Thers!

satthersday night live!

Evening all & sundry.

Gah

dood — title???

He’s quoting Harpo!

Sundry, that’s not till, like, tomorrow.

D’oh!

Hold on… smart lad wanted.

Oh. I meant Bob Sundry. Went to high school with him. Became an accountant. Good guy.

fixed — refresh and see the title

I would like a hard boiled egg.

Make that two hard boiled eggs.

SaTHERSday night LIVE!

Public higher education and broad access for all Americans is what built our prosperity and innovation in the later 20th century. That system is in danger of becoming extinct. There has been a severe erosion of the affordability of higher education over the last thirty years. On the one hand, states have decreased support for public colleges and universities from covering over 70% of the cost of educating students to less than 30% now. At the same time there has been a dramatic cut in both state and federal grant and scholarship programs, along with a shift from direct federal loans at about 3% interests to federally subsidized private loans at whatever the market will allow. This cannot stand or we will lose our country.

Thanks!

Forget my head were it unattached.

Howdy ‘pups.

Just bought a small appliance from a guy whose last name is Seller. Can’t imagine the bad jokes, poor fellow.

itz ok — i haz string and duct tape

Baling wire and chewing gum works real good, too. It is how I keep mine on.

Dr. Dick,

Mrs. Dr. Countertenor just got back from an interview at a private school in the Deep South. She remarked on the dedication of the students evident on the campus, especially in comparison to the students at our public university.

I wonder if seeing a bill for ~$12K/semester has more impact than the $1.4K/semester bill our students see.

The version I learned from my parents: I’d forget my head if it wasn’t fastened on.

Yes.

And it is clearly not a question of a money shortage. It’s a question of money being pissed away on purpose because of a corrupt & unaccountable system. Truman could do what he did vis. community colleges because the idea had not yet taken full root that the only economic policy that anyone could ever employ was cutting taxes on rich people.

when the hell did 2 years of free community college become so forking expensive? is it raygun’s fault?

I once worked with a “Cynthia Saliva.”

She was Puerto Rican and pronounced it “Sal-ee-va” but seeing it spelled out was, uh, startling.

I always did think though that “Cynthia Saliva” would be an excellent punk rock name.

String, duct tape, a hammer: what can’t you fix when so equipped?

We only need to bring back the tax rates Truman and Eisenhower had. Top marginal rate of 90% on income over $250K.

gonna need a crowbar and some crazy glue and i’m all set (edit: reply button didn’t work — was for thers at 23)

at the police academy, my drivers’ training instructor was Sgt. Sargent

I suspect it is more a question of greater motivation in getting into a highly selective school. a great deal of self selection going on there to insure that they only get the best, brightest, and most motivated. You, I, and Thers have to work harder at it, but I think do much greater good in the long run.

I think maybe shorten it to “Cindy Saliva.” It scans better for me.

Yes.

This has been another edition of….

Lemme ask you guys something.

By way of background, I turn 48 next week. I can translate Greek and Latin like nobody’s business. I am a self taught master of Music Theory. I have also taught myself statistics, SQL and Object Oriented Programming.

I had to leave college on a purely economic basis, yet I have greater skills than the kids that are churned out of the Institutions with which I must compete today.

Who is more valuable?

And WD-40

I am a product of the California Community College system. I am incredibly dismayed that that system now charges for higher education. That system made higher education accessible to people of modest means.

I could have gone directly into a four-year school: I had the grades and test scores to win scholarships. In fact, I had scholarship offers from private schools (I neglected to apply to the CSU or UC first time around), but with a sister one year younger I felt like I couldn’t hog the resources.

Now, instead of getting the first two years of higher ed out of the way with no accumulated debt, students are piling up debt in community colleges. We should be ashamed of ourselves.

I used to work at a private university with over $20K tuition. I now teach at a community college.

Older students who got downsized are the most motivated students ever. But overall, as far as motivation goes, I’ll take my current students. They have, uh, a sharper appreciation of certain economic realities and how they might need to deal with them.

And they’d still be rich, the rich people today who’d be getting taxed like that…

The Senate do the right thing? Horsefeathers, indeed. Couldn’t we outsource the Senate – the people in India are very nice on the phone.

i hope raygun is enjoying that fireside seat he earned

The secondary student loan industry was created by banksters who wouldn’t lend to students. Seeing a frozen market, industrious banksters went to the federal government and asked for a guarantee. The federal government said, okay we’ll guarantee payment on the loan in exchange for your taking on risky borrowers. And we’ll let you pad your margins so that you can make some money too.

As was ever thus, though, the regulator became captive of the regulated. And the margins grew, and the fees expanded, and the marketing of riskier guaranteed loans exploded, until marketeers are now simply selling loans without a care how a borrower uses them or gets educated. The student educational loan program has become a student indebtedness program: the education isn’t really important to anyone involved.

We need direct loans, and we need them now.

It doesn’t matter where you acquire, them, it is the skills that count. The problem is that for most people, college is the only place that they are likely to learn those skills. Unfortunately, they are now acquiring fewer of those skills because of budget cutbacks, which lead to ever larger classes, greater reliance on adjuncts and grad students, and fewer support programs.

No question, Kelly. You are. There are plenty of places to learn that aren’t formally recognized by the system.

I wonder at places that would rather hire a new DMA to teach applied music (voice/instrumental) than an established artist from one of the service bands or regional orchestras.

But that’s how the system operates. Yeah, if you want to be a statistician you have to apprentice yourself to a master and end up with a doctorate. But the University of Experience works for many things.

To each his own. But I am a dactyl fan of long-standing.

Very, very rich.

standing on chair clapping dood

I don’t know. I’d like to give our kids a tuition bill that shows them something closer to the actual cost of their education. Say, NMSU’s Instruction and General Funding from the State divided by the year-previous enrollment plus their nominal tuition and fees.

The purpose of public universities is to make higher education more accessible, not less. I do not think it is primarily cost which motivates students, but the prestige of admission to a highly selective “elite” university.

Depends on the state system. In NY it began in the late 60s, early 70s (I think without looking it up). Certainly though direct aid like Pell Grants really got shafted under Reagan, as did in NY certain scholarship programs. A lot of this happened over the course of my own undergrad years, to my personal dismay…

we went from this:

A carefully developed program to strengthen higher education, taken together with a program for the support of elementary and secondary education, will inevitably strengthen our Nation and enrich the lives of our citizens.

to primary and secondary education funding being cut in state after state after state

But the real erosion across the country starts in the 1980s (about the time faculty salaries go flat for the next decade).

OT, but no less obscene:

Tracy, CA residents must pay for 911 calls

I hope the motherfucker who came up with this idea is the first one who has to make a call.

Thank the Republicans every chance you get. Just one more way that they have tried to destroy the country for the benefit of the obscenely wealthy.

I’m not advocating increasing costs, just pointing out to our students that their education is being (fairly heavily) subsidized. It probably merits more attention than some are giving it.

Thers,

I ended up in a doctoral granting institution by accident. When I thought about a career in higher education, I thought community college, not Universal University. Then I ended up specializing in applied statistics, which isn’t something very common in the community college world.

my preference is his needing someone to make that call but everyone refuses to help because they can’t afford the fine

*spitting* forker

That’s completely unbelievable. Are you sure that ain’t an Onion article?

One of the tragedies of modern life in the U.S. is that we charge people through the nose for all the things that an advanced society should make available to everyone, health care, education and so on.

Oh well, if we keep pretending we’re exceptional I’m certain everything will work out alright.

was even on my local news up here in oregon….. i’m so glad i’m not in ca anymore

Yah. And it’s experiences like the student loan experience that create suspicion about mandated health insurance without strong regulation & public accountability mechanisms. No accountability = big money = big trouble.

That’s when it happened for me.

I had a very welcome scholarship in ’81 for piano, which I worked through ’84.

The problem was, it was for Piano Performance, not Pedagogy, or any other teaching type, which the University laughed at me when I said, “Hey what about the performance thing?”

I walked away in ’85. It’s been an institutional/degree problem for me ever since. Yeah, I own it.

No, the Onion is funny.

And that’s on top of the ambulance charge… I wonder if you could off-load that fee onto the ambulance provider and make Aetna pay it?

Nah, it would just come to us as higher insurance premiums. We are so, so, so, f***ed.

We are exceptionally backward for a developed country (which would explain our Gini coefficient).

I have one that sounds like an Onion article, too. A state legislator in South Carolina has put forth a bill that SC will no longer use paper money – only silver and gold. SC strikes again !

That I just experienced. Programs over enrolled with no required classes available. The debt they are acquiring will not be payable as it now takes more years to get all the classes.
Need public funded education.
Groucho: sya the secret word and down comes the duck with the money!

I think this could have been an Onion article nine or ten years ago. Nobody would have believed it…

for decades, ca has pushed call 9-1-1 for life and death emergencies and stressed that there was *no charge* for the call — that when seconds matter 911 was faster and would save lives.

now, when seconds count, people are going to hesitate and lives will be lost

American Exceptionalism, we will have the best soup lines in the world.

OK, but education is an investment — as the 1947 Report I cited stresses. There really are important large-scale benefits to affordable, easily accessed higher education. It’s not really controversial that, say, the GI Bill was an important driver of postwar economic success.

Changing the subject entirely. Even though they go faster, bobsleds =look like they’re much slower than luge or skeleton.

I saw that. Someone needs to tell this bozo that even the economy in a Dungeons and Dragons game allows copper.

I would be surprised if they haven’t already drastically cut the number of 911 operators.

they cut 911 dispatchers/operators before they cut cops. if you see news of any pd cutting cops, you can bet they have a bare bones barely staffed 911 call center

I don’t disagree, just saying that the thin edge of the wedge that later turned into the abyss was about a decade earlier, roughly speaking.

Agreed. You’re preaching to the choir, amigo. I did two years in a community college, two years at CSU, a year at UCLA and doctorate at Kansas State U.

I don’t know what would have happened if I’d had to go to a private college for undergrad and accumulated a pant-load of debt (for the time). I doubt I would have gone to graduate school immediately, or maybe ever.

Grover Norquist is getting his wish.

May he crack his balls and fornicate with sheep.

Kelly,
I so admire you. What amazing skills you have, really. And you are so much FUN, too.

I think that depends a lot on where you are. The cutbacks did not come in Oklahoma until the 1980s and they were still growing higher education through the 1970s.

On the other hand, these spurious 9-1-1 callers should be made to pay huge fines, and I fear they are not. Can you imagine calling 9-1-1 because your Popeye’s is out of chicken nuggets? Or because your husband won’t give you the remote control?

We need to make the abusers pay, and those who need real help won’t have to.

colorado springs

They can’t outsource cops, but I’m surprised they haven’t outsourced 911 call centers… unless they have.

You are much more charitable than I.

Don’t we pay for 911 in our monthly phone bills? I seem to recall a 911 charge appearing there the last time I looked carefully. Mrs. Dr. BC handles that stuff, so it’s been a looong time since I’ve looked carefully.

Or is that charge just for the TelCo’s equipment?

I want to shrink Grover Norquist to the size where he can be drowned in a bathtub.

That would be an important public service.

Yep. America’s answer to the Libertarian paradise of Somalia.

The stupidity of that is that it always costs more to outsource in the long run owing to that pesky “profit” thingee.

911 call abusers get arrested up here. not issued a notice to appear but handcuffed and taken to jail.

i like that

Uh-oh, “gentle reminder” time.

I just want to flush him down the toilet with the rest of the shit.

Thank you!

i think that is an equipment charge on the phone bills

But it is true, you know.

Guess again. They can outsource cops … our Lege in its infinite wisdom considered a bill that would allow amateur cops (reserve officers) full arrest authority.

It didn’t pass. This time, anyway. But what do I expect from Ted Mack’s Amateur Hour Legislature?

metaphorically speaking, of course

Agreed completely.

Surprising U.S. currency doesn’t read “In Profit We Trust.”

No, not really. I just know better than to get into fantasy violence. :-P

Have I been naughty?

The GI Bill was also an important social equalizer: people who never could have dreamed of buying homes for their family could do so, having gotten an education they never could have paid for. Because they served their country in WW2. While the suburban dream/nightmarescape created for them to raise their kids in has its downside, achieving it meant a path out of gritty urban life for lots of Americans and their kids.

WW2 was a huge social leveling, but our society could have very easily returned to the stratified 1920s world without the huge social engineering project that was the GI Bill.

We won’t see incomes begin to increase among the middle class without something as far reaching and comprehensive as that again. And recall, the war and subsequent projects were paid for with those 90% tax rates on the very rich: something we must return to in order to avoid the quick step to a fully dysfunctional oligarchy.

Always.

i went with metaphorically speaking instead of gentle reminder — trying to mix it up a wee bit

Thanks for all of your support!

tis true dood :)

The GI bill and the expansion of the public university system did more to build the American middle class than anything else. They took my parents and their siblings from poverty to the professional classes. Of course the Republicans have never seen a good idea that they did not want to kill, especially if it helps average Americans.

mrce and I both benefited from state schools. He was lucky, with parents who could pay. I put myself through undergrad and grad by working multiple jobs. But in the 70′s, I only needed a few thousand $ per semester, and I made pizza until 2:00 am for years. I could earn enough each summer and year to get through. Not so any of my co-workers now. They carry debts of five figures.

That’s certainly true about regional & state variations.

Do you suppose all these Ph.D.s know what a metaphor is? :-)

I think you were supposed to tag me, Suz.

And of course I was speaking metaphorically.

A semaphore that is all grown up.

A meta’s for something that’s about sumfin’ else altogether.

i took yours as saying you wished he would get to a certain size so i let it slide….. but i do appreciate the self surrender bct :)

we has a local newscast story about “reserve” police officers in SF: fully equipped amateurs *guns etc* who have full arrest authority. They were showing them riding the bus at night, freeing up actual officers to respond to calls and hang around high-trouble areas.

I knew we had *special* police who were trained and then hired by community business districts, for instance, but I didn’t know we had these reserve officers. One of the guys is a manager at a software company downtown, the other was retired. And they work a full shift five nights a week as almost-police. Not sure if they are paid.

Can I tell y’all about how much I care about Suz?

I just love her.

She and Eureka Springs have so much to do with how free LLN is, and I just bow to them. Just love them to the dickens.

This post could have had a better title. Take

When Harry Truman announced the appearance of the first volume of the Presidential Commission on Higher Education report in 1947

and

The Commission’s landmark report, entitled Higher Education for American Democracy

and you get

“When Harry gave us HEAD in 1947…”

Or have I been spending too much time at Gawker?

Is it like a two-by-four?

spew warning dood

Oh and our new police chief is pushing hard for Tasers. Thanks, Arizona.

Flag waver! :-)

heya TKK

Precisely.

The amount of money the country is frittering away is staggering.

Don’t know about San Francisco, but they aren’t paid in Albuquerque. I don’t know if we have amateur cops in Las Cruces or not.

There was a minor scandal in ABQ last year when it was discovered that a reserve officer was working prostitute stings and handling the arrests. That’s completely against state law, which requires sworn officers to make arrests.

There is little worse in my mind than a wanna-be cop.

i paid almost one grand just for tuition for one quarter of community college up here for stephanie — and that did not cover any books at all and was for 3 classes — not full time.

NYC has unpaid “Auxiliary Police” At any rate, I have seen signs recruiting such people.

at my former dept reserves were level 2 which meant they could not ride solo and had to be paired with an regular officer of the dept. they were not paid and were considered volunteers.

That’s my gripe. I’m expected to pay about $20k for things I ALREADY KNOW!

Maddening to get a degree at my point in life.

I look at my debt load after a gazillion years in graduate school and it was nothing compared to what the kids have to asume today, even accounting for inflation.

4 X 4 is a better pickup line.

Oy, fading. Noight allz.

Nighters, sir.

I don’t have a problem with aux/reserves or whatever working under the supervision of a trained officer. The key there is supervision.

g’nite thers

Good night, Thers.

yup :)

g’nite Thers

Think I’ll head out too, splendid evening to all.

Okay, let’s all start talking smack about Thers now

g’nite rat

For reasons that only she knows, my cat is currently tearing at top speed through every room in the apartment bouncing off the walls and everything else. I checked and she did not get into the stash of catnip.

Night, rf. Give Bob a peck for me.

Suzanne,
If our kids paid tuition here at Case Western Reserve University — 35.9 THOUSAND dollars a year each, it just would not have happened. As it was, tuition waiver for Case employees was a benefit. And that is why mrce and I stayed in Cleveland, and our children have no debt.

Remarkable!

when bailey cat does that i take it to mean she wants to go outside and assist. i’ve noticed that when she comes back inside after a swift trip outside, she is has a quieter demeanor

I went to college at what was then (81-85) the most expensive college in the US. I don’t think you could go to a state school now for what it cost.

We keep slapping our faces!

If she told you, she’d have to kill you, Dr. Dick.

My cats do not go outside. It is the secret to getting them to live to 21-1/2.

and again, that 36K is without books and other fees. a year. dayam

Stop!

Probably.

That must wreak havoc on your income taxes…

cat must haz cheeseburger

she’s a 50/50 cat — prefers to stay inside at night (whew)

She much prefers fresh Rocky Mountain trout.

That is correct! We paid about 1,800 dollars a month to have them live on campus (two together for two years, one each for two). Books! Who knows how much we spent.

I gotta go pay attention to Belch. I’ll be back if conditions permit.

Lurves y’all!

xxoo

A cat eating fish? Well, learn something new every day.

g’nite kelly — my sat nite cartoon will be good with your corn flakes

Nighters.

Oh yes. By then, it was a gift, and not a benefit. Killed us.

She mostly only eats fish catfood. Turns up her nose entirely to redmeat and picks at poultry.

My turn to toddle off. Take care all.

g’nite dr *pause* dick

OTOH, it still wasn’t as bad as 18K/semester in tuition.

The Truman era Report, and his recommendations are part of a longer policy process — and we need to be very aware of this history. We will be much more effective in debate if we are.

The first large national study of Higher Education (aside from what was known back in the Lincoln Administration, which created the Land Grant College and University Systems — The Morrill Act of 1863) — is the Conant Report which was produced under FDR’s sponsorship between 1937 and 1939. FDR had become convinced that the lack of sufficent higher education, particularly technical and professional training, was a major contributor to the causes of the Great Depression. Using Labor Department statistical resources, and pushed on this by Francis Perkins, FDR came to understand was that too many unskilled and/or semi-skilled unemployed workers were chasing after too few unskilled and semi-skilled jobs. Not only was this a partial cause of the Depression, but made that depression deeper and worse. What FDR asked Conant to address was what level of post high school education, in what volume, was necessary to build and sustain a healthy Economy.

In 1940 the US, for the first time, managed to graduate just slightly more than 50% of our 17-18 year olds from High School. Reaching that level (it had jumped 10 points in the 30′s decade) was made possible in part by the New Deal’s NYA — National Youth Administration — program, which paid children of low income families to stay in school and graduate from High School, rather than drop out and join the masses of unskilled workers competing for unskilled and low wage jobs.

In 1940 only 5% of young Americans went to College or to a post High School Professional-Technical Training School. The Conant Report of 1939 concluded that creating a more depression proof and modern technically oriented economy would require post High School education and training for about 40% of the youth cohort — and at least 80% needed to be High School Graduates.

Obviously the reality of World War II prevented Roosevelt from proceeding with the programatic legislation he had in mind in 39-40 directed toward changing this profile. Instead in 1940 FDR was instituting a military draft. He could only act between 40 and 44 in very limited ways — but he did convince George Marshall to create programs that allowed College Men to be drafted, complete basic training, and then return to college until they were actually needed by the services. In 1944 he would focus on the Educational Benefits of the GI Bill as a programatic way of addressing the disconnect between educational levels and the requirements of a more depression proof and higher tech-greater division of labor economy.

Truman’s legislative agenda on these issues is very much a follow-on to the programs and policy of the New Deal — the ideas of Francis Perkins and her army of Labor Statistics folk, the research of Conant and much else that was pulled together by FDR. And in fact by the 1950′s, the US hit most of the targets these policy documents set. I would argue that the lack of a repeat of the Great Depression, the relative short length of recessions and certainly the growth of the Middle Class which in part is defined by education and technical skill level, is proof of the pudding that the causal relationships behind FDR and then Truman’s (and I would add Eisenhower and Kennedy and Johnson’s policy) was correct, and worked.

So what went wrong???????

Let’s start with Nixon. He was confronted with a “new culture” something called “The Student Movement” which challanged his Foreign and Military policy. His Paronoid reaction led to many disconnected but small acts that eventually mushroomed. He began by using the “peacefulness” of a campus and the authoritarian control by administrators as a criteria for distributing research grants and other types of assistance to colleges. He changed some of the formulas used to distribute the College Tuition Loans that had been established under LBJ’s Great Society programs, which had the effect of inflating the costs of college to the middle and lower middle class students. (Nixon had a study done to determine the economic class origins of student war protesters — and his policy targeted the groups he saw as most likely to participate in protest movements.) All this happened before the de-funding of State Colleges and Universities began in the late 70′s and during the Reagan years — it became Republican Policy at the State Legislative Level only after the 1970′s. And it was during the Reagan Administration that the College Tuition Loan Business was first significantly privatized, cutting the banks into the business of making totally insured loans at a nice profit. By making Higher Ed a commodity to be played on the Financial Markets, the inflation of costs of operating Higher Ed skyrocketed.

We need to comprehend how all this is interconnected, and why just fighting one piece of it will never be productive.

Good night, Dr. D.

Don’t get me started about books, What a racket! It’s been twenty years and I’m still pissed about the price of texts.

True. And our two kids, we love them so, and thank them for working their asses off to get into a great university.

wow thank you

Sara,

You need to remember that the military itself acted as an important source of technical education in the period 1941-45. My father was drafted after graduating from high school in 1943, and trained as an electrician by the Navy.

Back in the day most technical military education had immediate civilian application. I’m not sure that’s the case any more.

Yeah, me too! Art history books were really, really expensive!

Sara needs to make that a diary. It’s too good to be buried in this thread, not that this thread is a bad place.

i agree with bct

Also, there was the shift from National Defense (later Direct) Student Loans started under Eisenhower to the current trainwreck of a loan system that we have.

I’m fading fast.

Good night, folks.

we need more taking care of business and less coddling corporations

g’nite bct

See you on the tomorrow!

What set me off in particular was a biology class(for English lit and engineering majors)that was only used for one semester. Had to buy it new and couldn’t recover even the half price at the end. You can guess from my grammar and spelling, I wasn’t an English Lit major.

What made me mad was a text for a French class written by the teacher.

stephanie needed books for two of her 3 classes that cost more than twice what my monthly food budget was back in ca — each

The most I ever had to pay for a text(in’92)was $116

That’s what bothered me about this news report — these were two aux, or reserve I think they were called, working together with no supervision on a Muni bus in the Mission. Lots of ways to get in trouble quickly, and they were both armed.

Sara, thank you. Please consider writing this up, or even something more extended about his history, at Seminal, FDL’s diary site. It’s fascinating and you are correct, we need to know all of it to fix it.

Thanks.