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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bread Upon The Water who wrote (242260)	1/15/2014 8:39:10 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541652

I'm trying to find a metaphor to express the difficulty of making a single point with you. Do you agree ( or not) that different tuition rates for different economic classes at public universities should be openly noted? Let's try this one again. Nothing like this is happening. What is happening is (a) tuition charges are going up for good and bad reasons; (b) good state universities, perhaps all including private universities, have always, well for some time, provided need based aid (as well as merit aid, athletes aid, special talent aid, you name it); and (c) because of (a) above, there is need for more (b). Some of that comes from federal aid, some from state aid, some from endowment income, some from tuition, and who knows what else. What is new is a right wing attack on all public education and, in this case, on public higher ed, which is, as Sam has so nicely noted, a form of class war. Why not go after aid to bright students to attract brighter ones to the campus (dumber ones pay for that), aid to athletes (big bundles here, non athletic students subsidize that): aid to pianists, dramatists, all sorts of special talents (not so much here as there should be, but not so talented pay for this). And so on. Do you, in fairness, want all this noted on some sort of bill to parents? Your kid was a bit dumb, thus your final fee is a bit more than some of our smarter kids; your kid is not a jock thus your bill is a bit more to pay for those jocks; and so on. I don't think so. These kinds of aid are inherent in the business of having universities. The only thing that particular article in the WSJ was doing was singling out need based aid. Thus, class warfare. Now onto the semantics of tuition charges which IMHO denotes substantive change: You, I gather, will simply have to believe what you wish to believe. If you don't wish to engage in what's changed--cost levels and class warfare, not aid--then it's definitely not worth us pursuing a conversation.