Why are College Tuitions So High and Getting Higher?

Quickly on the heels of the release “Love Gov” -- the Independent Institute’s satirical videos series on meddlesome government -- a new study from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York concludes that federal aid to college students raises the cost of higher education.

Duh!

Many observers have been puzzled by the relentless increase in tuitions charged by private and public schools alike -- at a growth rate greater than that of any component of the consumer price index, including health care. Some blame the price increases on the greed of campus administrators. But that assessment is an unfair oversimplification that fails to ask: what has enabled schools to hike tuitions so much?

Most U.S. colleges and universities, whether public or private, operate as not-for-profit entities, but that doesn’t mean they are run like charities indifferent to the bottom line. If the tuition at a school is, say, $10,000 per year, and some third party finances half that amount by providing a scholarship or low-interest loan, it’s wishful thinking to believe that the student will then pay only $5,000 per year. That conclusion would follow only if the tuition charge remains unchanged – and that outcome is only a pipe dream.

An economically rational college administrator will want to raise the tuition sticker price to as much as $15,000 per year, so as to capture some or all of the third-party payment, while leaving the student’s out-of-pocket cost the same. That way the school gets the extra money that has become available, but it doesn’t risk driving away cost-conscious applicants for admission.

Where does that extra $5,000 go? If history is any guide, precious little goes to current faculty salaries or the hiring of additional teachers (which would reduce average class sizes). Instead the money is allocated to expanding the school’s administrative staff – more assistants to the president or provost, and to more college bureaucrats with little or no classroom teaching responsibilities. Although these staffers surely will defend their positions vigorously, they contribute indirectly at best to the instructional, research, and service missions of their institutions.

All of this is made possible, of course, by the prevailing (and unquestioned) assumption that public subsidies of four-year post-secondary degrees are essential for young people to succeed in an ever more technical, globally competitive economic environment. In reality, the modern workplace does not necessarily need all of its workers to possess a baccalaureate degree. Warehouse workers and retail employees, for example, no longer need to be especially literate or numerate to parse paper manifests or maps. They instead can rely on bar codes and GPS devices to deliver customers’ orders.

Public policies that promote ever wider access to America’s colleges and universities, which remain among the world’s best, also have opened the door to students unprepared by our failed K-12 public schools to meet the academic demands necessary to earn a college diploma. Remediation of those educational deficiencies now absorbs inordinate college faculty attention, leads to the offering of degrees in undemanding majors, and threatens to devalue undergraduate educations to the level of high-school diplomas.

Many students meanwhile leave school laden with mountains of debt. Because much of the more than $1 trillion in outstanding loans is federally guaranteed, taxpayers are on the hook for repayment if the borrowers default.

The time is long past to end taxpayer subsidies to institutions of higher education and to restore market pricing and market discipline to America’s colleges and universities. A post-secondary education is a privilege, not a right for which everyone qualifies or merits.  

William F. Shughart II, research director at Independent Institute, is J. Fish Smith Professor in Public Choice at Utah State University’s Huntsman School of Business

via: The American Thinker

Some of Hillary's Greatest Accomplishments

When Bill Clinton was president, he allowed Hillary to assume authority over a health care reform. Even after threats and intimidation, she couldn't even get a vote in a democratic controlled congress. This fiasco cost the American taxpayers about $13 million in cost for studies, promotion, and other efforts.

 

Then President Clinton gave Hillary authority over selecting a female attorney general. Her first two selections were Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood – both were forced to withdraw their names from consideration.

Next she chose Janet Reno – husband Bill described her selection as “my worst mistake.” Some may not remember that Reno made the decision to gas David Koresh and the Branch Davidian religious sect in Waco, Texas resulting in dozens of deaths of women and children.

    Husband Bill allowed Hillary to make recommendations for the head of the Civil Rights Commission. Lani Guanier was her selection. When a little probing led to the discovery of Ms. Guanier’s radical views, her name had to be withdrawn from consideration.

   Apparently a slow learner, husband Bill allowed Hillary to make some more recommendations. She chose former law partners Web Hubbel for the Justice Department, Vince Foster for the White House staff, and William Kennedy for the Treasury Department. Her selections went well: Hubbel went to prison, Foster (presumably) committed suicide, and Kennedy was forced to resign.

    Many younger votes will have no knowledge of “Travelgate.” Hillary wanted to award unfettered travel contracts to Clinton friend Harry Thompson – and the White House Travel Office refused to comply. She managed to have them reported to the FBI and fired. This ruined their reputations, cost them their jobs, and caused a thirty-six month investigation. Only one employee, Billy Dale was charged with a crime, and that of the enormous crime of mixing personal and White House funds. A jury acquitted him of any crime in less than two hours

  Still not convinced of her ineptness, Hillary was allowed to recommend a close Clinton friend, Craig Livingstone, for the position of Director of White House security. When Livingstone was investigated for the improper access of about 900 FBI files of Clinton enemies (Filegate) and the widespread use of drugs by White House staff, suddenly Hillary and the president denied even knowing Livingstone, and of course, denied knowledge of drug use in the White House. Following this debacle, the FBI closed its White House Liaison Office after more than thirty years of service to seven presidents.

  Next, when women started coming forward with allegations of sexual harassment and rape by Bill Clinton, Hillary was put in charge of the “bimbo eruption” and scandal defense. Some of her more notable decisions in the debacle was:
 

   • She urged her husband not to settle the Paula Jones lawsuit. After the Starr investigation they settled with Ms. Jones.

  • She refused to release the Whitewater documents, which led to the    appointment of Ken Starr as Special Prosecutor. After $80 million    dollars of taxpayer money was spent, Starr's investigation led to    Monica Lewinsky, which led to Bill lying about and later admitting his    affairs.

   • Hillary’s devious game plan resulted in Bill losing his license to practice law for lying under oath to a grand jury and then his subsequent impeachment by the House of Representatives.

   • Hillary avoided indictment for perjury and obstruction of justice during the Starr investigation by repeating, “I do not recall,” “I have no recollection,” and “I don’t know” a total of 56 times while under oath.

    After leaving the White House, Hillary was forced to return an estimated $200,000 in White House furniture, china, and artwork that she had stolen.

  Now we are exposed to: the destruction of possibly incriminating emails while Hillary was Secretary of State and the “pay to play” schemes of the Clinton Foundation – we have no idea what shoe will fall next. But to her loyal fans – “what difference does it make?”

Author Unknown

And Now a little Truth about Money Politics and the Koch Brothers

As we all remember, the media completely freaked out after the Supreme Court decided Citizens United in favor of free speech. Taking aim primarily at the right-leaning Koch Brothers, the media posed as defenders of democracy against the corrupting influence of outside money in politics. As usual, the facts prove that the media are big fat liars.

Although legions of left-wing corporations like NBC News, Politico, MSNBC, CNN, CBS News, ABC News, The Washington Post, LA Times, NPR, PBS, Univision, Comedy Central, MTV, HBO, and ESPN spend billions of dollars pushing a political agenda 24/7, the left-wing media want a monopoly on free speech. The media believe only left-wing media corporations should be allowed to spend unlimited sums of corporate money to advance a political agenda.

This means, of course, that the Koch brothers must be relentlessly Alinsky’d by the media into Public Enemy Number One — into the very symbol of everything that is wrong with outside money in politics.

How big of a lie is this attack?

So big that the Koch brothers only rank 59th in campaign contributions, with a measly $18 million, which is about half of what NBC News paid Brian Williams to attack President George W. Bush with lies about Hurricane Katrina.

Not only that, if you look at the list top donors on this list, as Gateway Pundit reports, the Kochs are behind 18 different unions (and yes, unions are corporate donors using corporate dollars).

And guess who benefits from the $620 million in outside corporate dollars from these unions? Democrats, of course, which is why the media only complains about a drop-in-a-bucket of $18 million in corporate dollars coming from the likes of Koch Industries and says nothing about the $620 million coming from unions.

And I can assure you that that $620 million is only a drop in the bucket compared to the billions in corporate dollars spent by left-wing multinationals through their media companies to affect the outcome of legislation and elections.

Thank You: Breitbart

Valerie Jarrett and Her Communist Roots

FBI files confirm what we feared in 2008 — that the president and his closest advisor come from a long line of Communists. Not liberals or socialists, but Reds. And now we've all inherited their socialized medicine.

FBI papers obtained by government watchdog Judicial Watch document hard-core communism in the family of Valerie Jarrett, President Obama's most trusted and influential White House advisor. Here's what they reveal about her Chicago kin, who were known as "concealed Communists":

Her late father, James E. Bowman, was involved with Communist front groups and was in contact with a paid Soviet agent in the 1950s — Alfred Stern — who was wanted for espionage.

Jarrett's maternal grandfather, Robert Rochon Taylor, was investigated by the FBI for his membership in Communist groups and his business relationship with the same Soviet agent tied to her father.

Her late father-in-law, Vernon D. Jarrett, was assigned by the Communist Party USA to a special cultural arts "cell" that spread "the Communist Party line" and ran publicity for communist candidates and also raised money for them, the FBI says.

He helped the cell spread communist propaganda "among the middle class," indoctrinating them through newspaper columns, radio shows, speeches, plays and other cultural anesthesia.

Jarrett was such a threat as a Communist propagandist that he was flagged by the FBI as an internal security risk to be swiftly arrested in the event of a hot war with the Soviet Union. The FBI also investigated his wife, Fernetta "Fern" Jarrett, for Communist activities.

These FBI files on Jarrett's relatives are voluminous, covering their un-American activities during the height of the Cold War, when the FBI said the Communist Party USA sought to alter the American form of government "by unconstitutional means." (Sound familiar?)

That people running our country are the children of Communists ought to trigger an avalanche of in-depth news stories. Yet even with documentary evidence to safely guide them, the White House press corps yawns.

"If her father was waving the Confederate flag, I'm sure there'd be massive media interest in how that impacted (Valerie Jarrett's) politics," Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton told us.

Long before Obama was nominated in 2008, we ran a controversial series called "The Audacity of Socialism," in which we tried to warn voters that Obama and his ilk were a different breed of Democrat.

These weren't garden-variety liberals, we argued, but radicals orbiting anti-American subversives whom Democrats like Truman and Kennedy once went after.

Reed More about Jarrett's and Obama's Communist Roots: Investors Business Daily

Maybe Trump is Right About Illegal Aliens and Crime

Non-Americans commit over five times more serious crimes per capita than Americans.

It is estimated that there are some 133,741 foreign criminals in prisons and jails in the USA.  

They are not there for spitting on the sidewalk or jaywalking, and very few are there for immigration violations, as those illegal alien criminals are typically deported in fairly short order or simply let go as we have seen time and time again. They are there in large part for molesting, raping, killing, maiming and murdering people in America, as you will see below. 

Add in the 168,680 convicted criminal immigrants who have final orders of removal but who remain at large in the U.S., and another 179,018 convicted criminal aliens with deportation cases pending but who are also at large, and we have a total non-American felon population of 481,439...a number the size of our 35^th largest city, Sacramento, California, and larger than the entire populations each of Atlanta, Kansas City, Omaha, Miami, Minneapolis - and more.   

And remember, for most of these felons, there was a victim. 

Looking at it another way, illegal aliens constitute 27% of the federal prison population. This means that a group which comprises less than 5% of the population nationally is committing 27% percent of the federal crimes.  So just by that metric alone, illegal aliens commit over five times more serious crimes on a per capita basis than residents do. 

But here's another fact.  According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) in an April 7, 2005 report to Congress entitled "Information on Criminal Aliens Incarcerated in Federal and State Prisons and Local Jails", "The percentage of all federal prisoners who are criminal aliens has remained the same over the last 3 years--about 27 percent. * The majority of criminal aliens incarcerated at the end of calendar year 2004 were identified as citizens of Mexico."  Sorry to report the truth here, but quite a few people owe Mr. Trump an apology.  

That doesn't even include all the other criminal aliens that the government desperately tries to hide from the public even though they must announce it: according to Jessica M. Vaughan, Director of Policy Studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, the 36,007 criminal immigrants that the Obama administration released in 2013 to prowl the streets of America even though they had a collective 88,000 convictions, including 193 homicides, 426 sexual assaults, 303 kidnappings and 1,075 aggravated assaults. And that was just one year's worth of criminal illegal aliens let go to continue to prey on the citizens of the USA.  

In 2014, in a cynical move that can only be described as depraved especially because Mr. Obama ‘s most important job is to protect  Americans, the Obama administration released another 30,558 criminal immigrants, who had a total of 79,059 convictions, into America to mingle with its unsuspecting, innocent, law-abiding citizens.  Someone ought to tell the man what his job is. 

Much More: Family Security Matters