I feel your pain Barry. I wish I could say I am in a different spot, but I really am not. education is becoming an absolute travesty. Its not just a waste of time to delay young blood from entering the workforce - they are making it so you are so crippled financially by the time you do enter, you are screwed before you even get started. A very effective form of keeping the middle and lower class people down... Never let them have a chance to get started. Best of luck to you and your family in Asia..
Thanks man but I won't be going away from here but your thoughts are pretty accurate. I just read that my alma mater UNLV has raised the cost of tuition 12 times since 2002. The cost of tuition has more than tripled over that time. Yet somehow the school has the money to pay Hilary 225 K next week to come speak. The real issue is the cost of attending a state college without any grants or scholarship money is going to put most people in debt by 15-30K by the time they graduate. Then they graduate with their degree in English or Sociology only to make 12 bucks an hour because there are no jobs in that field or any decent job is given to the owners son or nephew or get stuck working in a horrible school district where they are forced to buy their own supplies and work 10 hour days making 26K a year and getting no support from the BOE or school district. I blame all this "free money" given away by the government to attend college. It's an easy way to get money. Sure we're going to give you money to attend college so you owe us so much you'll be paying it until you are 40 but if you don't we're going to charge you so much interest and other fees for late payments that we'll just start garnishing your SS, retirement or paycheck so you pay us even more then you owe us. I sometimes think I'd have been better off borrowing money from Don Corleone than the federal govt to pay my way through school. At least that way on his daughter's wedding I could ask for a pardon instead of a garnishment.
I could go on for days on how messed up the student loan program is, i agree totally,but I am going to address the rising tuition here which is just insane. The problem is they are running these colleges like businesses not colleges. Case in point your Hillary example - it's good business to pay top dollar for her, puts UNLV in the news, etc... But shouldn't their real purpose be serving their students? What does Hillary bring that truly benefits the student body from an educational standpoint --that paying a random foreign policy expert professor from another college for pennies on that dollar- does not? The answer is nothing more.. Another thing that never gets addressed is the constant construction of new buildings on these campuses. it NEVER gets talked about - on the contrary its celebrated...I'm not sure how many times my alma mater has raised tuition in that time frame, I'm sure it's a lot of money and its very possible they raised tuition every single year. Yet every time I go back there they are tearing something down and building something new... I understand some of construction is from philanthropy, but certainly not all of it.. And you can't tell me the money from those generous donors couldn't be used to support scholarships, lower tuition. I used to work in fundraising -- believe me, they are very careful about what they pick and choose to raise money for! Does my alma mater REALLY need a new million(s) dollar wing to its library - basically a glorified coffee shop? Probably not. Do they REALLY need a million(s) dollar new building for the humanities department? The old one was just fine... Etc. But for the business of attracting new students and setting themselves apart from other colleges, they need it.. .. Oh - and a senator might just stop by for the groundbreaking, even better!!! Fuck if they need more money they'll just raise tuition - right? It's not like every other school isn't doing that anyway... Obama and the dems are pushing for lower interest rates- that's fine and dandy but interest rates mean jack squat if your principle is high to begin with. They should be working towards lowering costs but that will never happen because the banks and universities aren't going to allow it. Until then -they can do their photo ops for every unnecessary new college building constructed and tout progress while we are getting screwed!!!!
Government spending basically comprises five buckets: 1. Entitlements that people have paid into like Social Security, Medicare, Disability, etc. 2. Entitlements that people haven't paid into (much) but qualify for also like Medicaid, Food Stamps, EIC, etc. 3. Tax credits that people receive for targeted spending decisions, like taking on a mortgage, having more kids, flavor of the day social engineering, etc. 4. The military/industrial complex. 5. Federal aid to state and local governments that props up mandated (safety, education, health, etc) and other (roads, sewers, energy) spending. Which exactly of these do you propose to cut? Seriously, the poor brown Cadillac driving welfare queens were handled in the 90's if they ever existed in the first place. Where exactly do you think your money goes at this point? Is the process corrupt? All processes that involve lots of money are corrupt. Try picking out the corruption though and eliminating it with a laser scalpel. What you'll find is that the corruption is a drop in the bucket in almost all of these processes and while it makes the people involved in it very rich and gets them re-elected it's a very small part of the overall spending that is done. If you mainly eliminate any of the categories of spending above you will reduce corruption significantly and at the same time dramatically reduce something that actually props the American standard of living in the process. We don't live in a country where everybody grows their own food any more. We don't live in a country where most people work for themselves any more. We don't live in a country where the average American lives to 48 years of age and half of all people die by their 18th birthday any more. You're not going to find anybody outside of a few rightwing nutjobs willing to go back to that state of existence once it becomes clear that this is what will happen when we stop spending money on things like vaccinating children and keeping cholera and scarlet fever dim memories from a time long past.
Where are you heading to ? I've got a few options at the moment but as of now it looks like either Singapore or Thailand for me.
Why do the Presidents of major universities make millions of dollars a year? What's the justification for that?
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/john-...lYwNzcgRwb3MDMQRjb2xvA2JmMQR2dGlkA1ZJUDA3N18x but the sun set and rose again...all seems quiet on the western front.
My option is unrealistic; Australia. Id love to get there but it isnt easy and it isnt cheap. (I might just be better off staying in the states).
Iraq was a huge mistake back when we first invaded and it's a huge mistake now. Pull all troops and cut the losses. Shoulda been done 5+ years ago. Complete waste of resources and we didn't accomplish jack squat except make Iraq completely unstable and let Iran rise to power. We should never have gone there. Trillions wasted because of a hunch. What a joke.
Because like most corporate goons they are operating a multi million dollar business and most see themselves as intellectual CEO's. Read up on this schmuck from Ohio State, Gee Gordon or whatever his name is. Complete clown.
Well if you were serious about it most of the countries over there are always looking for English teachers, that's my fall back. In some places they'll pay for your flight or reimburse you. In others it's so cheap to live that as long as you don't mind being in a foreign country you can do ok as well as save up some money in the process. Places like Taiwan, Korea and China offer some pretty good options as well as decent pay. I'd avoid Vietnam as it's cheap but they offer one of the worst compensation packages as you are paid hourly instead of a salary.
Not justifying the outrageous salaries, but university presidents have a challenging job. You ever work with academics? Very intelligent and highly motivated turf-protectors you have little control over due to tenure and collective bargaining (at least in public universities). Managing these kinds of people is an art under the circumstances.
