Friday, February 6, 2015

GOLD BACKED RUBLE? Maybe, maybe not

VOUS AVEZ RAISON, ALAN:  Affirmative Action president, indeed!

PRIME AMAZON EXPLAINED Always wondered why 2-day shipping?


DECENT DISCUSSION OF CHRISTIANITY'S HISTORY And a complicated and mixed bag it is.

OBAMA SHOULD REALLY KNOW WHAT HE'S TALKING ABOUT BEFORE PONTIFICATING Then again he wouldn't be Obama if he had any idea of how little he really knows.

A LOT RIGHT HERE Many, many distortions in this economy

Sounds like police state. DID THIS FORFEITURE LAW GET BORN?

SPOKEN LIKE A SOCIALIST Somebody tell this college professor/socialist that socialism has been found wanting. The comments are on point here.

THE OUTRAGEOUS COST OF AN UNDERGRADUATE DEGREE This is truly an outrage. A comment by Johnathan Swift Jr is most relevant. A comment by the blogger to Mr Swift is posted below.

From all that I have read about the issue of education, paying for it, and government involvement, Mr Swift has is just about right in his very informative post. I remember writing Mr Levin, the new President of my alma mater Yale, upon the matriculation of my son in 1990, how outrageously expensive the school had become since my undergraduate years in the 1950's. Then room, board and tuition was about $2,000. The same for my son, as I recall, was about $45-50,000 with spending money to be added.  As I mentioned to President Levin, even allowing for the inflation of the '70's a 25 times increase in the basic costs over 30 years seemed outrageous to me. Ten times increase since I graduated should amply cover the inflation issue, how account for the rest of the increase?  I volunteered that maybe it had something to do with the size of the course curriculum book, which seemed at least twice as big as in my time, and were all these courses necessary to provide a well-rounded, informed graduate at the end of 4 years? I didn't mention the inflation in the salaries of professors and the dramatic decrease in their work loads, commented on by Dean Kagan sometime later, when he wrote an article for a magazine describing his own teaching load as one-third what it was when he began his career 40 years earlier. The 3-page long response from Mr Levin seemed a little defensive, at least in its length, nevertheless he attempted a defense by arguing that knowledge expansion required additional courses, especially in an elite research school such as Yale. I was, and remain, unpersuaded. Rather, I believe Mr Swift has identified most of the drivers of most of the cost spiral for a college degree. I would add to his list of drivers probably the biggest driver of all, the involvement of the federal government through the influence of the billions in research grants and programs like Title IX, Pell grants, and all the other easy government backed loan schemes that enable experience deprived 18-19 year-olds to live, in some cases high-on-the- hog well, on excessive credit for 4 years or more. This abuse will not end well.