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How Colleges Are Pushing Out the Poor To Court the Rich
An anonymous reader writes "A change from 'need' based financial aid to a 'merit' based system coupled with a 'high tuition, high aid,' model is making it harder for poor students to afford college. According to The Atlantic: 'Sometimes, colleges (and states) really are just competing to outbid each other on star students. But there are also economic incentives at play, particularly for small, endowment-poor institutions. "After all," Burd writes, "it's more profitable for schools to provide four scholarships of $5,000 each to induce affluent students who will be able to pay the balance than it is to provide a single $20,000 grant to one low-income student." The study notes that, according to the Department of Education's most recent study, 19 percent of undergrads at four-year colleges received merit aid despite scoring under 700 on the SAT. Their only merit, in some cases, might well have been mom and dad's bank account.'"
Yep, got a nephew that is gonna end up having to drop out of college halfway through because he can't get the aid to finish even though he has high marks while the same school trips over themselves to court these third and fourth generation money kids that can just fuck off for four years for all they care, they'll have a diploma and a cushy job waiting at daddy's firm when they get out. He is gonna end up buried in 37k of debt without even a piece of paper, damned shame is what it is, poor kid worked his ass off and got screwed..
George Carlin said it best "Its called the American Dream...because you have to be asleep to believe in it"
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Going to school to get a good job is not longer a reasonable expectation.
And it doesn't make sense. We are spending the money. If we could spend the same money to keep people out of prison, we would simply have a better life and culture here in the US. But as tone of your comment suggests, we will perpetuate this "every man for himself" mentality that got us where we are. Reality is far different from your notion of reality. Reality says that people give up on themselves long before the 12 years of public school are over. Their expectations of life have been defined for themselves already.
Prisons decrease earning potential even after getting out. That's another problem we are failing to face. Once a person has a prison record, they are black-balled for life. It's okay if prison were a deterrent to crime. For some people, it's a rite of passage.
Government doesn't "foot the bill." *WE* foot the bill. They just decide where the bills go. Once again, if the money that goes to prisons went to schools, even in part, it could make a huge difference in the long run. The problem is it wouldn't make a difference for several election cycles. And no way a republicrat will vote in money for schools instead of prisons when the opposing party would get the glory.
Once a person has gone to prison, they are no longer full citizens. They lose the right to vote and to bear arms.... legally. We have decided their career for them.
Sorry friend but you can't just do that anymore, you can't even keep gas in your car with a minimum wage job as they won't let you get full time hours anymore, he looked at the GI Bill but considering how they have refused to let soldiers leave when their enlistment is up? No thanks, not to mention his grandma is getting up there in years and her health is declining and if my mom passed on while he was overseas he would be devastated, and its pretty much just the one college here as the only other one in the state is a 120 mile round trip which again, gas prices.
So its all well and good you got lucky by being born at the right time but...that America? Really doesn't exist now, being 19 today is a hell of a lot different than being 19 then, nobody will give you full time hours, jobs are scarce, there just isn't any real paying jobs to be had. Hell I've had 3 guys, including one in his 50s bless his heart, trying to get the job mowing my mother's lawn, things are THAT bad now friend.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
An over-educated workforce creates serious economic problems.
There are only so many jobs available that require higher education. When supply of educated workers is higher than the demand, a few bad things happen:
1) Lots of educated people simply cannot find work. The opportunities just aren't there. They wind up depressed, and working menial jobs that are below their skill sets and which do not pay them enough to make headway against their crushing student debt.
2) Salaries for the educated labor start coming down, since supply is so high. The people who manage to land the jobs must overwork themselves in order to hold them (since there is a line of people who would jump at the chance to replace them), and their low salaries means they can't pay off their student debts either (or if they do pay them off, it takes a very long time, which creates serious problems if they want to raise families).
3) Jobs that normally don't require an education start requiring one, since there are so many educated candidates (who cannot otherwise find work) applying. These jobs still don't pay enough for one to dig one's self out of debt, but now one must get an education and endure the mountain of crushing debt in order to get any job at all.
On the one hand, denying education opportunities to the poor is unfair. On the other hand, over-educating the population makes nearly everyone poor.