by Jack
Acting on advice of my cardiologist, at least 3 times a week I try to get the old pump running at a vigorous pace. So, lay on my bed and turn on the liberal NPR radio and listen to news and leftist programming. In no time at all, my heart rate increases, blood pressure goes up; even my face is flushed. Then after a few minutes I switch channels to Rush Limbaugh for a cool down. I repeat this several times for about an hour.
I call this cardio interval training. Works great. However, this morning on NPR something caught my attention, so I stayed on for as long as I could take it. Yeah, it was grueling, but thankfully I’m in pretty good shape, so I handled it. I was listening to “The Takeaway” (which seems a fitting title for a liberal show). They were advocating for race based admission to colleges (affirmative action). Liberals were concerned that admission directors maybe soon be faced with finding new and more creative ways to admit less prepared students, should SCOTUS declare affirmative action unconstitutional for the nation.
What is going one here? I thought we worked this out years ago and affirmative action was dead. It was already held to be unconstitutional, right? I was chagrinned to discover only 10 states currently ban so-called affirmative action at public universities. California, Washington, Michigan, Nebraska, Arizona, and Oklahoma all passed their bans through a voter referenda.
After more research I found that SCOTUS in a 2013 ruling in Fisher v. University of Texas, colleges must demonstrate they are using race in admissions only when “necessary,” meaning no other methods could produce the same results. They are moving in the right direction, but they are not quite there. This year in Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action SCOTUS said that voters have the right to decide on issues of affirmative action in their state. That’s also good, but it’s still not the definitive ruling we need to stop the horrible practice of race based quotas.
Texas had a racist ban in place from 1996 to 2003 based on a lower court order. And the University of Georgia voluntarily dropped their forcible race based admission also on lower court challenges and made the change permanent. So that’s two more states that joined to ban this racial discrimination.
Together, all of these states offer positive data on what happens when public universities are allowed to pursue diversity, but without being racist about it.
SCOTUS will soon hear an affirmative action case, either this year or next and they will finally put it out of it’s misery.
Race based admission ought to be an affront to every hard working, intelligent minority as much as it is to our nation’s founding principles for equality and our belief in the great melting pot. If we are truly striving to become a color blind society, then racism in any form is still racism. Racism does not belong in a society that says we are all created equal.
A college degree is, among many other things, to prepare students to be competitive on the world stage. If we are not competitive, what are we? Competition is the cornerstone of our nation’s business model that has served us so well. We didn’t get to be #1 in the world through subsidy and protectionism.
When our students enter the work force we have every right to expect them to be equal to or better prepared than students from any other nation on earth. Lowering the bar in admissions and hand holding students to get them through their academic years does NOT serve this purpose. It does NOT prepare them to have a fair chance for success in an open market place. And what is even worse, our nation will grow weaker for it. This may be hard to imagine, but some day we may even find ourselves reaching out to 3rd world countries for their medical and scientific grad students, only because our system did not produce what this nation desperately needs.
Affirmative action may have served a reasonable purpose once upon a time, many decades ago, but it is now an unnecessary burden. It’s an idea that is producing questionable results at the cost of denying the most qualified and competitive equal access to higher education.
I couldn’t agree with you more, Jack.
The only measure that matters is the students preparedness and performance.
Some schools require higher standards (or did) and for good reason. These schools are there to educate the exceptional student. Very few students are prepared to work at this level. There are thousands of colleges and universities and even at this level admitting a student just for the sake of diversity is a terrible idea. Young people should attend schools where they have a chance to succeed and shine….for many students of any race community college is the place to start.
The whole push for college (and you’re a loser if you don’t go) has gotten way out of hand. Not every student wants college or a profession that requires college. What they want to learn is a good trade…and a little respect in the education arena for these decisions would help a lot of students succeed at something they really want to do. At the end of the day brain surgeons need plumbers and electricians one way or another.
I guess what I’m saying is we should get back to focusing on the needs and wants of individual students. We should focus on what is possible not some fantasy about fairness.
Then…if admissions offices develop a habit of always rejecting…oh, say Asians, for instance, the admissions process at that school can be audited and appropriate action taken if students were unfairly targeted for rejection.
Equal rights or equal opportunity? Have to choose one, because you can’t have both. The only fair admission consideration should be based on income, to provide equal admissions to poor white students over rich minorities.
Also, when the students do enter the workforce they should not be forced to pay the higher interest rates charged by gov’t loans of 1.5% more than private loans to partially cover the cost of ObamaCare. Their loan rates should be reduced to the same as private loans or they should be able to transfer their loans to one with a lower rate.
Current Student Loan Interest Rates and How They Work:
Loans, Student Loans
The federal student loan interest rate for undergraduates is 5.05% for the 2018-19 school year. Federal rates for unsubsidized graduate student loans and parent loans are higher — 6.60% and 7.60%, respectively. Private student loan interest rates can be lower than federal rates, but approval for the lowest rates requires excellent credit. If you have good credit, you may be able to refinance existing student loans to get a lower rate.
Current student loan interest rates:
Refinance student loans
Fixed 3.09% to 8.69%
Variable 2.55% to 8.20%
Private student loans
Fixed 5.25% to 14.05%
Variable 3.69% to 12.99%
Federal student loans (fixed)
Undergraduate 5.05%
Graduate 6.60%
PLUS 7.60%
Rates updated monthly.
Federal student loan interest rates rose for the 2018-19 school year and apply to loans disbursed between July 1, 2018, and July 1, 2019. The interest rate for federal direct undergraduate student loans increased to 5.05%, up from 4.45% in 2017-18. Unsubsidized direct graduate student loan rates rose to 6.60%, up from 6.00%. Rates for PLUS loans, which are for graduate students and parents, rose to 7.60%, up from 7.00%.”
Average student loan interest rate
The average student loan interest rate is 5.8% among all households with student debt, according to a 2017 report by New America, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank. That includes both federal and private student loans — about 90% of all student debt is federal.
With a 5.8% interest rate on $30,000 of student loans, a borrower would pay about $9,600 in interest throughout 10 years.
The average student loan interest rate is higher among some groups, according to the report. For instance, the average interest rate is 6.3% among households where the borrower didn’t complete a college degree, and 6.6% among households with incomes less than $24,000.”
https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/loans/student-loans/student-loan-interest-rates/
Loans subsidize ObamaCare:
“Recent speeches by Tennessee Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander highlight a connection that has yet to be reported in the media and is yet to be understood by the young people struggling with high interest rates in the hopes of financing their college education.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, $8.7 billion of the money collected in student loan interest payments actually goes to pay for ObamaCare. The CBO estimates that the interest rate on these loans could be reduced from 6.8 percent to only 5.3 percent were the funds not used to subsidize the healthcare reform law and other federal programs.”
http://thehill.com/opinion/columnists/dick-morris/302247-loans-subsidize-obamacare
Are college students being overcharged on loans to pay for ‘Obamacare’?:
““Alexander was trying to make a point, an apples-to-apples comparison at the time,” Jefferies said. “If the president and then-Democratic Congress were going to take over the student-loan system to eliminate profits to banks that were ‘overcharging’ students, then the government ought not overcharge students to pay for Obamacare; instead, Alexander argued, it ought to lower interest rates by roughly the $8.7 billion used to fund Obamacare.”
But in any case, the money that was being saved under the plan was not on the backs of students, but from cutting out the banks. Until July 1, in fact, the interest paid on subsidized Stafford loans was 3.4 percent—which is a pretty good rate. (It has since doubled but lawmakers are trying to reach a deal to alter the formula.)”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/are-college-students-are-being-overcharged-on-loans-to-pay-for-obamacare/2013/07/16/ce0d3794-ee3f-11e2-bed3-b9b6fe264871_blog.html?utm_term=.de1a1d049139
“This may be hard to imagine, but some day we may even find ourselves reaching out to 3rd world countries for their medical and scientific grad students, only because our system did not produce what this nation desperately needs.”
You being facetious here? We’ve been importing doctors and engineers all along, and especially lately.
And how can it be a political “revelation”, when it’s only what you’ve believed all along?
Libby, oh no, are you telling me my future surgeon could be a C student from Pakistan U? And as to the revelation, it was mine of course, since you already knew this to be true.
You’re right Libs, we have been importing foreign/international students for years. And the reason why is they’re cash cows to the universities and colleges, including community colleges. They pay a higher tuition than non-state resident students and must show proof of income/support prior to being granted admission, since they are in most cases not allowed to work.
Foreign students get priority admission and class registration, and anyone who says they don’t is lying or uninformed. Many are on scholarships from their own countries and will return home once their education is completed.This is why you see so many doctors in our hospitals, clinics and private practice. They have an open door cleared path from beginning to end.
Foreign student admissions increased over 40% after the 2008 recession when US citizens’ enrollment declined. Money speaks and fills class seats with foreign students over those born and raised here.
“Based on the World Education Services, or WES, analysis of IIE Open Doors data, the total number of international students in the US increased 55% between 2003-04 and 2013-14. Self-financed students accounted for three-fifths or 60% of this growth, and today account for nearly two-thirds of all international students in the US.
Over the same period, the number of international students receiving foreign government scholarships or foreign university funding almost quadrupled from 13,699 to 66,147 and, likewise, those funded by an employer jumped five times, from 10,000 to 50,000. Meanwhile, the number of students sponsored by a US college or university has declined to 19%, down from 23% in 2003-04.
International students contributed almost US$27 billion to the US economy in 2014, which corresponds to a 12% increase versus 2013 when the total was US$24 billion.
The growth has been driven largely by demand from students from upper-middle-income economies and countries with large national scholarship programmes, which marks a significant shift from before the 2008 financial crisis.
By 2017, the global middle class is projected to increase its spending on educational products and services by nearly 50% – from US$4.4 trillion in 2012 to US$6.2 trillion.”
http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20150212092452773
Excellent read.
Socialism: The Slouching Beast on Our Campuses:
“A combination of ignorance and dissatisfaction with their economic prospects has led many college students to embrace socialism.”
https://spectator.org/socialism-the-slouching-beast-on-our-campuses/