When Democrats go after colleges and universities with low graduation rates, or propose that schools have "skin in the game" regarding graduation rates, for some reason they always go after private schools. Public universities, coincidentally (I'm sure) with staffs who donate overwhelmingly to Democratic candidates, are completely ignored. While I've stated many times that the government should get out of the student loan business (let banks, whose business it is to determine risk and lend money, lend the money), and that I don't believe universities should have "skin in the game" regarding graduation rates, you have to wonder why even Democrats wouldn't want to discuss schools like
this:
In fact, one state is responsible for all four-year public colleges with
graduation rates under 1 percent for Pell Grant recipients. The next
lowest graduation rate is nearly 4 percentage points higher...
For the 2016-2017 year, the most recent data available, Georgia had five
public colleges with Pell graduation rates under 1 percent, ranging
from Bainbridge State College (0.0 percent and $6.48 million in received
aid) to Atlanta Metropolitan State College (0.6 percent and $8.63
million).
Then there's the good news:
The top five public colleges with the best graduation rates for Pell
Grant recipients are big names in higher ed: University of Virginia
(90.9 percent), College of William and Mary (89.2), UC-Berkeley (89.1),
University of North Carolina (87 percent) and University of Michigan
(86.9).
UC-Berkeley received far and away the most Pell money that year among
those five: $36.78 million. It was also the only one in those five
whose enrollment was more than a quarter Pell recipients.
California universities sound even better:
“Among the 25 four-year public institutions whose students were awarded
the highest total amounts in Pell Grants, the Universities of California
at Irvine, Davis, and Riverside had the highest graduation rates for
Pell Grant recipients,” the Chronicle reports. “The University
of Southern California, Howard University, and Syracuse University had
the highest graduation rates for Pell recipients among the top 25
four-year private nonprofit institutions.
Leftists are always happy to dismiss facts that don't mesh well with their narrative, but they don't always go after private schools.
ReplyDeleteEliminating remediation in the CSU (Executive order 1110) and the Community College system (AB705), and further messing with the funding formula for the community college system, to move away from an apportionment-based method, to one which bases part of the funding on "success" (i.e., the more people a college confers AA/AS degrees upon, and certificates, the more funding they get), shows that not only are they willing to dismiss inconvenient facts, but also, to continue down a path that more rational and reasonable people recognize as utter folly. Of course, it all makes sense if you're a leftist that simply wants more power and more control.
History shows most people never learn anything from history, particularly leftists, but one need only consider the declining value of the high school diploma to realize what is happening to two- and four-year college degrees.
50-60 years ago, the proportion of people who had a high school diploma was around 60%, and the standards were higher than now. Now, upwards of 90% of people have a high school diploma, and the standards vary considerably, to the point where some high school graduates are extremely well-trained, and totally ready for what's next, whereas many at the other end of the spectrum are functionally innumerate and/or illiterate. The marketplace reacts by discounting the value of a high school diploma, to the point where it is now all but worthless. But wait, there's more: now, the left is doing the same thing with the two- and four-year degrees.
The best way I can describe what they are doing in CA-based "higher" education is shitting the bed. Between the soaring tuition, primarily caused by excessive government subsidies, to soft bigotry toward people of certain ethinicities, and rapidly dropping standards in key required subjects (Math & English), we are already well on our way to devalued college degrees. In a way, it is brilliant; leftists are in favor of college for all, in part, because they know that colleges and universities are great at making people faithful leftist voters. So more college, which is one response to the devalued degrees, is good in that way. Plus, more student debt also helps people to become wards of the state in a way.
When lefties talk about "holding colleges accountable", in the next sentence they tell you they're only talking about private/for-profit schools.
ReplyDeleteHaving clarified that, there's nothing else you wrote with which I disagree.
20% Conservative
ReplyDelete50% Moderate
30% Liberal
There's at least 50% more extremist on the left than on the right.