On Oct 13, 2011, at 1:30 PM, Jim Devine wrote: > me: >> the inflation in the education sector is not due to demand (as David says). >> It's more a supply-side phenomenon, the difficulty of raising the >> productivity of service labor in a time when service wages have to keep up >> with those in other sectors -- along with a tremendous rise in overhead >> (insurance, medical, and legal costs, especially). To some extent, >> college-cost inflation is a matter of "you get what you pay for": colleges >> provide many more services to students than they used to. We had a gym; they >> have a health club, etc. > > David Shemano: >> I absolutely 100% disagree. Colleges have health clubs instead of gyms >> because, as a result of government policy manifested in the student loan >> program, there are billions of dollars being allocated to the educational >> sector, which manifests itself in huge capital improvements and a >> proliferation of administrative jobs. No student loans, no health clubs... < > > I don't know about other places, but at LMU students have to pay extra > for access to the gym (which is much like a health club like "Gold's > Gym" but less expensive).
I was on a panel with a libertarian just this morning. He argued by anecdote and metaphor - we need a "purgation" after all that debt, it'd be like the "recovery room" after surgery, no mention that he meant that we need an unemployment rate of 25% to correct the "excesses of the past." Here too, no actual evidence. In fact, federal support for education is flat-to-down over the last three decades, and state/local support is down. Tuition, though, is up. More here: http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/College.html Doug _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
