, then University of the Arts in Philly and finally Temple. She went out on her own and instead of asking me the best route to take she consolidated her loans with nary a bit of guidance. Who holds this loan? CITI, those F$$KS. I pay the loan now but I will get her to take this tidbit of advice, "Die with your loans", take a class or two that are not in the field of the Degree you hold, change up every semester or two. You pay the minimum like $45/month, keep it up until you die. F$$K THEM! Her degree is in Religion, and she wants to attend Harvard Divinity, not because she is a freaky religious zealot because she loves the study of ALL world religions and the debates it provokes, but she is a writer so what time?
I am a Vet from the 70's so my education was paid for, these kids today are screwed.

Thank you MomO. Educators get blamed for many things that are not their fault. Public schools (and colleges) have taken the brunt of a myth cteated by the study "A Nation at Risk" that "proved' that public schools were mediocre. It was written by Bill Bennett, the pope of the necons. Since the 80's even people who should know better scream about out failing public schools. I admit that some public schools are failing because of severe underfunding and the institutionalization of poverty and de facto economic segregation, but most children in public school do learn.
Teachers Unions, the dreaded NEA and the AFT, have been made into demons and even been accused of being terrorists. So thank you, MomO for hanging in there for so long,and when you retire, may your state funded pension be generous.

The student loan racket is just one aspect of the insidious tactics of the "merchants of debt", along with sub prime mortgage loans and personal credit card debts. It's the first step in getting hooked into the system which is now collapsing in on itself.

BTW it's not education, it's indoctrination.

I have taught for twenty-one years in a public community college that has done everything in its power to hold down tuition costs. Even the baccalaureate degrees we offer cost less than $5000 a year for tuition--these days, a bargain. We have dedicated faculty and staff and a surprising number of good students. Our graduates include doctors, lawyers, writers, teachers, professors, politicians, and members of various skilled trades. What we don't have are the following: residence halls, athletic teams, enough money for the number of teachers we need, and prestige.

My humble contribution to the financial aid debate is the suggestion that the amount of federal aid be fixed, and if a student chooses to go to an expensive school, that student, his or her family, and the school in question should find the money, not the taxpayer.

I briefly dreamed that after the fall of the USSR the US could become the educators of the world. Send everyone home to their nations with our ideals firmly instilled. We spent the money on more weapons and fewer liberties instead. I guess our ideals and our Constitution were just fairy tales - like Santa and the Easter bunny.

The last time I was with a group of people including both college students and middle aged adults, the conversation turned to the treatment of prisoners and social inequities.
One college student, who is pre-med, asked "What's waterboarding?" (I explained).
The recent collage graduate asked, "Who is Charles Dickens?" (I just sat there in shock!)
What are they teaching these kids in college???

The key is to support the essential principle that education is essential for democracy.

The money is there. We spend what, $200 billion a year on the wars. Plus another $600 billion a year on the Pentagon in general. We could easily finance both public local schools and free college education at public universities with that money.

Its all a question of priorities. Since the people are not allowed to have a say on our priorities (note the Democrats and Republicans in complete agreement to fund the war and to raise Pentagon spending), we don't get to put the money where it would do us all some good ... like good, free public education.

The money is there. We just need to spend it in the right places. We should eliminate the idea of student loans, but replace it with free public college educations for all who can do the work.

To use a very old bumper sticker ... "It will be a great day when the schools have all the money they need, and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a new bomber."

I think the whole concept of education needs to be turned on its head. With technology advancing the way it is, by the time you graduate from college what you learned is obsolete or the job you were preparing for has been moved to India. All the system we have now does is set you up for a lifetime of debt servitude and limit your freedom. Which is probably the point, anyway. Besides, all the great American inventors and artists - The Wright Brothers, Thomas Edison, Steve Jobs, Elvis Presley, Jimi Hendrix - either dropped out of college or never went in the first place. Edison only had three months of official schooling, for that matter. Didn't seem to hurt him.

Peasant serfs don't need education. They need programming. They don't need health care, their lives are supposed to be ugly, brutish, and short. Peasant serfs don't need a Constitution or a Bill of Rights or a right to organize for better conditions. Peasant serfs in fact, have no rights that any richfilth animal need ever concern themselves with. Peasant serfs are merely the necessary evil in Master's otherwise perfect Slave Plantation Empire. Meat for the Machine. The perfect Machine.

Suck on the drugged lollipop, the Dr. says it's good for you, says so in your RDIF chip. Everybody been numbered and stamped like cattle in the stockyards. How's it feel being an animal waiting for your turn into the blades? You going to go like a helpless sheep into the slaughterhouse?

From 40 years ago, "What's your number? Did you get a high one? Got told about a guy got a '35', two weeks in country. That's it."

What's your number? You got a high one or are you one of the ones right up close on the blades? America has abandoned you like the millions upon millions who were thrown under the bus for the last 35 years. Don't pray to Jesus, he died from all the butchery in his name. Your only prayer is to shut this government down, and you won't. You'd rather go to the camps, quietly.

What's your number.

Peece.

I do not agree when anyone suggests that someone else make the sacrifice. If a person feels that sacrifice is necessary, let that person make the sacrifice himself,or herself.

These are lives and futures of countless young people. Abandoning them and their needs is, in my view, a serious problem, not any solution. While I hear the screaming need for solutions, I don't agree with "globalizing" the problem,or the all-or-nothing approach to solutions. I believe there are many, many solutions if taken on a smaller scale state by state. I have far more faith in human imagination, creativity, skill, intelligence and the ability of people to work together for solutions than this author, apparently.

On this point, I would agree with the author, that the federal government is not a wise choice of solutions to this problem. What's far wiser, in my view, is that we look to ourselves to solve these problems state by state, in the states where we live. An exception to this could be the educational needs of veterans, in which case, the mother-lode Pentagon budget might be the solution.

For non-Vet's, my guess is that educational solutions could be worked out at the state and local level. Let the people of Massachusetts address the college tuition problem within Massachusetts and work with the Governor and colleges to solve it. Same with each state.

I've had no luck with my internet search, although there has been a successful program that started in Vermont, I think, for college students to have major tuition reductions from participating in routine maintenance work done on campus: plumbing, heating, repair, janitorial, et al. Many colleges have big old drafty plants that are very expensive to maintain and operate, and some colleges have eliminated the maintenance staff -- with the exception of some essential ones for the purpose of safety and teaching the students -- in favor of the students doing this work.
While this isn't the only solution, it is, at least,
one solution that's been successful enough to have spread to many more colleges in more states.

I agree with the author that the exhorbitant cost of college is outrageous and in some, not all cases, greedy.
Assumption and generalities don't help. There's a need for the specifics, school by school.

I do not agree with the author's solution to "sacrifice" an entire generation of young people, either. We are fully capable of thinking in new ways, thinking out of the box, deploying new, creative and different solutions to the college tuition problem -- college by college, state by state. In my view, we have moral responsibilities to do so. Let's find solutions --with heart-- which respect young people and give eager, bright students deserving of equal opportunities to achieve his/her full human potential in this lifetime.

"It's easy to see why: since 1980, tuition at private institutions has gone up at triple the rate of inflation, and twice the rate of people's salaries. As Timothy Egan noted in The Times, 'If the cost of milk had risen as fast as college since 1980…a gallon would be $15.'"

This makes the volunteer military option more likely, eh?

how about we bring back the free state schools and start competing again?

Mr Butterfield:

Don't you realize that we have nothing to learn from other countries, except, possibly, methods used by nations like Israel to slaughter, torture, and control their subject peoples.

The expanding use of 12 ft tall containment walls in Baghdad are a fantastic idea. (Oops! Didn't the leadership cadre of East Germany try the same thing?)

Back to not needing to learn. Why do you think our corporate-owned news media never bombard us with successful instances, within other nations, of public education, public transportation, national healthcare delivery systems, public housing, free higher education, etc.?

These models are not supposed to work.

Unfortunately, during the anti-Commy crusade, all "left"-oriented academics, bureaucrats, and public servants were rooted out. Many of them had gained valuable experiences during the Great Depression.

After WWII, that bunch was wiped out of our history, public consciousness and political debate.

In fact, most of our plutocratic culture has repeatly presented Leftist public intellectuals and progressive bureaucrats in completely negative terms.

Not only does the mass media present(ed) such people negatively, this same media also dismissed the ideas of these earlier progressive public servants as unworkable and,of course, there was (and is) usually a malevalent intention assumed to be
the main factor that motivates their public concerns and solutions.

Now that we need such a foundation, it isn't there.

So, only private bureaucratic solutions to social problems are offered during the course of public and political debate. Unfortunately, these bureaucrats are not interested in the public weal. They are interested in assured government contracts (gained via lobbyists) and unearned profits.

Of course, these private bureaucracies are not interested in accountability; as a result they also lobby for deregulation or unenforcement of any regulation that might hold them accountable, responsible and answerable to the rule of law.

Welcome to the era of gangster capitalism.

" If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want to get an education go to the library" Frank Zappa

My favorite quote on education.

The public university I graduated from in 1981 was slightly shabby and comfortable. It is now a 'major research university' with a 'commitment to architectural innovation'. There are no more worn leather couches in large common rooms where a student can sleep off a hangover. Most of the new buildings look like cartoon versions of LSD trips. I don't know about anybody else, but brick walls that curve in the vertical jus' don' quite look right to me. The faculty used to have decent jobs and comfortable, shabby quarters. They don't seem to have decent jobs now, but their digs are first class. There are a whole bunch more administrators now, and the 'CEO' makes around $600K a year. Oh, and I wouldn't be able to afford to work my way through the place now.

The big money boys have bought off enough of the academics to get their way. New cars, granite countertops and jet set vacations are what's important to way too many PhD's these days. And it's not just the PhD's but the whole educated class. I doubt if this late-Imperial behavior will go on for much longer but what do I know? What I do find interesting though is the number of properous Mennonite and Amish people now in the rural counties here in southern Ohio. Whatever you think of their way of life, those people sure don't serve the beast and the beast doesn't seem very likely to take them down with it.

". . . it is no small thing that countries now exist, like Finland,
which operate under egalitarian principles,
which have virtually abolished poverty,
which provide almost-free quality health care to all their people,
and provide free, high quality education from child care to graduate school.
These are models, it seems to me, that we can learn from."

http://sanders.senate.gov/news/record.cfm?id=295314

Thank you dgoodin for isolating the critical quote. This piece is truly shallow, incorrect and flat-out STUPID! It reeks with the self-destructive anti-intellectualism that is an article of faith in this country, apparently including the left, if Rall is any representative.

I am involved in higher education in Texas, the second most-populous state in the Union. The state portion of funding for public higher ed has declined from about 40% a decade ago to about 18% today. The same thing is happening in New York.

Both are wealthy states. Texas has the 15th largest GDP on Earth. Despite that, other than UT Austin and A&M College station (which have an "oil money" endowment) and a select few medical research universities, nearly every higher ed institution is broke to the point of bankruptcy.

This is because Texas does not have a progressive graduated income tax that would provide sufficient money for education and other desperately-needed public functions.

I imagine that Rall, who often writes on this progressive website, opposes progressive taxation as well. I know the vast majority of Texans do and imagine that most US citizens do as well. And so we are in some really deep shit here.

But Rall, and others who cheer the economically disaster that we find ourselves in, seem to believe that they are somehow immune to its enormous and quite horrible consequences for this nation and all of humanity.

Nice...

the only true education would regard individual lifechoices and the resulting impact on our sensitive ecology...since this is not permitted, all subsequent 'education' is nothing but dancing around true knowledge and responsibility to train automaton consumers...who cares what branch of this crapola you major in? Why bother, when it all becomes immoral truth-and-responsibility-avoidance in the end, anyway?
Buy their toxic crap, eat their altered food, drink their bottled water, breathe their cancerous air, pay through the nose for their 'approved' medical treatment for diseases their industry likely caused in you...but, you got an 'education', so you're okay...

Education, like health care and prisons, should be non-profit, period. If universities and colleges want to conduct research, then they need to raise funds independently. If a doctor wants wealth, he/she is welcome to specialize in elective medicine and waste their lives performing nose jobs for celebrities and facelifts for the elderly elite. If a corporation wants to earn taxpayer-supplied profits on the backs of criminals, they should be run out of the country.

There's plenty of ways to "earn" more money than any human could ever need 10x over - it's time America stopped confusing capitalism with Democracy and insatiable greed with success.

So after coleges and universities can't shakedown middle and working class kids to finance their indulgent lifestyles, to whom will they run to support them in the manner to which they have grown accustomed? The two most likely candidates are the Pentagon (which is the single biggest business in the US today) and multi-national corporations (think big oil, chemical companies, Wal-Mart, McDonalds, etc).

I think the prospects of that dark cloud out shadows the shine of any "gottcha" silver lining. The problem with higher education is the same as the problem with healthcare they both should be a part of the commons and not allowed to be a for profit business venture.

In exchange for taxpayer financing, colleges and universities should be made to divest themselves of all military and commercial business sponsered research. If scholarly faculty want to do research, let them go to work for some R&D business venture. The faculty at a college or university should be about teaching and mentoring the next generation of scholars.

Also things like football, basketball, and baseball programs that function as a publicly financed minor league farm system for professional sports franchises should disappear from any institution of higher learning's portfolio.

dgoodin: Thank you for your "inside" prospective.

My question is, WHY are public colleges raising tuitions? In my state it is because of the constant budget crunch. Funding education poses the same challenges as any other public program. We have so many unfunded mandates from the federal government that we are cash strapped to get anything done. The fact is that the federal government sucks out money from all of the states to fund wars and and useless earmarks, and gives nothing of substance back. ALL state programs that actually benefit its citizens suffer. Not just education.

I really don't care about what private colleges are doing about tuition. They are in the business of making money, not educating the middle class students. They ought to take those billions and invest in America by giving full scholarship grants to deserving students.

A college education (not job training to become a wage slave) should be a fundamental right for all Americans, not a priviledge. We have to have an educated citizenry to hold on to our democracy. The founding fathers knew this.

I don't know what the answers are. I do know that it is wrong to just abandon our obligation to educate our young people.

Forcing millions of (mostly lower middle and lower class) kids to drop out of college is good for them? Good for the US?

Yeah, just what we need. A dumber country ...

ClassAct,
What you said.

When I saw an article by Ted Rall called, "The Silver Lining of Economic Collapse," I thought it would be something interesting. There are many potential silver linings of the collapse of consumerism. But this is hardly where I would start. Not that there isn't a lot to criticize about the education system.

"The Silver Lining of Economic Collapse"

America is broke - both monitarily and morally. The Magna Carta is in ashes. Any organism like our American Republic dies when too many of the parts become malignant. I think Menry Miller put his finger on it in 'Tropic Of Cancer' where the only way up was through complete degredation and collapse. Our world must be overturned if the Phoenix is ever to rise from the ashes of this Holocaust. This will be a very painful Neo American Century.

P.S. Perhaps Mr. Bush should take up golf again rather than maiming and murdering the innocent.

"For several years, few poor and middle-class kids would be able to afford college. To be sure, it would be a painful transition. Millions of kids would drop out, forced to defer their dreams. But it would be good in the long run — for the country and even for them."

Oh, yes, let's by all means do everything we can to make a college education inaccessible to all except the rich elites. That way we can establish an even more government of, by and for the elite. We need to keep those lower and middle class bums in their places after all.

Good comment above by John Freeman, too.

Kent Shaw

"The economy may suck, but the last thing the nation's colleges and universities need is more money. There are exceptions, but most are awash in cash."

My (public) university has over 100 million dollars in deferred building maintenance costs because the state doesn't supply nearly enough funding. Even though we have increased our extramural funding by 100% over the past ten years, it's still not enough. Last year, a water pipe broke in the ceiling of our 106 year old building, partially flooding a lab and nearly destroying several very, very expensive computers. We're awash alright, but not in cash. What building money we do get has gone to building desperately-needed new facilities, because the influx of students has created the need,however this means that my new faculty colleague cannot get her lab completed so she can do the research necessary to get tenure and hang on to her job and continue making her manifestly not-upscale salary. In the meantime, students complain because tuition increases and the legislature complains because; 1) our programs aren't ranked high enough nationally, and 2) we spend too much time doing research. Of course, these bright sparks don't realize that the quality of research is what national rankings are based on! I might add that none of these things are unusual -- nearly everyone I know works for some university of other, and we all seem to have the same problems. For example, the State of Colorado provides only 7% of the operating budget for its flagship university! In the meantime, all over the country religious conservative fundamentalists blame us for 'indoctrinating' their kids with radical ideas like evolution, environmentalist fundamentalists rail about research in genetics (which they rarely understand, but when did that stop anyone?), animal rights wack-jobs vandalize labs and threaten (and occasionally attack) researchers and their families. Extramural idiots like David Horowitz daily try to erode the system of academic freedom that makes our universities special, campus bred idiots like Ward Churchill give him all the ammunition he needs to do just that, and all the alumni seem to care about is whether the football team is winning.

OK -- sorry about the prolonged rant, but I feel better now! But seriously, what's happening in the academy is not a pretty site sometimes, and it kind of infuriates me to hear one aspect of it dismissed so cavalierly by this author.

A world with fewer businessmen, by George... Carlin that is:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5897849765437265993&hl=en

College is expensive because research is expensive. By definition research must go up faster than cost of living ratios. Fewer students go for the broad academic education of yesteryear, opting instead for the so-called "business education," that amounts to little more than propaganda for the current "management paradigm," so that most students come out with much less education than ever from their college career.
That said, the cost of tuition is crippling and the cost of a decent academic education is unobtainable for the vast majority. This is a great crisis for the public because the only real education provided is the one the student pays for. (Public schools only train pupils in the basics needed for holding down a job and being able to absorb propaganda.) Without a vastly improved commitment to publicly funded education, the future of the nation looks bleak for politics, for media, for technology, and even for business.

There is always Videojug.com

Collectively, the 'citizens' of this country are ignorant as stumps anyway. Lotta good education does when many high school graduates can't locate Canada on a map, much less Iraq. I'm through with caring much but hope to have a ringside seat (and plenty of ammo) for the collapse. Save the last bullet for yourselves, folks.

Galen - thanks. My mind is much too noisy for me to have said what you just said, nearly so well.

Gee. A world with fewer MBA trained CEOs.

Bring it on!