[Vision2020] A Dangerous ‘New Normal’ in College Debt

[Kenneth Marcy]

On 3/9/2013 9:54 AM, Nicholas Gier wrote:
> Good Morning Visionaries,
>
> Since I started teaching at the UI in 1972, tuition has risen 1,100 
> plus percent.  I have the exact amount over 1,100 somewhere in my 
> files.  In stark contrast appropriations for higher ed have dropped 
> from about 20 percent of the budget to about 10 percent.
>
> For the 21st Century the rest of the industrialized world will leave 
> us in the dust in most areas, except for defense spending per capita.
>
> I weep for America,

Fees for a full-time Idaho resident undergraduate student are $3,106 per 
semester this year.  For the 1969 -1970 school year those fees were 
$105, which yields a percentage increase significantly higher than 1,100 
percent.  One prefers not to consider higher education to be a double 
entendre.

$6,002 (2 x $3,001) deflated back to 1969 dollars is $941.34. 
Considering the median annual income in Idaho back then was less than 
eight thousand dollars per year, it would have been the case then, as it 
is rapidly becoming today, that only the really, really rich kids are 
able to afford university education.

Compare and contrast this education funding policy with that of some 
so-called poorer countries that provide their citizens with higher 
education as a matter of residential right.

Since the cessation of American post-WWII military adventures in 
southeast Asia, and with our continuing national refusal to pay our 
debts and focus on the present and future improvements of the United 
States of America, this country has been sliding inexorably downhill.  
The country is infested with financial bedbugs that are simultaneously 
injecting poison and extracting resources to the detriment of our 
collective vitality and sanity.  The fact that the historical sources of 
the infestation have been present since before the founding of the 
country notwithstanding, we need to wake up and clean house.  Medical 
attention in the form of anti-poison treatments would be helpful, too.


Ken