Yes, I get the joke. Education expenses are rising almost as fast as medical expenses, and nothing beats the rise of medical expenses except military expenses and the expense of giving the super rich enormous tax benefits on their already obscene incomes. Nowadays a college education, four years at a selective private tier 1 university will set you back at least a quarter million dollars. Double that in ten years, even without inflation. We can't be an educated country, competitive with China in research technology and the arts, when only coddled multi-millionaires can afford a good education. America must learn that it's crucial that a bigger portion of our tax funds be more heavily in education across the board, from K-12 to post doc, if we want to be serious about competing in a rapidly shifting balance of power from West to East, from North to South. Education is the new arms race. And America is losing it.
Let's face it, our education system to too drawn out at the 6-12 grades and too compressed at the undergrad college level. That's proven on one hand by the huge percentage of college-bound kids who earn dozens of advanced placement credits before completing high school and on the other hand by the fact that the average B.A. degree now takes about five years. Too much adolescent play-time is built into our system. I say compress those years from 6-12 into 4 years and follow them with 2 years of general college level courses to be followed by 4 years of study leading to a B.A. degree that's equal to today's M.A. degrees. I'm saying that the future standard college education should be "thicker" and longer than today's. Today's B.A. is only slightly better than yesterday's 2-yr. college certificate. Too much time is wasted in the years 6 through the "associate degree" level and not enough time is given to acquire a competitive standard education (which is, now, the M.A. level). A radical restructuring of education is necessary in America. China and India are already ahead and speeding up. wc ----- Original Message ---- From: joseph berg <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Mon, November 15, 2010 11:01:37 PM Subject: Re: "This study examines the process of commercialization of art which took place in Antwerp during the long sixteenth century, an era of rapid expansion of both the city's economy and its art market." On Mon, Nov 15, 2010 at 2:28 PM, William Conger <[email protected]>wrote: > I agree with Cheerskep. As I said, a million, even spending a million a > year > after taxes is not very hard to do. I gave the example of having 1 billion > to > spend over a lifetime of 72 years. That would be about 50,000 a DAY to > spend > (not invest or run a business with). Now that would be very hard to do. > wc > That won't be near enough when her kids start going to college: http://www.nydailynews.com/gossip/2010/11/11/2010-11-11_hungry_octomom_nadya_suleman_takes_her_14_kids_to_make_milkshakes.html
