Forum Post: Concerning Higher Education
Posted 12 years ago on Dec. 4, 2011, 12:09 a.m. EST by jimmycrackerson
(940)
from Blackfoot, ID
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
I have not attended a university in years, which is why I am kind of confused.
Can someone please explain why college applications cost 40+ dollars just for someone to read over and put their stamp or seal of approval/disapproval?
Why Does it cost 100+ dollars to take the Advanced Placement (or AP) classes and tests?
Why is there a charge for taking the ACT or SAT tests?
Why can I not retake these tests at a later age so that I may qualify for a more accredited university?
I haven't really done much research into this subject, but I will gladly accept any responses that lead me to the answers to the above questions.
Have you seen this? You have to see this. http://www.aetr.org/premise.php
Thank you for this GirlFriday! I had not seen this until now, and my suspicions have definitely been confirmed.
You are welcome. One of issues that I am passionate about is education and how it has become a big business. Because we rarely discuss education here, I would like to give you a few more links that may or may not interest you. The name of the game has been to force schools into standardized testing designed to fail to turn the education system into faux privatization. It has truly become theft of public funds. These mostly are concerned with primary and secondary education.
An article on the astroturf organization Parent Revolution http://articles.latimes.com/2010/dec/11/local/la-me-1211-compton-school-20101211
Blogs that track: http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2011/11/charter-school-scandals-suck-worse-than.html
http://perimeterprimate.blogspot.com/2010/04/grannan-advantage-linked-charter-in-sf.html
One of the things that people need to research on charter schools is their real estate which of course taxpayers also pay for.
Here is an article on scoring the standardized tests http://www.citypages.com/2011-02-23/news/inside-the-multimillion-dollar-essay-scoring-business/
Right on! Keep up the good fight, you are doing an exceptional job.
Would you want govt to cover everything for you? Most of your questions deal with private operations.
Then what in the hell the am I paying them for in the first place? Defense and protection? Against what? Certainly not against boogieman terrorist threat. Certainly not against the greedy bastards that have set these imperial dominoes* in place to fall crush the entire world.
Simple, people who work sort of expect to be paid!
Well shouldn't our hard-earned taxes be a high priority to cover these expenses?
Not really... I paid for my own college... er... still am. I'm not sure what makes me different.
Good for you! But not everyone here was born with a silver foot in their mouths. I don't see why a stiff piece of card-paper with a seal-of-approval and some scheming, self-serving dean's signature should cost well over sixty thousand dollars. And maybe I would better understand after having earned my degree. Which means spending tens-of-thousands of dollars of someone Else's money and the willful chaining of myself of the debt system. At least if this stuff were affordable, I could work both at wallyworld, and put myself through school.
Silver foot??? That's presumptuous. I assure you I put in my dues in restaurants, retailers, factories and construction.
But I'll humor you. Exercise your freedom to compete in the education market. Solicit knowledgeable people to do your instructing. To be competitive you'll likely need a technology group. And a facility (cant forget that). People to maintain that facility. If you can manage to convince someone to give you property, furniture, tech, any monthly utility costs and convince all these people to work for free then I say you might have something. But if your not charging for it you would have to cap your enrollment. And you 'Jimmy the selfless dean' would also have to waive compensation.
Another thing you don't take into account is that students may not be marketable employees for the field of their choosing (or at all). I know a not-so promising Engineer (bachelors degree) that makes an okay living as a roofer. Free education would have to account for people like him who wanted to do something, got the piece of paper saying that someone considered him to be educated for said something then falls flat on their face or decides that they want to be in a different industry. How many 'free' degrees are required?
And not everyone needs to go to college. There are many trades you can only learn from doing.
What did you go to school for and what did you end up doing?
I Started off going to ASU for accounting. I flunked out of economics twice after arguing against two different instructors stance's that Greed and selfishness is good for the economy. I refused to accept, and still do, that hoodwinking and scamming the uninformed customer is the proper way to run a business. And look at where we are now...
The way we mislead people with all this marketing just blows my mind. If some cheapass plastic, metallic, or liquid product is really so fucking necessary to my survival, it shouldn't have to advertized and drilled into my head in the form of lame ass commercials over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.
What is 'greed' really? def. "A selfish and excessive desire for more of something (as money) than is needed." What is 'needed'? An education is not 'needed'. I survived for a long time at or under the 'poverty line' doing skill-less jobs. I was miserable but I had everything I needed. I could probably have continued to do so if I hadn't developed an excessive and selfish desire to improve my quality of life. Desire isn't a bad thing even if it is excessive and \or selfish. Everyone has an excessive desire for something. You have internet. You don't 'need' it. Therefore it would stand to reason you have resources beyond your need. Unless that's accidental then you greed-ed for it. I greed for the internet too. And food beyond my need. And cable TV. Greed and selfishness are how were coded. We want to be more comfortable, more satisfied, more content.
More on topic with your OP: You chose to go into college then leave. I would be upset if I were paying for multiple people to do what you did. You and I both 'willfully chained ourselves to the debt system'. We had an incentive to be successful in that if we failed, we had no one to blame but ourselves and we were the ones footing the bill for our own failure.
Before 9/11 happened, and the successive economic events to follow, My sister and I (along with 2 of cousins) had over one-hundred-thousand dollars in some college fund. I was 14 years old when the towers fell. By the time I graduated high school and was able to go to college, That one-hundred-thousand dollars had now turned into a measly 13 grand. And if this sort of thing happened to me and my loved ones, I can just imagine how many other countless people across the globe were affected by these orchestrations. thirteen-thousand dollars Definitely not enough to pay any real speakable education. Now I admit that I made some unwise decisions in my earlier years with this money, which is the reason I ended up dropping out school. I did not want my family, or anyone wasting money for the decisions i was making.
you got an education and it turns out you wanted something else.
"Waiter, this duck confit with mango salsa doesn't look like a burger. does it look like a burger to you, kid? I want a duck confit with mango salsa, and it better look like a burger."
Same reason the whole college textbook scene is so overpriced and corrupt:
Its a scam (i know, i'm in it)