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I paid for the college (one left in undergrad, one entering med school) for all of my kids. I demanded that I approve of their majors before agreeing to pay for their education. My youngest is studying education (a noble, yet not very profitable venture). I agreed to fund his education as long as he agreed to go to welding school for a year after graduation so that he could work in the oil fields during his "summers off".
Education is an investment- invest wisely and it is worth the price. Invest poorly and it is not worth the cost. What kind of idiot parent would encourage a kid to get a degree in a worthless major?
Hawaiian by heart -- Taxes are at historic lows. You won't hear that much, but it is true.
Ronald Reagan when gov. of CA started the 'make people pay for state colleges' movement; prior to that any kid in California who qualified got to go for free. Other states looked at what he did and said 'we can make our schools into cash cows too'. This started the whole 'our college is fancier than your college' game as a way to entice students to pay more and more.
Folks who think college costs are the same as when they worked their way through as a gas pump jockey are fooling themselves...no part time job would pay enough to put a kid through college these days. Maybe if we raise the minimum wage, though.
I'd love to know how many of the 'liberal arts are a waste of time' types work for bosses with degrees in those fields. Quite a few, I'm betting. It's less Dunning-Kruger and more sour grapes.
My kid just finished her first 2 degrees at a state school in 3 years (saving us quite a bit) and will be going on to get her Master's. She will probably join the military afterwards.
Speak for yourself -- but my taxes are not low at all. Add up what I'm paying in federal income tax, social security tax, medicare tax, sales tax, property tax, school tax, hospital tax, gasoline tax --- it's absurd what I'm paying.
It's not that taxes are so high, malamute -- it's the real wages haven't budged since the 70's. Tax as a percentage of income, over all, are at 50 year lows. Your mileage may vary.
People are raised to go to school so they could get a good job for someone else. They are just following like sheep and don't think about the path or about the cost to getting there. They think.. I'll worry about that tomorrow.
On the other side a friend daughter is going "away" to college this coming year. The parents are paying. The same field I was in. When they told me the cost which was crazy. They asked my opinion I advised a community college for the prerequisite classes if not all the way through. I used to work with co-workers who went away to school and I went to community college. We held the same title and license and paid the same. They had huge school debt while I had no school debt. Of course they are still sending her away to college and paying that crazy amount.
The next conversation, the husband said "I'll never get to retire".
It's actually a status symbol for many people --- they're willing to sign away their homes or their whole retirement savings just for the bragging rights that their child went away to college -- when the same degree could be attained much more affordably if the child lived at home and commuted at least for the first two years.
I work with a guy who sent his son to an out-of-state school where he majored in art. He graduated and got a job and hated it, so he went back and got a masters in art history, got a job in a museum and hated it. The son now works as a fire fighter and loves his job -- and dad whines about the loans he's going to be paying off until he dies.
It's not that taxes are so high, malamute -- it's the real wages haven't budged since the 70's. Tax as a percentage of income, over all, are at 50 year lows. Your mileage may vary.
My income has gone up since the 70s. But I'm paying a large chunk of my income in all the many taxes.
Maybe the college loans should be viewed as a kind of tax and then they won't feel so bad.
That can be their "tax" that helps the government fund the big education-industry complex and it's greed.
I remember reading that there was a time where state higher education was free tuition wise?
That's how most civilized Western democracies do it. For some reason, we have been fooled here in the US into thinking that post-high school education should be a capitalist enterprise.
It's not that taxes are so high, malamute -- it's the real wages haven't budged since the 70's. Tax as a percentage of income, over all, are at 50 year lows. Your mileage may vary.
Exactly, like i said in other threads the top 25%ers in salaries have seen there income raise 35x the rate it was in 79' while middle class and lower classes income has stagnantted or dropped.
My income has gone up since the 70s. But I'm paying a large chunk of my income in all the many taxes.
Maybe the college loans should be viewed as a kind of tax and then they won't feel so bad.
That can be their "tax" that helps the government fund the big education-industry complex and it's greed.
Yeah i agree, its also greed on a personal level too. Education since after the 80s has been like people saying "I got my good education, to hell with you"
I just find it amazing that we are discussing bad education in public schools, expensive higher education, cutting welfare and arguing over raising min wage when we have had record profits for corporate america, Some CEOs are making record salaries 35mill a year, corporate government subsidies are at an all time high, taxes at an all time low.
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