Fixing Education

Some friends and I took a stab at it. Here's the conversation:

"Here's something I don't understand. There are, to my knowledge, roughly 5000 colleges and universities in the USA. Why not get rid of the less beneficial ones and put money towards the others so I'm not $40,000 in debt by graduation? Or give money to all the people who can't afford college and get financial aid.

· · 3 hours ago near Philadelphia

• 
  
• • 

    What would you do with all the students at said colleges? Would that end up seeming like a push to get rid of small colleges? But then I think that most small colleges have better finaid than bigger colleges. How would this affect acceptance rate/exclusivity?

    3 hours ago ·
  • 

    I think there should be actual research done in terms of the quality of education, the acceptance rate, and the percentage of people hired after graduation.Most of research I've seen appears inconclusive or poorly investigated. From there, colleges that have the lower scores should gradually be phased out. Students and professors would be transferred to better schools. Eventually, over say a 15 year progression, colleges will have increased size and professors and student body. The surplus from closing down the other college would go towards financial aid. The plan isn't foolproof but no plan is.

    38 minutes ago ·
  • 

    The main thing I remember is a college I had never heard of in West Virginia called my home and offered me a scholarship based on my GPA. It sounded suspicious and I found it strange a college just happened to have the resources to do that

    37 minutes ago ·
  • 

    If there were less colleges around, there would be less reason to keep tuition competitive.
    
    And the kind of government review program you're talking about would take cash away from the federal aid programs we already have.

    • 
      

      • ah

      • hrmm

      • i dont want competitive tuition

      • but i get your point

    • 13 minutes ago

      
      

      • it's that competition that was going to get you a scholarship in the first place

    • 13 minutes ago

      
      

      • But my point is competition or no

      • many people who need them aren't getting them

      • let alone a chance to get them

    • I'm sure somebody accepted it

      • not like they're going to let scholarship money sit around

    • 
      

      -Think of the cost of running all those academic insitutions

      • companies like GE are getting away with tax exemption

      • the governor of PA just cut education funding to put it into prisions

      • 60 percent of students in the area around temple dont make it to high school graduation

    • 10 minutes ago

      
      

      • yes, education should have more funding

      • that was not what I was arguing against

    • 10 minutes ago

      
      

      • I know

      • It just seems all those im power put money towards prision instead

    • 9 minutes ago

      
      

      • they do

    • 8 minutes ago

      
      

      • *sigh*

      • so no proposition of your own?

    • 7 minutes ago

      
      

      • about balancing the federal budget?

    • 7 minutes ago

      • erm. i guess thats where i went

      • everything federal relates

    • 6 minutes ago

      it begins with cutting the defense budget

    • • a sliver of that would be enough to fund that university review program

    • 3 minutes ago

      
      

      • alright

    • 3 minutes ago

      
      

      • I don't claim to know enough about how the system works after that

    • 2 minutes ago

      
      

      
      

      
      

      
      

      
      

      I dont either. other than too many people are getting away with too much illegal/undemocratic crap
    • 
      

      • working around special interests groups and the like, cutting wasteful spending, and telling local schools to stop pretending like they're going to cut the bus system

    • 
      

      • Special interest groups we can survive without I think

      • they seem to work more for $ and big business than the common woman whos working 3 jobs to feed her family

    • about a minute ago

      
      

      
      

      
      

      they're broken as they are

      
      

      • take the special interest groups supported by the tea party, for example

      • the play like they're grassroots groups when they're being funded by NewsCorp et al

        and then they talk like they're the common man who seriously thinks that corporations should get a tax break

        that sort of thing could only be solved by government regulation, which defeats the purpose of special interest groups

        so like I said, broken

    right

20:30

so I say

ditch the groups

which is impossible because lobbyists and corruption

here comes an impossible scenario

get rid of lobbying. (hey! look at that. the news is already less bias!) that knocks out interest groups. The middleman is gone and actual citizens get to have a say again

they can call government officials and politicians and have their voice heard

the impossible scenario would need impossible setup

like taking away the value that a lobbyist has to the politicians it funds

so then, where does campaign funding come from if not the lobbyists?

• 
  

  • lobbyists get their money from business, no?

• 12 minutes ago

  
  

  • so then take my setup and replace the word "lobbyist" with "business"

  • because it's the same thing

• 12 minutes ago

  
  

  • okay

• 11 minutes ago

  
  

  • with the same interests and results

• 11 minutes ago

  
  

  • business would then need to do something with the $400,000 salary lobbyists have

• 11 minutes ago

  
  

  • put it back into the economy

  • pay off the taxes im sure they owe

  • let alone campaign funding

• 8 minutes ago

  
  

  • or fund a propaganda campaign on all major stations explaining how the government is full of evil socialists who want nothing more than to beat up those poor multinational corporations

• 8 minutes ago

  • 
    

    that already happens

• 7 minutes ago

  
  

  • because lord knows they won't put the money towards improving the working conditions of third world countries

• 7 minutes ago

  
  

  • we need our indian tech support

• 7 minutes ago

  
  

  • if big business was forced out of the political process, they would try they're best to get back in

  • *their best

• 6 minutes ago

  
  

  • i realize that

  • and no amount of regulation will stop them

  • but trying to eliminate their power hold will do some help to the rest of us

• 5 minutes ago

  
  

  • it would be entertainment

  • seeing the results