The American Freedom Network

The Politics of Gimme

    Protesters at campuses nationwide demanded more money be spent on them.  These ‘students’ took time out of the classroom to demand their ‘right’ to a college education be funded.  Without having hard data to back it up, one can surmise that students majoring in engineering, computer science, architecture and other hard -science disciplines were not well-represented among the protesters.  While this writer, a college instructor and the father of college students, is sympathetic to the financial plight of college students, no sympathy is forthcoming for a gimme attitude that does not address the root causes of spiraling higher education costs.  These are, IMHO:
1.)  Colleges jacking up tuition because they can have students ask third parties to pay the additional cost through ‘financial aid’ in the form of grants and usorious loans.  The more ‘aid’ available, the higher the cost of college goes.
2.)  Textbook racketeering adds thousands of dollars to college attendance for filler-laden books that are obsolete as soon as the next edition is published.  No one ought to have to pay $200.00 or more for a door stop.
3.)  Junk majors that students take that will not lead to career employment flood the system with consumers who delay becoming producers while they pursue superfluous degrees in ‘Women’s Studies,’ ethnic/racial grievance studies majors, and most subjects ending in ‘-ology.’ The money spent on supporting people in these programs is largely wasted.
4.)  Unnecessary, ‘required’ classes in p.c. subjects that raise ‘awareness’ of some issue dear to an influential pressure group add to the cost and length of a degree program.
5.)  Legitimate ‘required’ classes are not always offered often enough for the average student to graduate in four years.  Students are customers, and colleges often try to keep their longer than the traditional four years by not offering classes they require often enough in order to milk another year’s tuition out of them.
6.) Colleges often get addicted to the latest and greatest technology, and practically force their students to keep up.  If their on-line courses, student self-serve webpages, et cetera require Windows XP or newer, or the university standard is MS OFfice 2007, then students who could otherwise get by with older computers and equipment have to upgrade. 
7.)  Public universities practice ‘market socialism’ by competing with each other when they open satellite campuses in each others’ back yard.  Using public money to so compete, without a true price mechanism to control supply and demand, is inefficient, as was demonstrated in the 1930s in the famous Lange-Lerner debates.  It also encourages inefficient use of tax-funded resources.
8.)  Universities spend lots of money offering remedial classes to students who are not academically prepared to be in college.  This waste of resources to do what K-12 schools did not do lengthens students’ stay in college, and with it their total expense to obtain a degree – if they ever do.

    Better approaches exist.  Lansing Community College, for example, sets its’ technology requirements low enough that anyone running Mac OS 9 or Windows 2000 can use its’ on-line resources.  Open-Source textbooks, written by professors like Dr. Preston McAfee, can be used, at no cost, in lieu of more-expensive commercial options.  (Dr. McAfee’s economics textbook is available for download at www.lulu.com.  For a small cost, they will print and ship it, or you can download a .pdf version for free.)  Students not academically prepared for college should be referred to a local adult education program. (There are also some students are not ;college material,’ and schools that enroll them do them a disservice.)  Some colleges offer ‘no frills’ curricula, often by distance education, and can save a student thousands of dollars.  Excelsior College (my alma mater) and Governors Western University are two examples of this.
      Students-protesters should be protesting the above, and not the reality of funding cuts at a time when states are releasing prisoners early, pension funds are under-funded, workers are being laid off, and virtually every other service and program is being cut.  They might also remember that a college education is not a right, but that would imply that they didn’t skip their American Government class to go out and protest…