Ouster of UVa's President and the Future of Public Higher Ed

I'd agree with Starman and will add this anecdote from many years ago. When I was in my mid-20s about 12 years ago, I visited my longtime optometrist. As I read the eye chart, he said sneeringly that my parents -- both of whom taught in elementary schools -- were socialists because teachers teach all the students in their classes. (The implied alternative was that elementary education should be reserved for a few of the students, and to hell the rest of the class.)

I'd rather go blind than deal with pre-Tea Party propaganda while I'm reading an eye chart.

 

Who you callin' dead wood?

 

Present company excepted, of course.

 

VCU across the board is getting better. It is taking a perceived negative (city school) and turning into a positive almost overnight.

 

If you're going to reside in a city, I'm thinking Richmond is not too bad a choice.

 

I can't for the life of me see how one could conclude that this saga supports this hypothesis. For starters, the people who appear to be knee deep in this are (drum roll) major, major donors to this university (which, by the way, gets relatively little of its budget (something like 10%) from the state).

 

Define important. Is poetry worthy of study? Sure. But, is it necessary for the State/University to provide courses in it? Especially if it's not cost effective? That means it needs to be subsidized. Who should pay for it, and why?

Besides, in today's world, you can do all the study of poetry you want from the comfort of your couch. Why do you need to go to a classroom to study it?

You can read poetry. You can read criticism of poetry. You can join poetry discussions online.

At some point -- especially in the Liberal Arts -- a degree is just a piece of paper. Does a degree in Poetry, or English Lit, really mean you are more educated in the field than someone who is self taught?

 

I don't know if poetry sucks, but I do know that some of the arts majors don't exactly lend themselves to successful post-graduation employment.

One might say that about, I don't know, a print journalism major.

 

The answer to this depends on the individual student and the area of study and the degree and the institution granting it.

But why ask this question only of liberal arts majors? Why not business majors? Or engineering majors?

Self-taught is self-taught is self-taught.

And every individual defines what might be 'important' differently. But poetry as a lasting record of our shared human experience goes back much farther than the written word in every culture on earth. Seems worth our systematic understanding and storage, does it not?

 

Not to mention the fact that it's been proven repeatedly that spending gobs of money does not automatically equal quality when it comes to public education.

Washington DC's public school system spends more per pupil than just about any other locality in America, and yet, its schools consistently get dusted by the charter schools within the city's boundaries. Their problem is absolutely not that they're being "starved by corporatists."

And don't get me started on the scam that American universities have perpetuated on the public because of the federally guaranteed student loan program. If colleges and universities had to set tuition rates at levels that were determined by supply and demand -- what most of their customers could actually afford to either spend or borrow on their own merit -- these outrageous annual increases wouldn't happen. We also wouldn't have construction binges in the middle of a recession and philosophy professors making six-figure salaries teaching BS classes that won't help anyone get a damn job.

At some point, the federal government decided it was a fundamental right to be able to send your kid to college -- even if the parents couldn't afford the tuition and many of the resulting college graduates would spend most of their lives paying off the debt from their student loans. It's a nice status symbol, and I know a lot of people like me who are the first college graduate in their entire family tree, but the average BA or BS degree is rapidly being priced into irrelevance.

 

This certainly sounds like an intuitive account, but I have yet to see any study proving causation between student loans and tuition. Further, even if it explains the explosion of tuition rates at "lower" ranked universities, it doesn't explain why rates at top, private universities continue to go up. Harvard doesn't even consider loans in student aid awards, Stanford waives tuition for people under $100K, etc.--so loans are unlikely to be a factor in the rising tuitions at those schools.

More likely, our educational system creates an inefficient status race. People care more about they're kids going to a "better" school than going to a good one. This would also explain why K-12 tuition skyrockets even without the presence of federally subsidized loans.

I also think it's fair to note that one other contributing factor has been the decrease of aid at the state level. State universities charge more and more to out-of-state students so they can subsidize low in-state tuition rates with less and less taxpayer money. Loans might have indirectly encouraged that by giving out-of-state students the means to pay those higher rates, but the reduction of state aid was the direct causation.