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