Germany has long shown far greater foresight than the United States in the investment into science, infrastructure, and alternative energy — investments that are now giving the country huge returns as a leading economic system. With a decision of Lower Saxony, the German have now shown precisely how serious they are about keeping the country as one of the most educated in the world: they have eliminated all college and university tuition. The Germans view education as not just a right, but an essential component for continued growth.
There are critics to educational subsidies who raise some good-faith issues of how such payments can eliminate pressure to make efficient choices and actually drive up costs. I actually see value to students paying some tuition. However, with tuition sky rocking in the United States and falling enrollment numbers, the United States is heading to a reckoning in the future for our lack of investment in our workforce. While we have spent trillions of dollars on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (and just renewed our commitment to the later to keep forces in the country), we have continued to cut environmental, scientific, educational, and infrastructure investments. The inevitable result is that we will continue to drop in our competitiveness in the world market and the future economy. Every other country is investing heavily in education while the United States continues to be distracted by shiny objects with more immediate political benefits for politicians.
What is striking is that it is not just third world countries that are investing heavily education, but economic leaders like Germany.
Notably, tuition was only introduced in Germany in 2006 after the German Constitutional Court ruled that limited fees do not violate the country’s commitment to universal education. However, the tuition rates proved unpopular and the country is now tuition free. Of course, there is no such thing as free tuition. The taxpayers are footing the bill. Moreover, such government subsidies can have a negative impact on not just the choices of students (who feel less pressure to make efficient choices) but on schools which are dependent on the government.
Nevertheless, the contrast could not be greater with the United States in terms of the commitment to education as not just a right (as it is in Germany) but as a real national security priority.
The article below has an interesting discussion of how England rejected the free tuition approach but has lost more money due to the higher student default rate on tuition. Yet, the English students face a maximum debt load of $14,550 per year where U.S. tuition rates and debt are soaring. Student loan debt in our country now stands at $1.2 trillion.
Of course, that is less than a third of the costs for the wars, but no one is making such comparisons.
http://thinkprogress.org/education/2014/10/01/3574551/germany-free-college-tuition/
http://www.salon.com/2014/09/21/professors_on_food_stamps_the_shocking_true_story_of_academia_in_2014/
excerpt:
The most shocking thing is that many of us don’t even earn the federal minimum wage,” said Miranda Merklein, an adjunct professor from Santa Fe who started teaching in 2008. “Our students didn’t know that professors with PhDs aren’t even earning as much as an entry-level fast food worker. We’re not calling for the $15 minimum wage. We don’t even make minimum wage. And we have no benefits and no job security.”
Over three quarters of college professors are adjunct. Legally, adjunct positions are part-time, at-will employment. Universities pay adjunct professors by the course, anywhere between $1,000 to $5,000. So if a professor teaches three courses in both the fall and spring semesters at a rate of $3000 per course, they’ll make $18,000. The average full-time barista makes the same yearly wage. However, a full-time adjunct works more than 40 hours a week. They’re not paid for most of those hours.
“If it’s a three credit course, you’re paid for your time in the classroom only,” said Merklein. “So everything else you do is by donation. If you hold office hours, those you’re doing for free. Your grading you do for free. … Anything we do with the student where we sit down and explain what happened when the student was absent, that’s also free labor. Some would call it wage theft because these are things we have to do in order to keep our jobs. We have to do things we’re not getting paid for. It’s not optional.”
excerpt:
“Walmart and the compartmentalized way of treating faculty is the going rate. The way administration turns around and says, for instance, where I was teaching it was probably about 65% adjunct faculty. But the way they fix their numbers, it makes it looks as if it’s less when they show their books because the way they divide it and the way they play with their numbers it shows that it’s less.”
excerpt:
The most telling phrase in Merklein’s words are “the school as a business.” Colleges across the country have transitioned from bastions of intellectual enlightenment to resort hotels prizing amenities above academics. Case in point: The ludicrously extravagant gyms in America’s larger universities are home to rock climbing walls, corkscrew tracks, rooftop gardens, and a lazy river. Schools have billions to invest in housing and other on-campus projects. Schools have millions (or in some cases “mere” hundreds of thousands) to pay administrators. Yet schools can’t find the money to hire more full-time professors. If one follows the money, it’s clear that colleges view education as tertiary. The rigor of a university’s courses doesn’t attract the awe of doe-eyed high school seniors. Lavish dorms and other luxuries do.
excerpt:
“The real problem with the adjunct market right now is that it cheats students of the really outstanding educations they should be getting,” she said. “They’re paying a lot of money for these educations and they’re not getting them. And it’s not because they have bad instructors, it’s because their instructors are not supported to do the kind of work they can do.”
bettykath – as a former adjunct I can attest to the fact that you cannot survive on the money you make as an adjunct. I had a meeting with the Presidents of all the community colleges to tell them they were surviving on the money they were saving by hiring adjunct faculty. And I told them the following “Adjunct faculty are the n**gers of education.” Didn’t help any and I stopped getting work, but I felt better. Got a full-time job teach high school.
part of the despicable Nazi treatment of Jews was tattooing them, something verboten in their culture.
Nick – as a history teacher you should be aware the Nazi’s tattooed themselves.
sloh, Maybe tattoos of sagging pants. But, hopefully that dysfunctional prison culture fad will die soon.
Maybe there’s a market for designing tatoos that accommodate aging-sagging! Someone probably will and become rich. I think of these things all the time. ???
DBQ, You daughter is fortunate to have you as a mom. Although I’m sure there were times she didn’t see it that way.
Nietzsche and cooking–yikes!!
slohrss29 – does have a nihilistic feel to it, doesn’t it? 😉
Po, my college was done the same way. Scratched and clawed working for cash for community college. Made my way through that, and went on to 4-year. Changed major for a while, realized it was mainly a pipe-dream, changed back, worked my way through. Had about $5,000 in loans and felt overwhelmed for a while! I am not complaining because I loved learning. Since I paid for it, it is also very dear to me. I come from a farmer and laborer background, and still feel fortunate I could do that. I don’t think it is an option to “work your way through school” these days.
To be irrevocably dedicated to one track at an early age is unreasonable.”
Jim 22 DBQ, you just outlined my argument for never getting a tattoo!
LOL That is exactly the argument I used when my daughter wanted to get a tattoo (in high school) and a piercing in her nostril. All the other kids are doing it….doncha know.
Not only did I point out that both were irreversible…..just think how awful they will look when you are old and have wrinkled saggy skin like Mrs. So and so down the street. [I used the example of an old wrinkled stooped over sort of crazy bag lady who had a hard life and man did it show. I think of her whenever I forget to take my calcium supplements!]. Your tattoo will be so saggy, blurred and wrinkled up in your skin, no one will even know what it is, being folded up so badly. They’ll probably think it is dirt that you haven’t washed off. AND that hole in your nose, besides being clogged up with boogers will be even bigger, you will probably have to clean it out with a Q-tip. Gross!!!
She to this day doesn’t have either a tattoo or piercing.
🙂
po, Indeed. My brother graduated from Villanova w/ a degree in philosophy and became a top chef in Boston. It was tough discussing Nietzsche w/ his Dominican and Puerto Rican staff.
Nick – I am sure your brother’s staff understood every word he had to say about any philosopher he was discussing. 🙂
Jim, LOL! Absolutely. Young people have permanently defiled their epidermis and reputations. What a bunch of rubes. Much to my delight, neither of my kids went the tattoo route. My old man, who served in the Navy in WW2 HATED tattoos. He would always point them out to me and remark @ how ugly they were. He was 25 when the war started so he had been around. He saw, young, drunk kids, getting tattoos and knew it was stupid. He died in 1989 so he thankfully didn’t see the tattoo culture erupt the past couple decades.
Nick – from the art standpoint I am a big fan of yakuza tattoos and some work on people. But my mother so ingrained in me that I should not have a tattoo that I think she would rise from her grave if I got one. 😉
I don’t like to use “greed” in a positive sense. I would think “choice” is the important point here. When there are choices, there is natural competition, and that is important to just about any economic model. Man, I would love to raise my rates–but the pressure of options for my clients make that very hard to do. I can’t just raise my costs because a spreadsheet says my business needs more money. I have to demonstrate the value before I get more money. Just look at the former USSR (even though our oligarchy uses different terms, we are kind of getting close to the same thing–need only look at the banks).
Jim22. thanks for the insight. My wife was adamant that our oldest goes to a good college and stressing out about being able to pay for it. Since we are still paying the $200,000 student loans we incurred together, and we both returned to school for a different major, through taking classes at our local community college, I convinced her that short of him stepping it up enough to either earn some scholarship or convince us to make the sacrifice, he really does not belong in a university outright.
He can get in as i did, community college, slower pace, less costly, great instructors, better mastery of subjects, then college.
And Nick, I agree with you. Not everyone should go to college. I think every child should be exposed to a trade. Optimally, every child should be trained in some trade.
Interestingly, many college graduates are now taking up trades, farming, woodworking, metal work…
Maybe our growing challenge with China can at least help the rebirth of domestic craftsman. As great as the German military machine was last century (albeit over-stretched), it was the power of the American industrial might that prevailed. We may actually be at that point in time again sooner rather than later. They sure built nice planes though.
Nick, That and social media repair.
Jim Invest in companies that do tattoo removal. That is a burgeoning industry.
Annie – “Price controls on healthcare and education is clearly needed. The “greed is good” mentality is what drove costs up.”
Annie, You are just plain wrong. Govt. subsidized loans are what is doing it. More greed is what is needed. It will force the market to correct. Like I pointed out earlier, to me, a paradigm should be happening and the importance of teachers should be going bye, bye.
Dust Bunny Queen – “Well, that inflexibility is certainly not good! People change and need to be able to switch their aims and goals when their circumstances change. To be irrevocably dedicated to one track at an early age is unreasonable.”
DBQ, you just outlined my argument for never getting a tattoo!
Paul: po – you are blaming a university for something that happened hundreds of years ago. I can blame Islam for the same. And sadly, with Islam, it continues today.
Paul, are you okay?
Did I hurt your feelings somehow?
What do you want from me?
If you want to discuss Islam, I can indulge you, as long as you are willing to engage and not keep throwing in sentences that are not related to the exact point being discussed. None of your comments focuses on the same point, or builds on the previous point, When challenged on one, you jump to another.
I am making the point that our leading universities were ALWAYS involved in the pursuit of profit beyond the moral and beneficial offering of educational services, and i used the example of slavery, which precedes other contemporary issues, such as the refusal to divest from fossil fuels, or the turning a blind eye and deaf ear to the abuse and rapes of young women within their walls.
Are you intending to bring up Islam anytime I criticize anyone anywhere about anything? You are exemplifying EXACTLY why i made myself scarce. But, hey, territory…marking…urine…feces…people must do what they must, i get it.
Let me know how long you plan on doing this so I can sigh and bear it. Just expect a bill for service rendered.
po – we are talking about Germany not the US. If you want to talk profit making institutions using slavery that I can go on about all day. Just let me know. 🙂 When you open the door, do not expect me not to enter.
If you want to talk about the high cost of higher education today, I am more than willing to join the discussion. As I have said, I think the next US Attorney General needs to look at the racket in college text books.
And I agree with you about community colleges for two reasons. 1) they are less expensive 2) there is more hand-holding and better tutoring.
It is sad that some people can’t think outside their box and see that there are great professions that don’t require a college education, But, the education industry doesn’t make much, if any, money on that. So, the noble professions of tool and die maker, mechanic, plumber, electrician, etc. have been neglected. Instead, we have a couple generations of college educated people, who can’t write worth a damn, looking for jobs that aren’t there. Many go into govt. work, a perfect job for the education industry educated people.
po@minutebol – “I have been telling whoever wants to listen not to send their child to university from high school unless it is the rare child who knows exactly what (s)he wants to study,who is smart enough, and dedicated enough to go for it.
AT $40.000 a year, why pay for the child to spend a couple of years trying to find himself, indulge in extensive partying and later on finding a job that has nothing to do with her major?
Find a good community college in your area, let them take classes there while remaining home (or they can get a job and pay for their apartment). Taking their general ed classes for the required 2 years would give them plenty of time to mature, to be more responsible and more importantly, to know what they really wish to study. Universities have a vested interest in maintaining the structure of high school to college pipeline, but, frankly, most recent high school graduates have no business going to college directly. It would be more beneficial to all parties concerned, and to the nation, if a system was put in place that offered them the option to volunteer in our parks and other national infrastructures in exchange for college credit and a stipend.
The 18 year old body and mind is not meant to be in a classroom most of the day. it is meant to be more active, more challenged and to see more than 4 walls.”
po, I couldn’t agree more. My son fell into the exact trap and is now back home going to community college and paying us back what he wasted.
My dad also used to blame the colleges for teaching remedial classes. Colleges have been lowering their standards for years so they can get more tuition dollars. Plus it was less than exciting for the teacher too. My dad would say getting blank stares teaching Differential Equations was acceptable, but getting a blank stare after showing 2 + 2 = 4, well, you just don’t know what to do with that. If you can’t enter college able to write and do math, you shouldn’t be allowed in. Otherwise you are just dumbing down your institution. Which may be the goal in all of this.