By Hunter Wallace
In The Washington Post, Bernie Sanders has an Op-Ed on his plan to make college tuition free:
“In 1877, Rutherford B. Hayes became the first president to make a strong case for universally available public education. “Universal suffrage should rest upon universal education,” he said in his inaugural address, adding that “liberal and permanent provision should be made for the support of free schools.” Hayes, a Republican, didn’t worry that some poor kid might benefit from access to “free stuff,” nor did he believe that the children of wealthy elites should be excluded from the universal nature of the program. For him, education was the basis for full economic and political participation, and full participation was the basis for all prosperity. An education should be available to all regardless of anyone’s station. …”
Forbes also has an article on how college tuition isn’t exactly free in Denmark:
“There is no doubt that a sustainable funding mechanism for college education is an important policy for any modern country, but if one pays upwards in 56% in income tax and 25% in sales tax (including a 105-180% tax on cars) to fund education and other social services, one would not call it “free.”
Among other things, Denmark is the least corrupt country in the world. The Danes are fond of balanced budgets, hard work, high middle class taxes and far more expensive consumer goods. They trust the government. Because of their relative lack of diversity, Danes are less divided by hyper-partisan political parties than Americans.
If public education were abolished, White families would have to pay private tuition to send their kids to school, which they already do in the poorest parts of the Black Belt and urban parts of the South where the diversity ratio makes the public schools unusable.
How would the White birthrate increase from having to pay more for education than White families already do now? Just the opposite would happen. Whites would limit the size of their families because education – K-12 and college tuition – is increasingly unaffordable.
One effect of vouchers would be the destruction of veteran teachers who kinda are race realists but keep it sublimated. The issue is complex.
Segregation in public schools was a good idea.
One thing you could do in the US context is to allow religious groups to have schools. They would need to be publically audited for financial and physical abuse but state run religious schools do exist in various white nations. These religious denominations could be largely white or whatever. I guess that is what vouchers are really about though, parochial schools as a clandestine racial segregation.
Downside is you could have a madrasah. But we have these things now anyway.
Keep thinking like women. Keep thinking you can create something free, by voting for it.
Hunter Wallace // October 24, 2015 at 2:56 pm //
“Whites would limit the size of their families because education – K-12 and college tuition – is increasingly unaffordable.”
You made a solid case against higher education in another thread. The merit based system you called it. The people that went to college are the ones that have been destroying America.
Instead of making a case for free higher education, you should be making a case that it should not be required to get a decent career. College educated people should be mocked for what they have done to the West.
The comment section has gone from discussion of Bernie Sanders position, to the retooling of society. If that is the case I would advocate for return to the medieval church dominated aristocratic white society. Trades for those who are not cured for college. College/university for only those who are the most intelligent men, women stay home and have babies no educatIon of a like level.
In short a guild based mercantile Medievil western European pre-enlightenment society.
Hunter – public education is already being systematically demolished. Do you consider Common Core “curriculum” to be of AY value? Smart White families are home schooling. The families I know, that do this, have lots of children.
Richard Bird, above, accurately pointed out that the College Crowd are the apparachiks actively destroying the West. Outside of hard science/engineering courses -“college educations” are now NEGATIVES.
Well no one has asked what Mommy Professor has to gain from all this “free” higher education? It couldn’t be more power for them, could it?
Bernie nothing is free. Who do you think is going to pay for it?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/natasha-srdoc/firstever-us-presidential_b_8367160.html
US Presidential candidate have been “invited” to go to Israel, and pay obeisance.
Denise
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/natasha-srdoc/firstever-us-presidential_b_8367160.html
The comments surprisingly are one sided. There is hope.
About the Deep South article.
I saw interesting article titled ” Which State’s Residents Have the Most Cash to Spend” by a multimedia firm with the unlikely name The Motley Fool.
Using government cost of living and income data they calculated the true affluence of the 50 states and D.C.
Some partial results.
North Dakota 54,506
Nebraska 45,243
Louisiana 40,269
Texas 40,161
New York 39,396
Alabama 37,175
Mississippi 36,132
California 36,074
If California’s numbers included the millions of criminal invaders from Mexico and comp., their number would be even far worse than it is already.
The Leftists can’t move on from their extremely outdated cherished belief that the South and conservative Midwest states are backwards and poor compared to New York and ,especially, Mexifornia.
By the way, I wonder if Theroux was brave enough to bring up the evil racist eight letter word when interviewing the fat black elders in the Deep South. Did he press them on their disastrously sloppy sexual Behavior? Why are they dysgenically breeding like third worlders when inexpensive contraception is available everywhere.
Some have denigrated the value of a liberal arts education these days. There is something to this beyond the obvious lack of jobs requiring these degrees. More often than not it is political indoctrination. I was looking at new hires in the English Dept at a major university once and noted each new professor’s specialty. Almost exclusively political in focus. Such things as “neocolonialism” and “feminist theory.”
The American Historical Association once lamented that the best work in history was being done by non-historians.
Only degrees in the natural sciences, engineering, mathematics, pharmacy, and business are worth going into debt to pursue.
I made a case against meritocracy, not higher education. The problem with meritocracy is two-fold: that it assumes group loyalties and affinities are irrelevant, and that it produces an elite that feels it owes nothing to anyone else. The case against meritocracy is that technical knowledge is important. It is just not THE most important consideration when selecting our elites. We want competent people in key positions, but if they are a hostile elite, their technical knowledge is nothing but a liability to us.
As for higher education, we can rule out agriculture as a source of mass employment in any future pro-White controlled state. We can bring back a lot of manufacturing jobs from foreign countries by changing our tax and trade policies, but that won’t be a long term solution either due to automation, robotics and new technology. If we intend to have anything resembling a competent workforce on par with foreign countries, of course we will have to invest in higher education.
As for paying for free college tuition, we could have it under the present system if 1.) we had avoided the disastrous Iraq and Afghanistan wars and didn’t have to pay for so many more wounded veterans or 2.) simply by raising the tax burden on the top 0.1% from 33% of their income to 40%.
The key phrase there though is “under the present system.” Under the present system, sending more kids to college could lead to all kinds of disastrous scenarios because of who works in higher education. Thus, the question for me really depends on whether we are talking about the future state that we all envision or what we have to deal with now.
Philosophically, I have no objection to free college tuition. In a free South, I believe we will have to invest more heavily in our education system. Frankly, there are pockets of the South where the education system is an embarrassment, and not just in the majority black areas.
Hunter Wallace // October 25, 2015 at 3:48 pm //
“I made a case against meritocracy, not higher education.”
Universities produce incompetent people. Everyone knows when you check into University, you check out your common sense.
I would push for the total demolition of the university system. It is extended babysitting for adults, well into their 20s and 30s. Everyone over 18 should be in full time employment, creating a family and studying only what they need to do the job in front of them. As they get promotions they can study more. When they have their feet in the real world with real people, hopefully they will learn common sense.
I will also say that university courses are outdated filler. If you have time to write something down, it is already out of date by the people that are actually working in the field.
And if you make it free you will have adults that get degree after degree, because they don’t want to work. I know people like this with multiple degrees. White and complete traitors to whites. You see a lot of these people in countries with “free” education.
And we should stop calling it “free”, unless we really mean that no one including the tax payer should have to pay for it. Let these University professors give their time away free and I’ll support it.
“If we intend to have anything resembling a competent workforce on par with foreign countries, of course we will have to invest in higher education.” – they come here to benefit from our education system because it is the best one on planet earth.
” they come here to benefit from our education system because it is the best one on planet earth.”
Students attending the most expensive and exclusive universities read the same books as the poorest. In short its all just salesmanship and marketing.
The West was at its best when most people did not need a degree to get a good job. I have a relative that rose to CEO of a large company and he became a multi-millionaire and he was able to start a family at 21. Today he wouldn’t even get a start.
Forgetting the detailed argument for a moment scrapping the entire federal education dept. is almost certainly a good idea.
Remember when Steve Jobs dropped out of college to work on computers with his pal Paul Allen in his garage? What an idiot! You can’t get a good job working in a cubicle like Dilbert that way man! Don’t be a fool stay in Screwl!
One of Hunter’s arguments was we have had Universities since Medieval times. Well we had castles too. When cannon was invented the military stopped using castles.
Now if we look at universities vs technology available they are also outdated. Why do we need a professors giving lectures every day when we have digital recorders for cheap? Record a lecture series once, scrap useless teachers.
Why do universities need all that brick and mortar? They built universities so people could talk to experts of different disciplines. Well that is easy and cheap with the internet.
You could save 98% of the costs of higher education by using currently available technology. The professor priesthood wouldn’t like that though, they would have to go and get real jobs.
RichardBird
‘You could save 98% of the costs of higher education by using currently available technology. The professor priesthood wouldn’t like that though, they would have to go and get real jobs.’
The professors in the University of Wisconsin system average approx. 14 hrs. per week in the classroom. Poor things are overworked.
Sam, there is preparation for each class which is easily more than the time actually in the classroom. Then comes grading, advising and office hours. Add to that the requirement to do one’s own research and publication in order to get tenure, keep the job and be promoted.
14 hours in the classroom is a full-time job.
But many highly-paid professors spend 3-6 hours/ week in class. Or zero.
William H McCarty
’14 hours in the classroom is a full-time job.’
William, this was a topic of interest recently in Wisconsin when Gov. Walker wanted to cut some fat from the UW budget. Profs. in Wi. have a very light work load.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2015/02/scott_walker_to_u_wisconsin_faculty_work_more_than_14_hours_a_week.html
‘Word of Walker’s remarks about faculty teaching loads needing to be heavier prompted UW-Madison to release a faculty workload survey from February 2014. The survey yielded 191 full responses from biological sciences, humanities, physical science and social studies departments, according to UW-Madison.
Of those who responded, 96% said they teach, supervise and mentor undergraduate students and spend an average of 14.2 hours per week instructing undergraduates and an average 4.2 hours per week advising and mentoring.
All reported research activities as part of their work, with an average of 8.4 hours per week spent on research/creative work with students. The total time spent with research, scholarship or creative work was an average 21.3 hours per week.
Let’s look closely at these numbers, because they’re important. Professors self-reported teaching 14 hours a week and spending 4 hours “advising and mentoring.” I don’t know where you went to college (or if you did), but where I went, a large East Coast university, most professors didn’t spend any time advising or mentoring, and they sure didn’t teach 14 hours a week. Furthermore, I doubt the veracity of self-reported “teaching hours.” If it’s unverified, they have every incentive to report having taught more than they did. Some classes aren’t even taught by professors, but rather by teaching assistants.
But let’s pretend they really do teach 14 hours a week. They claim to do 8 hours of “research” a week, but again, who cares? Remember, this is a public university.
Should the taxpayer really be paying to subsidize academic research? Does the average citizen in Oshkosh benefit materially from a new treatise on the wonders of socialism or a research paper on what The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn says about transgenderism?
I think that at a public university, taxpayers should only be expected to pay for teaching. Why can’t they teach 20 hours a week? Or better yet, why can’t they teach 40 hours a week? Many don’t even do their own grading because they have teaching assistants.
Let’s take a look at the results of the UW system. Only a little more than 50% of students managed to graduate in 4 years. Another 30% graduated after spending 6 years to complete a 4-year program. Why should the taxpayer pay for such poor results, or pay to have students take 6 years to do a 4-year program?
Teachers should be working full-time to teach students. The student body should be downsized to eliminate students who can’t handle the work. With these commonsense measures, $300 million could easily be cut from the UW budget.’
Eventually, Walker managed to cut 200 million. Because of this action there will be NO increases in tuition over the next few years. Students and tax payers were the beneficiaries.
There are good points here, Sam.
Let’s look at teaching 20 hours/week. The instructor doesn’t just walk in a room and start talking. There must be a plan. Goals. Structure. That 20 hours doubles to at least 40 hours. It probably depends on the subject, too. Older professors might just pull out from a file cabinet lectures/lesson plans from the past. Who knows? I think 14 hours in class is about as much as many can handle. What about students? 20 semester hours in class would be more than required to be full-time. At that rate everyone would graduate in 3 years (6 semesters).
I agree most are underworked.
Research is essential to keep the job. An outstanding, top-flight teacher who fails to publish is gone in 5-7 years…
Large research-oriented universities are responsible for really important advances in science, medicine and engineering. Not all research is leftist, race-gender (sic), crack-pot, worthless crap.
Also, research brings in massive funds from the federal government and private sources.
“Remember when Steve Jobs dropped out of college to work on computers with his pal Paul Allen in his garage? What an idiot! You can’t get a good job working in a cubicle like Dilbert that way man! Don’t be a fool stay in Screwl!” – I would certainly like to return to a time when universities did not have a monopoly on signaling, but the fact of the matter is that our university system beats the ones everyone else has. The salient point I was making is that, no, we do not need to invest more in our education system, it is already a world beater.
William H McCarty // October 26, 2015 at 5:35 pm //
“Large research-oriented universities are responsible for really important advances in science, medicine and engineering. Not all research is leftist, race-gender (sic), crack-pot, worthless crap.”
Oh really?
More Than 50% Psychology Studies Are Questionable: Study
http://www.valuewalk.com/2015/08/psychology-studies-are-questionable/
And this is just psychology.
Science (Physics, Chemistry, Biological Sciences), Medicine, and Engineering.
Not Psychology.
Don’t be naive. “Hardcore scientists” purge all dissenters when it comes to global warming and historically they’ve been responsible for holding back scientific advancements for decades. If you really believe the scientific disciplines are free of corruption, you haven’t read anything on the history of science.