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which is why im looking at 2016, not 2008... plus, president bush can barely put together a coherent sentence, so i would imagine that most of what he says is pre-written for him. There is no one writing my answers...this is all just what i think and know, and when i dont know something, i admit it.

i had a sticker on my beer fridge in college that read:

College is just a bar with a 30,000 dollar cover charge

Far too many kids look at it like that, and that accounts for the slow devaluation of a college degree. There are way too many "party schools", which have far too soft of entry requirements. pretty much anyone who can get a handful of funding can get into college for at least one semester, and college has turned into a sort of docking station between high school and real life. That isnt what college is meant to be. These kids who have NO place in college take things like federal grants and loans, and waste them. They have no idea what they want to do with themselves, so when they go to college, they spend a semester or two taking intro classes, none of which interest them, so they dont put any effort into it...and they fail or drop out. Now, that grant could have been a HUGE benefit to someone like me, who entered school knowing exactly what i was there for, and I had to pay it myself. My parents helped as much as they could, but they werent able to pay for everything, and i feel that knowing that when i was done with school, i would be paying for it literally, i valued the time that i spent there and i was going to make for damn sure that i left there with a piece of paper that said that i knew something, about something...


however, i knew a TON of kids who even after 2 or 3 years were undecided. Again, college isnt a break room to hide in until you know what you want to do with yourself. there shouldnt be majors like "general studies", because that doesnt prepare you for any sort of future, and those people come out of school with a "degree", which effectively devalues MY degree in tax accounting with a minor and economics. i had friends who, year after year, took a handful of intro courses, and struggled through them all...only to eventually run out of funding, so they quit school to find a job. Again, wasted time and money. Far too many kids go to college because it is the "thing to do". Kids are expected to go to college, but its not for everyone.

On the first day of school, the professor in my useless freshman prep class said "introduce yourself to the person to your left, then to the right, then in front of you. you now know three people, if not more...and of those three people, 1 wont be in school after this semester, and of those three, only one will ever graduate." That doesnt seem odd to anyone else? How can we expect funding programs to take serious consideration into putting more money into these programs when there is only a 1 in 3 success rate?

TechmanBD

This reminds me of a story a friend who is getting his PhD to become a professor told me. I think he said he read it in the news. This was awhile back. Some college student who was a freshman failed a test he was given. I guess he was upset so he called his mommy right there in class when he got his test back. He then handed his phone to the teacher. Mind you, what the story was, this kid didn't study and partied all the time. The mommy then started in on the teacher that she paid all this money for her kid to go to that college, blah blah blah. That kid will not make it in the world. What his this jackass going to do when he is at a job and screws up? You can also blame some parents out there as well. Just because you pay for it, doesn't mean crap.

RLSH700

Hmm...Here is the way I see it. Post-secondary education is not going to be solved by more government, but instead by getting the Gov't less involved. To a degree, I think the government is to blame for why education is so darn expensive. They basically have things set up so then they encourage the college for more wasteful spending. For example, they have these grants that they will receive more funding if they remodel or tare down older buildings and build new ones. My campus took advantage of this like a college student takes advantage of happy hour. They tore down building that were in perfectly good shape to build more expensive ones with less space, remodeled building to make them more fancy as opposed to necessary remodeling (to fix potential structural problems), they kept redoing the parking lots when they were in excellent shapebefore this, they would spend tons upon tons of money on campus beautification that was not in anyways necessary. These campuses make the government look practical in their spending at times, and the sad thing is just like the government, that isn't enough. Instead of making the wise decision like any corporation will do to cut spending in unnecessary areas or finding more efficient ways to do all of this, they instead jack their prices up over and over and over and over and over and over again. Their problem is they need to get a control on their spending.

I disagree about the colleges with lower entry standards point. I will say that these do have a purpose, they correct the mistakes made by the standardized tests. According to the ACT, I wasn't smart enough to get into the University I graduated from. Then 4 1/2 years later, I graduated from that University that has higher standards with a 3.46 out of 4.00 average after being on the Honor Roll and Deans List a couple times. The reason why I didn't do well on the ACT is I didn't have enough time to finish the darn thing. The two year that I went to before hand only required a H.S. diploma and that you took the ACT before hand. They first gave me I think it was called the "Compass Test" (their own form of the ACT which was not timed). The advantage of institutions like this is they are so much cheaper than Universities, it would blow your mind. My private H.S. was more expensive than it was and it was hardly a fancy private school at that (three classrooms, no library, no gymnasium of our own, had to share lockers, had to do fundraisers whether or not we were involved in extra curricular activities, etc.). After I left there with a 3.53 out of 4.00 average, I received thousands of dollars in scholarships from my University that had before hand, considered me not worth even letting in their doors. I will admit some of my professors were jokes from that two year, but most of them were intelligent and good instructors. In fact, the most incompetent instructor I ever had degrees from Harvard and Yale! Many of the students I had to deal were at a H.S. maturity (others I question if they had even been born yet), but those normally flunked out after the first semester. SIU-Carbondale on the other hand had higher standards than my two year had but that is a huge party campus and it is a pretty big institution.

The other thing you have to take into effect is the other purposes of institutions like these. Some people I know who have degrees from more impressive institutions for designing products, marketing products, and/or selling products in more complex fields such as the medical industry will take classes from these institutions so then they can see things from the perspective of a doctor so then they make better products, have a better understanding of how doctors use these products, and be better connected with the atmosphere after having endured it themselves. So why should they have to spend another $30K on a degree in a field that they are not planning on practicing in when they get a good enough idea

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the american automotive industry is killing itself paying unskilled laborers FAR too much, and way more than they are worth. the only people who can fix the auto industry are the people who are signing union contracts. do you think that the japanese floor workers are making the equivalent of 50-60k a year?

as for your other questions, its hard to say, as ALOT of things can (and probably will) happen before 2016. as far as im concerned, this country is full. i feel that only a painful lesson will teach illegals not to come back. the governments current stance is basically like me finding someone breaking into my house, grabbing them by the wrist, and dragging them back to the porch, then leaving the door open and going back to bed...and hoping that they dont come back in. other countries cut peoples hands off for stealing, and we have rapists and murderers walking the streets thanks to legal technicalities. the US is a nice place for the poor of the world to flock and live off of legal residents like myself, and its time for that to stop. if you werent born here, you shouldnt be eligible for any sort of government aid. if you came here and youre poor, then go back to where you came from and let that government worry about you...if you dont want to do that, i think the president Rall's new "alien minimum wage" plan should suffice long enough for them to take themselves back to where they came from. youre illegal and you dont like making 2 bucks an hour to do some AWFUL job? then go home. if the government didnt make it SO easy for illegals to thrive while REAL americans suffer, we wouldnt have this problem.

my first swipe at government spending would focus on foreign policies. im sick of watching my tax dollars wasted on breaking up holy wars and civil wars, only to have those countries get pissed off and lash out at american civilians. they dont want us there? fine. step back and let them all destroy each other...then we will see how much everyone hates the US. they hate us now because we step into everything, but unless its canada or mexico, i dont care what goes on in other countries. we arent the worlds babysitter, and its been going on long enough. our government spends more on feeding OTHER countries than it does feeding the poor of this country.

the "oil prices" that effect gas prices are a joke. when the price of oil goes up 10 cents a barrel, gas prices shouldnt go up ten cents a gallon. the government mandates the price of milk, why not gasoline? oh, thats right..because our current president has his hand DEEP in that cookie jar.

this entire country is getting screwed by doctors and insurance companies. a while back, i got very sick, and went to the doctor that my insurance company recommended. not surprisingly, that doctor told my insurance company that they shouldnt cover my bills. what an odd coincidence. not to mention that fact that doctors used to be there to help people, now they are there ONLY to help themselves. when i worked as a mechanic, and someone brought in a car with a bad transmission, my job was to fix that transmission. if i sent them out and the car came back with the same problem, it was my fault...but when a doctor sends someone out and they come back with the same problem, why does the patient have to pay over and over and over again? they create their own business by not doing the job right the first time. also, when i said to a customer "bring the car back in a week for me to look at", i would check it out and send them on their way if nothing was wrong..it took me five minutes and cost them nothing. when my doctor says "come back in a week", it costs me 35 bucks every time i go back...for five minutes, and he doesnt do anything?