I had been wondering about that…
I guess you’ve got to draw the line somewhere.
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As a matter of factBy lex, on April 5th, 2009
April 5th, 2009 | Tags: academy | Category: Politics and Culture
22 comments to As a matter of fact |
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The lunch and dinner per person caps are really quite reasonable. In fact, they are a bit lower than I would have expected.
Lex/
One of the obscene dirty little secrets is the rampant rise in educational costs. Let me run some numbers that will blow your mind. Even though as a scholarship athlete at LSU I didn’t have to worry about tuition, we would still get a reimbursement ticket from the bursar’s office every registration breaking down the amt of our scholarship. Now, granted, at the time, LSU had, I believe the lowest out-of-state tuition costs in the nation for a Univ.. of it’s size thanks to the tradition set by Huey Long, who wanted to attract people to Louisiana, still, the figures cited are all relative to the times.
In 1962, my freshman year, out-of-state tuition was $50.00/semester over and above in-state tuition. By the time I graduated in 1966 it had risen to the UNGODLY AMOUNT of $150.00/semester!
Are you sure you don’t want to reconsider and make better use of your flight-time going x-country looking for Mr. Peabody’s Wayback Machine?
PS: I don’t remember exactly what in-state tuition was at the time; it was low, but pretty much in line with the national/regional average. What stuck in my mind was the eye-popping minimal rates for out-of-state.
I, too, have been mystified at the rising cost of education. I was in college a little after VX, and I also was lucky enough to have an athletic grant-in-aid. I went to the always expensive Univ. of So. Calif. from 1969 – 1973, and tuition was about $1,500 per semester. Room / board in a fraternity were $135 – $150 per month, with meals on the weekends not being provided. This was considered very expensive back then. To put it into perspective, however: I could have worked my summers and some vacation time as a beach lifeguard and earned enough for school.
Compare that with today’s costs. Try to earn enough as a student part-time worker to afford any of the big colleges. Those same big colleges that have endowments in the Billions of dollars. Those dame colleges with contracts from government and business to do ‘things.’ Where does the money go? It infuriates me that there is so little attention given to this.
Two years later and all the tennis scholarship $ would have gone to basketball. You just missed the “Pistol”.
Wilko/
Funny thing, I never saw him play a single minute in an LSU uniform except on film years later. I was in pilot tng his freshman yr, at DaNang his soph, and in England for his final two. This was all in the days before cable, ESPN, satellite TV, etc. He was playing for the Atlanta Hawks by the time I got back to the US.
He did get a new BB stadium built, the Pete Maravitch Assembly Center, or “P-MACK” as it’s known. It’s almost an architectual duplicate of the dome at the Uof I in Champaign which pre-dated it by about a decade. Previously they had played all their games in the Parker Agriculture Center on a raised temp. floor on a dirt surface where all the livestock shows and rodeos were held. Had one end open to the cattle stalls with a huge tarp hanging down to keep out the cold and the smells. LOL!! Pretty hard to recruit with a facility like that.
The really funny part was that Pete’s freshman yr (NCAA wouldn’t let Fr. start on Varsity in those yrs, remember?) all the fans would pack the place for the freshman pre-lim game, than 3/4 would leave when the Varsity took the floor for the main game. DOUBLE LOL!!
ONLY TIME I ever set eyes on him in person was when I was back on leave visiting between DaNang and England in fall of his Jr. yr. I literally physically bumped into him coming around a blind corner on the way from the Student Union to the Lib. by side of Admin Bldg. He said excuse me and I said the same. Sum total of conversation–didn’t have the heart to bug him. Considering his untimely death, part of me now wishes I had…
Lex –
I presume that you are commenting on the SF Gate’s article on the $75 limit for a bottle of wine at taxpayers’ expense.
If one ever doubted that those who toil in “Big Education” live in a parallel universe to ours, this should clear that up.
Good to know that all the funds raised by our California Lottery for educating “the children” are going to a good cause. Looks to me as though the lottery scam just furthers the education scam here in our [formerly] great state.
Who the heck do these “educators” think they are? The US Congress?
Ticks me off. I can just imagine what would have happened to me had I put a $10 bottle of wine on a travel voucher upon returning from TDY. I’d have never made 30 years.
Educators? No problem; need to recruit you see.
Hey Lex:
Had fun with the FAFSA form yet? Nice way to see what happened to, in our case, what happened to 18 years of diligently saving for college. Hoping my freshman won’t have to take out loans until the middle of junior year now.
VR,
Comjam
Much has been written on causes for increased tuition, and I’ve even read some of it – leads me to believe the biggest reasons is government subsidization (through student loans and grants), along with the increased number of Dept of Ed requirements that accompany said federal money. Same phenomenon that is occuring with bailouts — take the federal money, and the feds start twisting your arm, hard. Makes one look a lot more closely at the few colleges that refuse to take federal money (Hillsdale and Prinicpia come to mind . . . )
Lex,
Not just higher education mind you. I recently went back to take a peek at the prep school I attended to see where the tuition might be at these days. It is now a wee bit over 40K a year – for high school! Keep in mind this place was not a bastion of academic greatness but was rather the prep school you sent your progeny to after they had been expelled from other schools.
So, why does it cost so much? Because they try to be everything to every person and that costs dearly. I mean, you can’t send the entire Freshman class to China for a week for cultural studies on the cheap ya know. Nor can you build a biathlon course for that one kid for nothing. All these vital things cost money – and they need our help – ‘natch. At least that is what the Office of Development keeps telling me in their incessant pleas for donations.
Yooper-
Hell, my High School sent the entire year nine class to China for 5 weeks, built a campus there….
As to tuition, I just paid my latest bill, yeehah 5 figures a semester.
Five figures a year? For a high school education? Something that, pretty much by definition, anybody with a diploma or GED is qualified to teach?
Heh! For that kind of money I’ll take on five or ten pupils and put some desks into the machine shed. I’ll teach your little progeny everything the local school board requires and quite a few things they don’t. I’ll add in the lessons on common sense and why self esteem is their problem, not ours, for free.
I jest, of course. The thing to note here is that people are paying these prices for private education. They are not forced into doing so, this market is supplied already via your property taxes in all states, and they evidently aren’t Prep School alums ensuring their kids go the same route to enjoy the same connections at Prep, University, and Fraternity upon graduation. They’re public school graduates who’ve looked at the school systems, looked at the checkbook, looked at their kids, and voted with their dollars on the kids.
Sort of makes public education seem like a losing proposition, doesn’t it? Sort of makes you wonder, if you’re spending thousands in property taxes each year to fund the public education system why folks aren’t satisfied with it. Sort of makes you want to go back to school as the check-writer instead of the student.
Trust me, it’s worth a vacation day.
– Max
Having put my children in both private and public school I can tell you that putting the check book on the table makes everyone sit up a whole lot straighter and pay quite a bit more attention. When the tuition is being confiscated through property taxes almost no one gives a damn what you have to say… Public school systems are, for the most part, awash in money. They just don’t want you to know.
Max-
Nah, I’m (again) a Uni student, down here I’m paying around about $10,500 a semester.
Five figures a year for a High School student is easy done though, IIRC it was $14000 odd for my senior year, a school my friend just put his kid into (and the alma mater of my older brother) is over $19000 for senior year these days, I wouldn’t be suprised if my school weren’t up there too.
My folks had four of us going through at once, ouch!
…I was fortunate enough that the USAF put me through school, and seeing what my friends and family are paying for their kids’ educations, I;m not sure how anyone can do it without GI Bill assistance any more.
The one thing that bothers me is that up until recently my Alma Mater kept sending me letters begging me to cough up money for them. After almost ten years of that, I finally sent them back a polite but firm letter pointing out that their football coach (it should in fairness be pointed out by all accounts a superb teacher and genuinely fine man) makes more every year than the Governor of our state and his cabinet put together. When his pay gets trimmed, then I’ll look at donating, not one minute sooner.
Haven’t seen a letter since.
Mike
The only problem with that logic is that the football coach “earns” his money, as determined by the market. He’s entitled to every penny – I’m sure the program he manages brings in a nice profit for the school. Doesn’t mean you have to participate, of course.
$75.00 for tequila would yield more qualified recruits, especially at $15.00 per bottle.
“The vast majority of expenses submitted here are entirely reasonable and appropriate, but every once in while things go out of whack,” Doug Levy, a UCSF spokesman, said Friday. “Usually it’s perfectly innocent, but every now and then people forget that it’s university money.”
Excuse me! Trust me, at $75/bottle they know quite damn well that it’s university money. They sure know it’s not THEIR money, or they wouldn’t be ordering a $75 bottle of wine.
Let’s see. My tuiti0n at the ‘Tute was IIRC $1850 my first year. By the time I graduated it was running around $2250. That would be ’70 – ’74. By the end it was about $4000/yr with books, fees, room and board and all thrown in. Now if you pay the full fare it’s > 10x that. But then very few people pay the full fare. Just about everybody gets some assistance. In fact, if your family’s income is < $100K you’re not going to get charged a dime of tuition. If your family’s income is < $200K you can leave the value of your home off of your financial statement.
Thanks very much for the link. Right now, I’m trying to figure out how to get some public university interested in recruiting me. I could use a good meal.
Guinness at $5 is a bargin. And a good bit more enjoyable.
The cost is so high because whenever it goes up, a hue and cry reaches our benevolent legislators, and they increase the money available to cover the cost.
The dirtiest of little university secrets is that far, far more are admitted each than year than have any chance of succeeding. They borrow deeply, then they fail–one week, two weeks, three weeks in, with the amount of their rebate decreasing sharply. Every fall there are legions of college drop-outs now stuck with thousands in government loans, and universities count on that money with an actuarial precision that would make insurance companies quail.
When I went to State U, tuition plus room and board was approximately $3500 a year. My father lived within his means, retired USAF, and owed little. We got nothing for financial aid, he wrote my checks out of his own pocket to spare me the debt (wasn’t until grad school that I foolishly ran up the student loans).
In Europe, there is none of the overwhelming in loco parentis to drive up the administrative overhead. If you are accepted, you will probably have your tuition paid for by the state, go find your own books/lodging/chow.
Get the Federal government out of any funding of universities or students, and don’t patronize any school that requires on-campus residency for any period of time. Probably only the latter is possible, but it will do much to keep your children out of the hands of the thought police that lurk throughout the university infrastructure, and teach them much about life as well.