Missouri senator rolls out new tax overhaul proposal

[GraniteStater]

Originally Posted by Flyover_Country

At risk of getting off topic, there are a few very separate issues here.

1. No amount of money spent in education will overcome a lack of parental involvement. Look at the barges full of cash that places like NYC and Chicago spend per child on education and how well that isn't working.

2. School performance is largely determined by largely meaningless metrics such as performance on multiple-guess achievement tests, how many are able to be socially promoted through 12th grade, and how many go on to waste a bunch of time and money in college getting a degree that isn't worth the paper it's printed on. School performance is a qualitative rather than quantitative measure and that doesn't lend itself well to the government success/failure ranking flowchart methodology.

3. How schools are set up and run probably does need to change but it is beyond the scope of this conversation (e.g. really, really OT.) However the decision of how to to this is absolutely best left to a local level, as should funding.

Your opinion of higher education, unfortunately, is all too common in most areas of Missouri. To say that "and how many go on to waste a bunch of time and money in college getting a degree that isn't worth the paper it's printed on" is absolutely absurd. Just because you don't value college education doesn't mean it doesn't have a high value for many other people that pursue a multitude of degrees that are in demand with a plethora of jobs, even in the current economy.
I do think a greater collaboration between schools and businesses regarding job placement for individuals of varying levels of skill and education is a significant key component that needs to be continually worked on.

[Flyover_Country]

Originally Posted by GraniteStater

Your opinion of higher education, unfortunately, is all too common in most areas of Missouri. To say that "and how many go on to waste a bunch of time and money in college getting a degree that isn't worth the paper it's printed on" is absolutely absurd. Just because you don't value college education doesn't mean it doesn't have a high value for many other people that pursue a multitude of degrees that are in demand with a plethora of jobs, even in the current economy.
I do think a greater collaboration between schools and businesses regarding job placement for individuals of varying levels of skill and education is a significant key component that needs to be continually worked on.

I went through eight years of postsecondary education and went well into six figures' worth of debt to get it. My observations come from that experience. The huge number of people going through undergrad is largely a result of degree inflation. Many of the people I went through undergrad treated it like a 4-5 year license to party. They majored in something that had nothing to do with what job they ended up obtaining when they graduated. In fact, most jobs that "require" a college degree don't actually require any of the education that the person got in college. The HR folks have a big pool of unemployed people in the rotten economy and put "requires a college degree" on the job description to weed out the huge numbers of people who apply for the few open positions. A job that simply needs "a" college degree doesn't need it. It's not like they require a certain degree or a license/certificate which is only available to people who have completed a certain degree (e.g. professional engineer certificate, nurse's license, etc.) Nope, just "a" college degree. The college grad just ended up wasting 4-5 years of earning potential plus has student loans to pay off all to sleep through/text in/skip classes in such useless majors such as gender studies and 16th century European literature. How is that a real benefit to society, other than the college and the Department of Education Direct Loans Program raking in the dough from these poor saps?

I also ran into the "professional student." They would take many more years than the norm to obtain their degree and/or obtain multiple undergrad and graduate degrees of various sorts in an attempt to prolong their adolescence beyond undergrad. They rarely did much for a job when they finally were done with school either. They simply managed to waste a decade or more of their time goofing around and being unproductive.

As far as job placement goes, colleges don't care much about jobs. They advertise that "oh, we'll prepare you very well for the job market!" but when you get to class all you hear is "we educate, we don't train." I have an excellent example from one of my undergrad classes. I was in diff eq and some of the other engineering students wanted to learn how to solve a certain series of equations that would be very useful in their fluids classes. The professor refused as he stated that "we don't do training here, we educate. Now pay attention to these theories." That was far from the only time any of us ever heard that line. College is like anything else in life and has costs and benefits. Unfortunately the costs are increasing and the benefits are decreasing, making it less appealing.

[STLviaMSP]

^So...you spent 8 years being a professional student and accumulated over $100k in loan debt pursuing an advanced gender studies degree with a minor in 16th c European lit that you have found to be not particularly useful in securing gainful employment?

[Flyover_Country]

Originally Posted by STLviaMSP

^So...you spent 8 years being a professional student and accumulated over $100k in loan debt pursuing an advanced gender studies degree with a minor in 16th c European lit that you have found to be not particularly useful in securing gainful employment?

No, I went into a healthcare field that has recently developed a very rigid price ceiling and a greatly increased workload due to government regulation, most notably the actions of CMS RUC as well as the HITECH Act and Obamacare. I can throw a dart at a map and find a job there, but none of them can pay enough to let me pay off my obscene (both principal and interest rate) loans in much less than 20 years unless you are willing to continue living off ramen noodles and having roommates for another dozen years while you roll all of your post-tax income into your loans despite working 80+ hours per week.

BTW, I paid about as much of a percentage in income tax as Obama did, despite earning only a tiny fraction of his >$600K income. I guess I forgot to write "elected official" as my occupation to let me get away with a much lower income tax rate. With his >$600k income he should very clearly hit the AMT and be paying at least 30% instead of closer to half of that. No wonder they are trying to take our guns away...