Category Archives: education

Is it in their best interest to let your kids rack up massive student loan debt?

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While I sympathize with the author of this Detroit News column, it is surreal to see someone say “we only want the best for our kids” while encouraging them to rack up staggering amounts of student loan debt as they enter adulthood:

The day of reckoning had come. Our first-born graduated from the University of Michigan in December and they were having the come-to-Jesus meeting with loan officers at the federal government.

I held my breath in the kitchen as my husband, blessed with both the patience and steel gut required for opening the closet on an avalanche of debt, said over the phone: “Why is it Jason, that the last counselor I talked to, not five minutes ago, gave me completely different numbers for the standard repayment plan?”

When I finally heard the balance in full, I gasped. (Here’s why: Today a four year in-state college education at the University of Michigan costs $100,000. )

Make no mistake. We borrowed willingly, with no regrets about the quality of her education, nor any illusions about the mounting interest.

O.K…I get it… If you don’t have the money to pay for tuition at a Big Ten school, just go into debt over it. Why go Jr. College for the first two years, then go to a less expensive school near home to reduce the cost when you can take out a massive loan.

These days, my husband and I have so often prefaced our conversations about securing both parent and student loans with the “Times have changed …” speech, our kids now roll their eyes. We tell ourselves that paying for their own education makes them value it more. But the truth is: We hate them taking on debt right out of the gate.

Saddling yourself and your children with incredible amounts of debt to attend college is not in anyone’s best interest.

Then we get to the real purpose behind the column. The author want’s the state and federal government (i.e. you and me) to “provide an affordable path for higher education.”

As a state, and a country, for that matter, we can’t keep on insisting our future depends on a highly educated work force and then not provide an affordable path for families to get their children college degrees.

One way to drive down the cost of college tuition is getting the government out of the business of student loans. Every time government becomes involved in an economic activity, it becomes more expensive. If government student loans are severely limited and Universities see fewer students attending their hallowed halls of higher learning, cost of tuition will drop in a hurry.

Otherwise, tuition will keep climbing and people like Mary Sue Coleman will continue laughing all the way to the bank.

EPA funding “arts to help students understand the impacts of air pollution on the environment and their health.”

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In the grand scheme of things this is not even a rounding error in the Federal budget, but it is just so stupid:

(Denver, Colo. – Dec. 12, 2011) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced it awarded more than $1 million in grants to 46 non-profit and tribal organizations working to address environmental justice issues nationwide. The Repertory Dance Theatre and the Utah Society for Environmental Education are two nonprofits in Utah receiving $25,000 each.

“Community-based action and participation in environmental decision-making are critical to building healthy and sustainable communities,” said Lisa Garcia, EPA’s senior advisor to the administrator for environmental justice. “By supporting local environmental justice projects in under-served communities, we are expanding the conversation on environmentalism and advancing environmental justice in communities across the nation.”

The Repertory Dance Theater uses the arts to educate Salt Lake City youth about the impacts of air pollution. The organization will conduct Arts/Environmental Residency Programs in K-6 schools in the west and central areas of Salt Lake City and will use the arts to help students understand the impacts of air pollution on the environment and their health. The project intends to produce innovative lectures, demonstrations and movement classes in 10 elementary schools.

Rather than wasting tax payer money trying to create the next generation of enviro-fanatics through the use of movement classes, how about having the kids focus on the 3R’s.

Generation Obama

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This is a fantastic article discussing the economic troubles facing recent college graduates, a.k.a. “Generation Obama:”

This is Generation O: the age cohort that contributed, registered, volunteered and voted for Barack Obama with greater intensity than we have seen since at least the 1960 presidential election. Since then, the effect of President Obama’s failed economic policies has fallen most disproportionately on them.

The unemployment rates among Generation O not only suggest personal disappointment, but also large and lasting implications for them and for society.

Things will be difficult for some time for recent college grads:

A paper forthcoming in the American Economic Journal Applied Economics found that graduating in a recession leads to earnings losses that last for 10 years after graduation.

The authors, University of Toronto economics professor Philip Oreopoulos, Columbia University professor Till von Wachter, and economist Andrew Heisz of Statistics Canada, found that earnings losses are greater for new entrants to the labor force than for existing workers, who might see smaller raises, but who have jobs. In addition, recessions lead workers to accept employment in small firms that pay lower salaries.

That, in turn, may help to explain why there is in our country a creeping fear of downward mobility, a prospect that Generation O will not do as well as their parents.

Young male graduates have been particularly adversely affected, with an unemployment rate of 11 percent, compared to 7.9 percent for women. Five years ago male graduates had an unemployment rate of 5.8 percent, and the rate for females was 4.5 percent.

As pointed out previously here at MCT, it is going to take a long time to unwind the mess we face today and these findings are more proof of this fact.

The RealClearMarkets article closes with this:

It’s not just bad luck, or President George W. Bush’s fault, as Mr. Obama tries to suggest. Mr. Obama has promoted an Old Economy model that favors big corporations, labor unions and more government. But Generation O thrives best in a New Economy model that favors nimble start-ups, hard-charging union-free workplaces and minimal government interference.

Generation O voted for Barack Obama believing him to be a new kind of leader, but he has delivered them an Old Economy with European-style mandates (think Obamacare), sclerosis, and dysfunction. They put him in the White House, Barack Obama has consigned them to their parents’ house. Clearly, only one side made out well on that deal.

Be sure to read the rest, it is a real eye-opener.

The EPA: Indoctrinating Our Children Since 1970

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Remember, government in all forms, is overhead. It is an expense and adds no value (economically speaking) to our economy.

One of the most burdensome overheads of all is the EPA. They impose huge penalties for simple paperwork violations and will look high and low for a violation of some obscure regulation to use as a hammer against a business. Additionally, the EPA is in the business of indoctrinating our children to become eco-warriors. And what is worse, we are paying money for this drivel aimed at our children:

  • Choose and use a wide assortment of products made from recycled products, such as pencils made from old blue jeans; binders made from old shipping boxes; and many types of recycled paper products. You can also reuse items like refillable pens, rechargeable batteries, and scrap paper for notes. Using recycled-content and reusing supplies prevents waste and saves you money.
  • Before starting a new school year, sort through your materials. Many supplies can be reused or recycled. Notebooks, folders, and binders can be reused. Recycle unwanted papers and reuse your old folders and binders. Share your used books with friends, relatives, or younger schoolchildren.
  • Waste from packaging accounts for more than 30 percent of all the waste generated each year. Use school supplies wrapped with minimal packaging; use compact or concentrated products; or buy products that come in bulk sizes. Save packaging, colored paper, egg cartons and other items for arts and crafts projects. Look for other ways you can reduce the amount of packaging you throw away!
  • Many schools reuse text books to save money and reduce waste. Covering your textbooks with cut-up grocery or shopping bags helps reduce waste and keeps your books in good condition. Be creative—use markers or colored pencils to give your covers unique and fun designs. Paper grocery bags are also great for wrapping packages.
  • Use nontoxic products, inks and art supplies, such as batteries with less mercury, vegetable-based inks, and water-based paints.
  • Use and maintain durable products. Sturdy backpacks and notebooks can be reused for many years, which helps reduce the amount of broken items tossed away each year. Put long-lasting, high-quality tires on your car and bicycle. Be sure to keep your tires properly inflated.
  • If you bring your lunch to school, package it in reusable containers instead of disposable ones, and carry them in a reusable plastic or cloth bag, or lunch box. Bring drinks in a thermos instead of disposable bottles or cartons.
  • If you buy lunch, take and use only what you need: One napkin, one ketchup packet, one salt packet, one pepper packet, one set of flatware. And, remember to recycle your cans and bottles.
  • If you drive to school, try carpooling or take public transportation. Get your parents’ permission to try walking, biking, or skating. You can prevent wasted fuel, reduce air pollution, and decrease traffic in your community.
  • Borrow or rent your decorations and supplies for parties, dances, and proms. If you buy these supplies, try adopting a theme that can be used from year-to-year, so that you can reuse your decorations and supplies.
  • Pass it on. Share the message with your friends and schoolmates. Waste less by reducing, reusing, and recycling. Volunteer for, or start , an environmental club or recycling project in your school.
  • Work with your teachers and friends to find ways to encourage everyone in your community to make waste reduction a part of their everyday lives. You can also look for unique ways to make your school more waste-free, such as starting a school composting project.

The EPA; working overtime to create more little radical environmentalists.

Inside The Mind Of An Ivy League Liberal: Why A Shrinking Economy Is Good

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According to this Lib, we should give up, go green and embrace a shrinking economy. Via Yale Environment 360:

Herman Daly has reminded us that if neo-classical economists were true to their trade, they would recognize that there are

diminishing returns to growth. Most obviously, the value of income growth declines as one gets richer and richer. Similarly, growth at some point has increasing marginal costs. For example, workers have to put in too many hours, or the climate goes haywire. It follows that for the economy as a whole, we can reach a point where the extra costs of more growth exceed the extra benefits. One should stop growing at that point. Otherwise the country enters the realm of “uneconomic growth,” to use Daly’s delightful phrase, where the costs of growth exceed the benefits it produces.

Of course, it is the elites in academia that will measure the costs and benefits, not consumers or the markets. They will decide what is best for us.

The lunacy continues:

Though not widely accepted, the case is strong that growth in the affluent U.S. is now doing more harm than good. Today, the reigning policy orientation holds that the path to greater well-being is to grow and expand the economy. GDP, productivity, profits, the stock market, and consumption must all go up. This growth imperative trumps all else. It can undermine families, jobs, communities, the climate and environment, and a sense of place and continuity because it is confidently asserted and widely believed that growth is worth the price that must be paid for it.

But an expanding body of evidence is now telling us to think again. The never-ending drive to grow the overall U.S. economy is ruining the environment; it fuels a ruthless international search for energy and other resources; it fails at generating the needed jobs; it hollows out communities; and it rests on a manufactured consumerism that is not meeting the deepest human needs. Americans are substituting growth and consumption for dealing with the real issues — for doing things that would truly make us and the country better off.

It is time for America to move to post-growth society where the natural environment, working life, our communities and families, and the public sector are no longer sacrificed for the sake of mere GDP growth; where the illusory promises of ever-more growth no longer provide an excuse for neglecting to deal generously with our country’s compelling social needs; and where true citizen democracy is no longer held hostage to the growth imperative.

Read the rest if you dare. It is truly nauseating.

For a guy who is who is supposed to be super smart and is going to tell us how to live our lives better than we are now, his two main points are dead wrong.

First, he is tring to tell us that our chase for economic growth is turning people into working zombies through increased working hours. This is not true at all. Via Economic History

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And it gets better:

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The idea that people are working longer hours in an expanding economy is flat out false.

Our intrepid lib professor’s second assertion that we are destroying ‘the environment’ in a ruthless pursuit of an expanding GDP is false as well.

If you are a frequent MCT reader, you know that one theme here is that only wealthy countries can afford to worry about the environment.

Go to any poor or developing nation and look at the condition of the environment. Go to rural China, Africa & Cuba and look at the conditions people live in. They don’t care about the environment. In many cases, they only care about where their next meal is coming from.

A growing economy makes life better for everyone.

Reading, writing and environmental literacy

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Maryland’s State Board of Education imposed a new requirement adding ‘environmental literacy‘ to their states graduation requirements.

According to Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, Democrat (of course) this new requirement will prepare students for… Wait for it… Green Jobs!

The new rule is a regulation from the State Board of Education, not a law passed by the legislature, so it lays out no specifics. Governor Martin O’Malley offers no real details but praises it, saying it will “infuse core subjects with lessons about conservation and smart growth and the health of our natural world.”

O’Malley also said it’ll serve as a “foundation for green jobs,” though one analyst says training for those is just like it is for any other job.

Why is it that Democrats keep blathering on about green jobs? The only ‘green jobs’ are the government subsidized ‘green jobs.’

Setting aside the green jobs nonsense, this program is simply environmental indoctrination.

No one would object to boosting achievement, but some analysts fear a broader, more political agenda would be in play. For instance, the local school boards won’t get any extra money, so a group called the North American Association of Environmental Education offers a guide for teachers.

An early passage from the guide says “consumption of natural resources, air and water pollution, and the impacts of climate change are among the many complex challenges that threaten human health, economic development, and national security.” It goes on to talk about the need to “take informed action.” And that raises some eyebrows.

They are attempting to create the next generation of eco-warriors.

An extra big tip O’ the hat goes to Martin for sending this story my way.

Obama’s Commerce Secretary Nominee Is A Big Time Supporter Of Cap And Trade

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Really?

John Bryson, nominated by President Barack Obama today to head the Department of Commerce, once said it was “incredibly important” that the United States pass cap and trade legislation and that America needed to become a global leader in combating man-made global warming.

“I regard it as incredibly important that the United States comes forth in this year with federal climate change legislation as a foundation for moving ahead,” Bryson told the U.N. International Energy Conference in late August 2009. “I think we in the U.S. have an obligation to assist in significant ways in providing leadership in this community of nations that you represent and addressing energy and climate change.”

And it gets better…

Bryson, a co-founder of the liberal environmentalist group Natural Resources Defense Council, was most recently a member of the United Nations’ Advisory Group on Energy and Climate Change, a panel of scientific and industry experts tasked with providing advice on combating global warming.

2012 can’t get here fast enough.

Grand Rapids Teachers Union President Suggests Using Students To Protest State Budget Cuts

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Grand Rapids (Michigan) Teachers Union President suggested, at a school board meeting, to take the kids out of class to protest proposed state budget cuts. Because, you know, it would be a great civics lesson.

Here’s a novel idea: why don’t we teach our students the importance of civics by giving them the opportunity to protest state budget cuts? That was the suggestion of a Grand Rapids, MI teachers union president last night during a school board meeting.

“We need to demonstrate strength in numbers of real people. Real people who are impacted by the decisions these elected officials are going to make. Real people who vote,” Grand Rapids Education Association President Paul Helder said. His ideas for unity include “voluntary educational civics field trips to Lansing to teach our students about the importance of having a voice in government” and “taking an action of some kind that requires the rescheduling of a day of school.”

The Union President’s idea was shot down unanimously. Not because it is a really bad idea., but because the school bored didn’t like the idea of pulling students out of class for the day.

Extra big tip O’ the hat to Martin @ WWTFT and StumbleUpon friend wseincjudydavid for pointing me to this story.

The College Education Bubble Continues Its Expansion

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If you read Ace Of Spades, you would’ve seen this yesterday:

Via Instapundit comes this damning statistic on the value of a college education these days:

The Center for College Affordability and Productivity (CCAP) has unearthed what I think is the single most scandalous statistic in higher education. It reveals many current problems and ones that will grow enormously as policymakers mindlessly push enrollment expansion amidst what must become greater public-sector resource limits.

Here it is: approximately 60 percent of the increase in the number of college graduates from 1992 to 2008 worked in jobs that the BLS considers relatively low skilled—occupations where many participants have only high school diplomas and often even less. Only a minority of the increment in our nation’s stock of college graduates is filling jobs historically considered as requiring a bachelor’s degree or more.

So basically all the money that many college students (and their parents) have paid/borrowed for a college degree was wasted. They paid $60,000+ just to qualify for essentially high school entry-level jobs.

However, if you are a regular reader of motorcitytimes, you would’ve known about this trend July 4th, 2010- Even Recent College Graduates With Advanced Degrees Finding A Tough Job Market

It’s a bit ironic when you think about it. The mostly liberal educational institutes push a college education as the only way to get ahead in the job market while their liberal policies are crushing the economy.

Or in August- Obama: Folks Need A Degree

What Obama and the liberals will create is a type of credential inflation (as opposed to monetary inflation) where an increasing number of college graduates will be chasing a finite number of jobs. This will cause many employers to require a college degree needlessly for jobs that at one time did not require a degree. Furthermore, employers will start requiring Masters for jobs that today only Bachelor’s Degree.

Of course, if Obama’s plan is realized, the real winner in all this will be the Colleges who will see a surge in enrollment and a nice profit.

Or in October- Over 317,000 Waiters and Waitresses Have College Degrees

Remember how Obama said “folks need a degree?” It turns out that many people have degrees and they end up under employed.

I’m just saying…