Colleges waste money, charge more

  I am always surprised that few people in this country are willing to talk about why costs of a college education are rising and how much money we pay so-called academics. 
  We seldom talk how little students learn in these college environments that are so oppressive with regard to alternate viewpoints like conservatism, Christianity, Israel or the beliefs of pro-life students.
  While the average student who attends a state school has accumulated debts around $30,000, (which I find hard to believe), overall Americans have accumulated $1.2 trillion in student debt.
   Those who attend fancy pants schools, remarkably, graduate with less debt because of the numerous grants and endowments available for these privileged one percenters.
  I find this hard to believe, as I mentioned, because I know many young people who have accumulated far more than $30,000 in student loans. Years ago, I too had accumulated thousands of dollars in loans, which I paid by working in a department store while looking for a "real" job.
  I paid cash for my master's degree, working full time as I took classes.
  These huge debts have changed young people's patterns of behavior, graduates putting off marriage, purchasing a home (maybe NEVER) and moving forward with their lives.
  Some people blame athletics for rising costs, yet athletics actually bring in money as opposed to the humanities, which are often stocked full of radicals, communists and activists.
  Economist Stephen Moore says costs for health care and tuition are the fastest rising expenditures in the United States. 
  Why? Moore from The Daily Signal:

What do these two industries – medical care and education – have in common? The answer is: government. The public sector basically runs these two sectors of the economy. Our health care system is about 52 percent public and 48 percent private. In education, about 70 percent of the dollars flow to public schools.

It’s no secret why these industries are such failures at curtailing costs. The answer is the people who get the service don’t pay for it. This is called the third-party payment problem, and it’s systemic in medicine and education.

   Even Robert Reich contends that, for many students, college is a "colossal waste of money."
  Here are some other reasons from the Post Gazette:

Another source of increased expense is administration. Since 1980, the number of administrators per student at colleges has about doubled; on most campuses their numbers now match the number of faculty. Here are some of their titles: senior specialist of assessment; director for learning communities; assistant dean of students for substance education; director of knowledge access services.

Needless to say, these officials claim that they offer needed services. Who can be opposed to ensuring access and assessment? But let's not forget that tuition pays for all these deans and directors; having more of them means higher bills for students.

Added tuition revenue has also gone to raise faculty salaries. Yale's full-time faculty members now average $129,400, up 64 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars from what they made in 1980. (Pay in other sectors of the U.S. economy rose only about 5 [percent in this period.) Stanford's tenured and tenure-track professors are doing even better, averaging $153,900, an 83 percent increase over 1980.

  Colleges waste many dollars in other ways, including purchasing "branding" accoutrements, entertainment,  luxurious pools, wellness centers and dorms and "perks wars."
  Though we may cite these online resources for research, where is the outrage or frank discussion in the MSM and this administration?
  Well, there is little outrage because those well paid college administrators--and many so-called academics (who are often also grievance mongers) are among the strongest supporters of Leftist politics.
  An excellent read by Megan McArdle suggests it's the elites in America who are pushing the notion that all students most go on to college, even when many jobs go without applicants, much less qualified personnel.

"Construction, electrical, any kind of trade that you can think of, which traditionally has had maybe an older workforce, those groups are actually trying to recruit younger workers," she said.
Haavind also says a number of available jobs are in the healthcare and clean energy fields.

  The notion that Obama needs to pour more "free" money into community colleges is foolish and ill conceived.