Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion The price is too high!

Please elaborate, providing links and resources.

My apologies, subsidy is what I understood as your view upthread, and in prior discussion threads. Would you please clarify your position?

"Relevant activities" can mean many things. I chose that language specifically to avoid boxing myself in to any single solution, because complex social problems require a complex package of solutions.

Agreed, however, the rules of our society in the U.S. do not include paying for an adult's education. Find me where that is a right in our Constitution or it's amendments and we have a different discussion.


Regardless, as an adult I have no right to make you pay for my treatment. As an adult, you have no right to the services or property of others.


Currently two of my eldest son's best friends had both had their college all but paid for by the U.S. military, one of the including a graduate degree, so I can be assured it's not just a fake worm on a recruiting poster.

As for societal responsibility, you make mass assumptions which don't become you, I fulfill my societal responsibility quite generously of my own free will, I don't need the government to use force for me to do so....and that's where my objection is, not to fulfill societal and moral obligations but to be forced by threat in order to do so.


At no point did I indicate that my taxes toward toward the military are charity. I receive a valuable service in exchange for them. My point which you failed to understand is, this is a viable option for financing college.

You're welcome as well btw. Combat Engineer here.


Once again, you assume FAR too much. The presumption, as I far too often see, is that societal duties and responsibilities can ONLY be fulfilled though the government. Real adults don't need the government to hold their hand and force them to do so, they do so of their own free will.

Now I'd suggest that you cease with the personal character attacks and making mass assumptions about belief systems and values as it becomes neither of us.

For clarification, in the context of this discussion, what does it mean to you?

This argument is a red herring and a straw man. At no point did anyone make the argument that any one individual should have a guaranteed right to a publicly-financed secondary education.


I'll expect you to be a man of your principles, then, and cancel your insurance.


The "how" here matters. For enlisted folks after their terms, the GI Bill is financed largely by other enlisted folks paying in their $1200 in the first year of their enlistment (when that makes up a huge proportion of their salaries), and also by the fact that they're accepting far below market value for their labors during the course of their enlistments.

For officers, the costs of their education is offset by the contractual obligation to serve for a specified period of time, also at a rate far below market value.

Either way, the beneficiaries are largely paying their own way.

Anyway, this is a red herring argument, because we were talking about the growing inaccessibility of a secondary education on a societal scale. Unless the military plans a massive expansion, they cannot play a role in alleviating that.


By that I assume you mean you also pay your taxes, and interpret that as a social responsibility, and not something you're under threat to do.


Wait, so you assumed that I'm a liberal (I'm not), that I believe social duties are solely the responsibility of the government (I don't even know any liberals who believe this), and somehow I'm the one making inaccurate assumptions?

I'm not sure what system of beliefs I've attacked, except the notion that people should enjoy the benefits of society without accepting the responsibilities that go along with them. I don't recognize that as a system of beliefs, but rather as a pathology.

Obviously anything that fosters discussion and promotes awareness would be a relevant activity - anything from this thread to writing your Congressman, organizing protests, participating in brainstorming sessions, etc.

One thing that stands out to me in this is that, as we've discussed elsewhere in this forum, far too many institutions are carrying bloated debt rolls because of expenditures on things that have nothing to do with the mission of education, with the most extreme example being the lazy river. It seems like, rather than continuing to escalate tuition and expenses, that could be resolved in bankruptcy court. Sure, investors might take a haircut, but that's investing, win some/lose some, and the smart investor should have known better than to buy a bond to finance that.

Another solution that seems obvious is NCAA sports, where there's an arms race in spending, yet outside of the top ten institutions, colleges are bleeding red in this area. Cut those programs (or perhaps spin them off into a private entity), and you've got a lot of money back in the pot that actually educates people.

Next, there's clearly a severe bloat in most administrative positions, and there's an opportunity for streamlining.

Granted, if I were running this, I'd put some of those savings back into teachers, because the excessive use of adjunct professors has come at a significant cost to quality.

Once I was done with those measures, I'd balance the books and see where I'm at, and formulate next steps.

Thank you for sharing these thoughts.

Possibly I see some likemindedness, between you and Bostonian?
Between you and Old Dad?

Somewhat of a no-frills or back-to-basics approach?
Valuing cost-benefits justification?

And let's not forget the unintended consequences of increasing availability to federal student loans, and their impact on rising college tuition:
https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff_reports/sr733.pdf

Better mousetrap --> smarter mouse

That's what I understood to be aquinas' expressed view, here, as a Canadian inquiring whether there is universal aid for college tuition in the US.

Dude, would you please kindly refrain from calling the member whose moniker is "Old Dad", Old Man? I find a half-dozen of such references. I understand this may be a repeated typo... in which case, would you mind editing your posts?