As ET appears to be more interesting than the people he's with, most likely he's looking for a way out.
Lol. It's not a bargain by any means. Raising a kid even in Hongkong and sending it to the top private schools comes cheaper than what you have to cough up in the US for a decent education. So it's a bargain to have kids in the US, what are u guys complaing about ?[/QUOTE]
I think your numbers are about right but you could say the same thing about a whole bunch of other things. Just because it was unnaturally cheap during the 1970s does not mean it can or should be unnaturally cheap now. A lot of things have changed since then. During the 1970s, education was heavily subsidized but not heavily used. In the late 1960s, about 12% of the population aged 25 to 29 had achieved a BS degree. Now the figure is approaching 30% of the population. I'm looking at wikipedia for the figures: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_United_States So when the price has gone up so much you can attribute that (at least partly) to a failure of the subsidies to ramp up with the use. But there's also been changes in how professors spend their time. They used to carry a much larger teaching load. Now, at least in the STEM stuff I work in, their primary duty is to obtain research funding from the government. And close to half of that is skimmed off and used to pay for bloated administration costs. As far as students being unable to pay for the costs of their education, most of that is due to the fact that students are getting easier and easier degrees. While the number of people getting college degrees has tripled, the number getting degrees in STEM subjects is roughly the same. And this is while the population has grown. Students today know that getting a degree in History is not going to make much of a career for them (unless they're a star). So they go to college intending to major in engineering. When they get here, a lot of them discover that engineering isn't easy and more importantly, they don't have any natural ability in the subject. Some of them drop out but a lot switch majors to something a lot easier like "Communication". Another thing that's going on is that fewer students seem to be "readers". This is probably hitting us harder in the STEM fields than in English or History I suppose. But you see it even in grad students. Young people just don't read as many books as in previous generations, apparently. I have no idea where this comes from; it might be a real change, it might be just perception and it might be that by sending a higher percentage of the population to college, we're digging deeper into the barrel and getting students who are less suitable for academia. It's difficult for me to justify having the public pay for individual education costs beyond high school. What's going on here is that we are taxing the crap out of blue collar workers in order to subsidize the education (and therefore higher personal earnings) of their bosses. What's more, the children of the educated have huge advantages in college preparation, over the children of blue collar workers. Subsidizing the process makes those class advantages more permanent. Maybe that's why Obama is talking about free 2-year schooling; it's not as elite.
Why does any of this have to do with Democrats and Republicans? The world is quite amused about all that infinite finger pointing going on between the 2 American parties. This is a global issue and way beyond political parties.
Below are 10 major reasons why the U.S., more and more, has become aterrible place to raise a family unless you’re rich... (9 reasons given) 10. They don't teach presumably college-educated journalists enough math to count to 10.