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The Perils of Higher Education

By Jonathan Feaster

2009-02-21

How tragic it is that so many people are trapped in hopeless situations because of the education industrial complex. This has recently been shown to be painfully evident in a recent article in Forbes magazine titled "The Great College Hoax."

College is just not for everyone. This is not some elitist statement in any regard. It's a matter of economics or finding the means to obtain your ends. With a little determination, many smart and talented people would be much happier if they would forgo the college racket and start making their way in the workplace.

If you are thinking about college I suggest that you first ask yourself if the degree you're wanting to pursue is even needed to do what makes you happy. Are you willing to pay the various costs of tuition (interest, mental, physical etc.)? When I went to college I learned that the hardest part was not the stress that came from within the classroom but the enormous stress that came from outside the classroom.

My fiancee and I were lucky enough to pick an in-state public college that was well-known and relatively cheap. We didn't simply pick a school just because it was popular, had good marketing and we definitely didn't pick a school because we were sports fans. How on earth does a good football team make a good education?!?! A degree is a degree and it really doesn't matter where it's from (especially if it's from a public school!) Don't learn this the hard way. Just pick a school that's known and one that you know you can graduate from!

We were also both lucky to be able work full-time for kind and tolerant employers and to live within our means. We both finished degrees that we made sure were highly sought after in our respective fields. We avoided degrees that wouldn't merely be a stepping stone to more post-graduate work. We went into fields that were practical and could lead into multiple fields or have multiple uses (Architecture/Engineering/Logistics/Technology).

If you're thinking about college take care to make sure that you need that degree and that you can actually get it at reasonable cost. In short, make sure that the degree is going to work for you-not you working for it for the rest of your life.

• The Great College Hoax

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Red Utopia:

Hitler had nothing on "Uncle Joe" Stalin.

You know, the "peaceful" Stalin made his breakthrough by "practicing the politics of pragmatism" when he took care of all of those pesky property owners who refused to put their "skin in the game."

Link: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1549381614128077376

The Fault Lines Emerge:

The Keynesians believe that you can get something for nothing. It is possible...
All you have to do is steal.
Taxation is theft and the least the government could do is quit pretending that they're helping us. Heck, even murderers and bandits spare our intelligence when they do their deeds.

So says Peter Schiff:
Printing money is merely taxation in another form. Rather than robbing citizens of their money, government robs their money of its purchasing power. Many people assume that if government provides the funds we can spend our way back to prosperity. However, it's not money we lack but production. If the government simply prints money and doles it out, we will not be able to buy more stuff; we will simply pay higher prices. The only way to buy more is to produce more. It is production that creates purchasing power, not the printing press!

Link: http://www.monetarycurrent.com/commentaries/52-analysis/614-the-fault-lines-emerge.html

Enough!:

Don Cooper has the gonads to stand up to the thugs!

Link: http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig9/cooper7.html

Crisis and The Obamaites:

In his book, Crisis and Leviathan, Robert Higgs makes a proposal:

"that government control, which increases during a war or economic depression, continues after the crisis, with each increase influencing the prevailing ideology, making further increases more acceptable to the public."

Sound familiar? This seems to be the theme for The Obama Administration. Here's some examples:

• "never waste a good crisis," - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
• "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before." - Obama Administration Chief of Staff Rahm "Dead Fish" Emanuel
• ...we've experienced great trials before. And with every test, each generation has found the capacity to not only endure, but to prosper - to discover great opportunity in the midst of great crisis." - Barack Obama

Link: http://apnews.myway.com/article/20090307/D96P7GG00.html

The Meltdown: No PhD Required:

The regulators were not only aware of the risky loans, they mandated them.

John Silveira over at Backwoods Home Magazine gives one of the most concise explanations for the meltdown.

President Bush said recently, "The market is not functioning properly." Of course it wasn't; it was being regulated by people who were trying to force markets to do things no prudent man would or should do. The regulators allowed Fannie and Freddie to operate without opening up their books, twisted them for political ends, and forced them to make unsound fiscal moves. The one thing you will not see is the Democrats admit they screwed up. The one thing you won't hear the Republicans say is that they lost their courage when they had a chance to correct it.

Government fails.

Link: http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/silveira115lw.html