Heathcare vs. Higher Education

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This is a spirited and accurate post from Karen at The Spinster's Point of View. If you haven't visited her blog, get over there. It's always an entertaining read.

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Obama speaks repeatedly on the cost of insurance premiums rising at a rate twice that of general inflation. It's all due to the mean and evil practices of the insurance companies and we must call a halt to their nefarious and predatory ways. But what about higher education? That too has a rate of inflation twice that of the rest of the economy. Is Obama calling out universities and vilifying them for their predatory practices? Of course not. He's dealing with this by offering to foot the bill for people who can't pay back their student loans.

What I want to know is why college tuition is rising at such a rate. Health care premiums rise because the cost of health care itself rises; but what about education? What costs are rising so fast that the universities have to increase their tuition at such a rate. They should already own all of their building. They make the students buy their own books. On campus students are charged extra for housing and the kids have to buy their own food. So what on earth is causing the universities to have to increase their tuitions at such a rate? Can it be, could it possibly be, the salaries the colleges pay their professors?

If we want to talk about predatory practices, colleges are a good example.

• You are forced to take classes you don't want and don't need in order to satisfy the individual college's requirement -- and you have to pay the college for this priviledge. That sounds remarkable like racketeering to me.
  

• If you transfer from another school, the classes you didn't want to take don't transfer to the new school and you must take more useless classes to replace the last batch.

• You have to buy ridiculously expensive text books which you find when you try to sell back at the end of the year are actually worthless because of a new addition.

• You have to fight with 4,000 other students to get the class you do want only to find when you get there that the teacher doesn't speak English. Or at least you think he doesn't. It's hard to tell if what he is speaking is a foreign language or just so heavily accented that it's indecipherable.

• You have to pay for the privilege of this up front and there is no refund for a class given by a professor you can't understand.

• When all is said and done you have paid $160K - $280K for an education that will qualify you for a $30,000 per year salary.

Forget banks, forget credit cards, forget insurance companies, let's go after the institutions of higher eduction for robbing us blind and using our money to indoctrine the children.