Why all the pampering of young people?

I was just at a liberal arts college, waiting for my girlfriend to finish an exam. Taking a walk around...

Along the halls, there were countless flyers for all sorts of scholarships and trainee work opportunities. I know the rhetoric..."young people are the future", "educate the youth", etc.

If you believe that, more power to you.

But I happen to think that universities (especially public ones) and philanthropy are big business. I just don't know where all the money is coming from and going to since all of this stuff seems to be funded by a byzantine web of promiscuous private-public incentives.

It just seems disproportionate to how productive young people in college actually seem to be.

For sympathetic minds...why do you thing such an industry exists and what are the interest groups behind it?

 

Are you saying you don't believe young people are (eventually) the future?

 

there was a time (thousands of years ago) when education consisted of parents talking and singing to their kids until they were about 4 and then they became productive or everyone died.

as time progressed and with each advancement more time/training was needed to work in the framework of society. Colleges have been around in mostly the current form for a few centuries, it is just that as life gets faster and more complicated a large number of very well trained people are needed to keep things going, NO ONE likes the training period of life really (the part where you are allowed to play sure but not the training part) , this is the reason for all the cajoling and encouraging

 

Hey if it keeps young punks off the streets and outta my way. =]

 

Achievement and Acknowledgement are two different things - both show merit though it is only the former that carries much weight in the production of such for employment and/or advancement purposes

 

Student loans. There is no reason why students should be forced to take on crippling debt in order to have a chance at climbing the financial or social ladder. There is no reason why college should cost as much as it does either. It's absolutely a business for those profiting from it.

 

I don't see the pampering. Except maybe with gender-neutral housing lol. My daughter is a senior in college and she is getting a very good education.

I agree with Wizardofodd. The problem is the cost and the unwillingness of Congress to support equal opportunity in higher education. I heard yesterday on NPR that today a mediocre student with well-to-do parents has a 80% chance of getting into college while a high-performing student from poor parents has a 20% chance. And the student loan burden is another thing. This is morally wrong. And it's a shameful thing for America. It even hurts our competitiveness in the world.

 

I would imagine that this industry feeds off of the rhetoric that you mentioned: "Children are our future, etc."

It makes businesses look good. It pulls at heart strings. It makes students and their parents feel indebted to a certain organization.

Also, as previous posters have mentioned...student loans.

 

If children are our future then we ought to fucking educate them for free. But the people who are profiting from this system absolutely believe the children are the future.....future profit.

 

Another area where we need more socialism. I mean it. (ducking...)

 

I have one daughter currently in college at one of the top universities and her academic performance paid for 90% of it. When all is said and done we will be about $40K in debt. It would cost us more than that to feed and house her for that period of time.

But there are people there, her roommate for example, who are there because of daddies checkbook and not her GPA.

The system may seem out of whack, but I'm curious about this;

Do you work for free?
Why should you expect educators to?
How much do you spend a year on room, board and food?
How much do you think it costs to keep the infrastructure YOU utilize daily functioning?

Who are the people making tons of profit from this (besides the textbook publishers)?

Why is it always some nebulous and invisible "them" that are always the perpetrators of these schemes or the one "profiting" from them.

Reminds me of the Wizard of Oz, :sultan: "it's the man behind the curtains fault".



Have any of you who say it should be free actually extrapolated on your thought to figure out the where, when and how of your free educational system would function, or are you just blurting out the first "hippy appropriate" response that comes to mind with little actual thought?

Like I say, logistics are a bitch.

Black, white, or psychedelic paisley, sheep always make me laugh. :mickey:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_education

Calling the people who disagree with you 'sheep' almost always reflects a deep lack of creativity.

 

you failed to comprehend what I meant obviously.

I was commenting on the knee-jerk responses certain types of stimuli will produce in certain groups.
Hippies are just as "sheep like" and susceptible to mob influence as any other human grouping.

Nor was I targeting anyone in particular nor did I view that anyone was in disagreement with me, just voicing my opinion on the subject.
The questions I asked are valid and crucial questions relative to the topic.
Far to often in this forum people blurt out answers which most often are a knee-jerk response suited to "fit in" with the perceived hippy persona of Hip Forums and such responses amount too little more than the braying of a lamb.

Those are the same accusations that are levied against any and all groups that are often the target of such ill-informed and poorly thought out braying that seems to resonate so loudly and echo endlessly within the halls of Hip Forums among the sheep who flock here.




I'm just making observations and taking notes as I enjoy my assignment on this little rock.

 

You do realize that by making that statement you have declared that about 78% of the membership of Hip Forums are deeply lacking in creativity.

 

We already educate most kids for free from K-12th grade. Do I need to continue? I'd be happy to.

 

Is it for free?
I know I pay taxes AND have also had to pay for textbooks, materials, etc, etc for each of our six kids as they progressed through the "free" public school system.
The average annual cost for putting one of my kids through "free" elementary school was about $200, for middle school it was about $325, high school has been about $500, but #6 starts next year, so who knows what the bill will be.
Plus the letters that come home from teachers asking for donations of supplies because the tax dollars aren't enough.

Not even gonna mention the $25,000 + the wife and I have donated to the schools in time, money and materials over the years because the tax dollars don't stretch far enough.
Not perfect, but it is reality.

So if I tally it up, it has cost us approximately $35,0000 to send our kids to "free" school, including the two years three of them were home-schooled and not including any extra-curricular activities.


So without trying to sound like a noxious ass , let me ask you Wizard, are you voicing your opinions based on real life experience or on what you're impressions of what the educational system in America is/should be?


That is an honest inquiry with absolutely no malice intended, simply seeking information.
:mickey:

 

Agree with what mostly everyone has said here. Education SHOULD be cheaper. But maybe I am a little bias, but allow me to elaborate from my experience....

While it may LOOK like they're making it a cake walk for the students, KEEPING these incentives is NOT an easy thing. They change the restrictions almost by semester and alot of times fail to tell the students in a timely manner (and sometimes not at all...but that was probably my schools poor communication between departments).

And THEN they try to "help" you out by giving you your other options...and usually by this point you're already halfway through....so it's either spend the next several months hunting around and applying for more scholarships (which a large percentage of that time ends up being a waste), figure out a way to pay for it out of pocket, or get strapped in with a student loan.

While this isn't everyone's experience...in the end the point is the same.
They paint it up to look like a cake walk. You have all these options to fund school because they want you to get your education and be a productive part of the economic system, but at the same time, they're still a business and WANT THEIR MONEY. So college students are a perfect target.

 

What keeps me out of any ability to move on from disability is I can't get any sort of job anymore that can support me. I would go back to college but I am not about to become a debt slave at my age. I have already in my life paid off two sets of student loans. If they really wanted people to learn in order to enter the workforce then school would be free - it pays off a degree trains you as a better/more productive person. The fact that it is not free demonstrates two things 1 ) they just want money, not to educate you B ) they know they have pushed all real jobs out so why actually care about a real education

 

ehhh?

On this occasion I'm going to have to question the premise itself.

What actually is the question you are asking?

 

I think you're more of a sheep if you can only envision the world within the confines of the current system.

most people advocating for free education are probably well aware that it isn't really free, that it must be paid for with tax payers money. Therefore, free higher education would not work in our current system...because our politicians dump so much money elsewhere and spend it in highly inefficient ways.

Education is an investment. I would love to live in a country that viewed it as such and prioritized spending to reflect those priorities.