Yer not wrong, but boy howdy, are they easy to retain budgetary oversight over! The state university I teach at was once 100% funded by the state, but now the state picks up only 10% of the budget. Somehow… somehow the state has the nerve to still claim 100% control over major purchases and fiscal policy, meaning the university cannot issue its own bonds, and must go begging to the state if they want, say, a new building.
States (and the feds) need to step the hell up with 100% education funding across the life course, a country with an educated populace produces a better quality of life for all concerned than a country with an uneducated populace.
Also: American students need to recognize the tremendous political power they hold. A budgetary shortfall of 3% in a university is a major destabilizer because so many of the major pieces of the university’s annual budget are protected (e.g., deans’ offices and administration, etc.), so that 3% tends to translate into something like 10%–15% cuts directly on academic units’ ability to teach. If the student body got hella organized and something like 10% of students refused to pay registration/tuition fees in a school year it would hamstring the university. I’d like to see students flexing muscles like the folks in Montreal did a few years back.
Off topic: I’d like to point out that the illustration is ++good! Excellent work (I need to up my game)
On topic: It took me years to pay off my student loans back in the day before this current nightmare of ever rising tuition and fees and out of control students happened. The best hope Wifey & I have for sending our kids to college is either scholarships or I finally pick the right lottery numbers (scratch offs? That’s for suckers)
In four decades of controlling our government, there is not one thing conservatives have done that is in the best interest of the Amerikan people. Every single thing they do is to make life harder, more miserable, less healthy, less chance of succeeding, less chance of retirement, for the people who actually keep the nation’s economy running. Amerikans have been the most productive workers in the world for decades, and yet, we receive none of the benefits. If Dem’s and Progressives simply stepped out of the way, within six months conservatives would take away protections for women, LGBT and anyone who is not a WASP and wealthy. They would shut down all unions, the five day work week, the 40 hour week, end SSI, Medicare and Medicaid. They wouldn’t require companies to have affordable health plans, removing any sense of medical care. They would remove all work safety measures, all environmental laws, all clean air and clean water laws, increase fracking and water pollution and air pollution, remove all child labors laws, shut down the Nat’l Park system remove wilderness and wildlife protections and allow extraction industries to destroy our public lands. That would just be the beginning. Unless you are a greedy millionaire/billionaire, if you vote for any conservative politician you’re signing your own early death warrant, not only for yourself, but your immediate family and their future families.
The bottom line is that neither the Democrats or Republicans will do what is needed to help middle America. They receive too many political donations from the medical, pharmaceutical and defense industries. As you point out, the Republicans are a bit more shameless in their attack on the lower 95% of the population. Also, poor people in general are a lot easier to control, particularly if you can convince them that the even poorer people are the cause of their misery.
Yep. What both parties have been doing for awhile now is making sure that public institutions cannot afford to carry out their responsibilities, then blaming them for failing to do so. And Joe and Jane Public just keep falling for it.
Can confirm. Have wrong kind of loan. Have spent 10 years in the public education sector anyway. At least I knew I wasn’t eligible from the get-go though.
That’s simply not true. Yes, Dem’s do receive money from corporate interests, but this ‘both sides do it’ is completely wrong. Progressive Dem’s are leading the charge to shore up SSI, Medicare and Medicaid and hopefully Medicare for all or single payer. Dem’s are NOT looking to break unions, take away fair labor practices, rights for women and LGBT and minorities. Dem’s are the only ones fighting for the environment and expanding public lands as monuments and wilderness. It’s not the Dem’s who are trying to dismantle the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act. It’s not the Dem’s who are hindering clean energy programs. It’s the conservatives that are trying to do that. If not for Progressive labor we would not have the labor laws we have now, children would still be working in coal mines and yes, coal mines would still be a big industry because you know, conservative stoopid. Try fishing off another boat, comrade.
Your point is well taken. My point is that the Dems are not willing to take on the real reasons that healthcare costs are out of control or the ever expanding military. They still are merely the lesser of the evils.
Amway Betsy could care less about this problem; Donald “golf-course” Trump doesn’t give a schizz. Time to haul out the figurative torches and pitchforks and vote the GOP out of Washingtom.
i’m only paying my student loans so they won’t seize my social security. if social security happens to become insolvent before i retire, there won’t be another dime paid from me toward my student loans.
