Category — tuition

Commentary - Melanie Scarborough: Stop throwing tax dollars at well-funded colleges

WASHINGTON (Map, News) - When a friend’s daughter was in town a couple of years ago visiting American University, where she had been accepted as a freshman, I showed the girl — a California native — the sights of Washington, D.C.

As we crossed the National Mall, she asked me what that big building was at the end. I told her it was the Capitol, and she asked, “What’s that?” I explained that was where Congress meets, and she asked, “What’s that?”

The girl was weeks away from graduating from a swank high school, had been accepted into a supposedly competitive university, is the daughter of parents with post-graduate degrees … and she’d never heard of Congress.

I would have assumed she was an anomaly or blamed the California school system if I hadn’t heard similar comments from other young people who attend top-rated high schools in Virginia, such as the daughter of a co-worker who mentioned a classmate visiting Europe — “one of those places that starts with an A.” Amsterdam? Austria? Antwerp? “No,” she said. “I think it was Alcatraz.”
[snip]

So you wonder why they put pictographs on the Mickey D’s cash registers?

When Bush said the illegals were doing jobs Americans won’t do, I thought he meant won’t. He didn’t, he meant CAN’T. There is a large group of Illexicans working fast food. I guess they’re smarter, they know what the pictures mean.

The failure of secondary education means that a college degree is roughly the equivalent of what a high school diploma was a generation ago. Consequently, college instruction is not necessarily higher education; in many cases, it’s remedial, with universities having to teach freshmen basics they should have learned in ninth grade. Employers know that, which is why even the most menial of jobs now requires a college degree — spawning lower-tier state universities that are essentially seat-selling operations.

For example, at Radford University in southwest Virginia, the average SAT score for incoming freshmen is a meager 990. Only 6 percent of students graduated in the top 10 percent of their high school class; 28 percent finished in the bottom half.

Yet Virginia taxpayers send about the same amount of money to Radford ($58 million in fiscal 2009) as they send to the College of William and Mary, where the average SAT score is 1350, and 85 percent of students were in the top 10 percent of their class in high school.

The demand for more college seats creates a demand for more financial aid, and Congress blithely complies. Last week, the House passed a measure to spend an additional $20 billion on financial aid to students — the biggest boost since the G.I. bill of 1944. It did so not only without asking whether all the students eligible for financial aid need to be in college, but whether the colleges they will be attending need the additional money. [snip]

This is why we are heading for a recession? When this great waste arrives at the end of the tracks, you will see a train wreck bigger and longer than the Great Depression.

I hope we can hang those responsible.

I didn’t live in MA during the Dukkakis era, but I suspect it was a lot like living in MA right now under Deval Patrick. Facing a shortfall that his own budget chief estimates at about $1.35 billion, the governor has decided now is the time to give in-state tuition to illegal immigrants. Forget about the fact that he’d never consider giving NH commuters the same benefit. They just obey the law and pay MA state taxes. Liberals never reward those kinds of people.

And the best part of the story? He instructed his legal team to see if he can get it done without the legislature. So the guy who swore to uphold the state constitution has ZERO respect for the law. Remember, this isn’t his first suggested end around the state constitution. He told the legislature not to uphold its constitutional duties and just shelve the gay marriage amendment.

But the Patrick criminal love fest doesn’t end with illegal immigrants. In a move we can only interpret as a legal failure to devise a strategy around the legislature, the Moonbat-in-chief filed a bill to gut employer access to the criminal records’ of felons. Thank God for that because I feel safer already. But remember, he wasn’t going to be soft on crime if elected.

This is the kind of “leadership” that just makes you want to spit nails. The state has huge problems, but the governor only has time to help the state’s criminals and casino operators. Where’s the promised property tax relief? Where are the extra cops? Where is the $700 million in government efficiencies you saw?

Face facts Patrick voters; you’ve been conned.