<p>my comment shouldn’t have appeared so pointed at @lerkin… It was intended to be a commentary on the impacts of technology (negative or positive). I personally think that libraries are headed the way of the buggy whip and “snail mail”. And as much of an issue? should government even BE in the “higher education” (post H.S.) business? seems the private sector has that pretty well figured out. We don’t (as a society) typically endorse public competition with the private sector, why now? particularly when the private sector has proven it can offer it competitively. Get out of the business and regulate it.</p>
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<p>I’ve always wondered why Community Colleges operate in this
way. Universities have a max number for their courses and those that
drop the course make space for other students to take the
course. Also, the professor can take more than the max number (or
raise the max number) if he or she wants to. With Community Colleges,
the number is fixed and slots can’t be reclaimed by students that drop
the course.</p>
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<p>I think that the cities and towns typically spend about $10,000 per
student which seems to be around the norm in the state. Some wealthy
towns may spend more and poor cities and towns may receive aid from
the state. State aid has been a contentious issue and the subject of a
few lawsuits going on for about twenty years with not that much change
as a result of the lawsuits. Funding used to be the sole responsibility
of the cities and towns but a lawsuit changed it so that the state
provides varying amounts of funding based on the relative wealth of
cities and towns. So there used to only be a local property tax but now
there is a state portion of the property tax.</p>
<p>As far as outcomes go, let’s take a look at Mean 2011 SAT Scores by State
at</p>
<p>[Commonwealth</a> Foundation - 2010 SAT Scores by State](<a href=“http://www.commonwealthfoundation.org/policyblog/detail/2010-sat-scores-by-state]Commonwealth”>2010 SAT Scores by State - Commonwealth Foundation)</p>
<p>New Hampshire comes in 26th so it’s in the middle of the states but
out of the top 20 states, the participation rate is 10% or lower in
all but one state and that rate is 19% for Colorado. The participation
rate in New Hampshire is 77%. New Hampshire also edges out
Massachusetts which has income, sales and property taxes (and a bunch
more) though the Massachusetts participation rate is 89%. So New
Hampshire seems to do a pretty decent job educating a good chunk of
the population if you go by SAT scores. The top three states for
percentage of population with college degrees are MA, CT and NH in
that order so it’s not surprising that the kids would be reasonably
well educated as there are so many parents with degrees.</p>
<p>I am not that familiar with how things are going in higher education
outside of the frequent comments that the state is not funding higher
education. Still, it gets harder and harder for in-state high-school
graduates to get into UNH. There have been articles over the past
decade stating that students that thought of UNH as a safety have been
surprised when they didn’t get in despite doing well with respect to
their school peers.</p>
<p>I would guess that the recession magnified the problem of not enough
slots for more demand. For some strange reason which I haven’t figured
out, there is a lot of OOS demand for UNH. Maybe it’s hockey, or
people like to ski or the location near beaches, mountains, Boston and
Canada are an attraction. So the state brings in a LOT of out-of-state
students. 40% of students are from out-of-state. This percentage has
remained constant since 1981.</p>
<p>Source: [Lack</a> of state funding shapes UNH enrollment | SeacoastOnline.com](<a href=“http://www.seacoastonline.com/articles/20110626-NEWS-106260334]Lack”>http://www.seacoastonline.com/articles/20110626-NEWS-106260334)</p>
<p>Interestingly enough, prices for UMass are pretty close to those of
UNH despite MA’s philosophy of valuing education with public dollars.
It seems that public higher education is generally expensive in New
England and that might be the result of students in the area having
so much access to great private universities in the area.</p>
<p>The approach to state taxation allows parents to live in inexpensive
housing to save for college if they wish or live in expensive housing
where they will pay more in property taxes.</p>
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<p>Libraries are funded locally by cities and towns. I do not believe
that they receive funding from the state. So they can be good or
bad - the locals vote for the kinds of libraries that they want.</p>
<p>Many of the towns are quite small and budget matters get voted on in
town meetings so you have participant government. There are lots of
towns where it isn’t particularly hard to get elected to one position
or another and then move up the political food chain. Don’t expect to
make money at it though. The compensation for state legislators is
$100/year and free trips through toll booths. I have had several
friends that have been or are in politics and it’s truly volunteer
stuff outside of the Executive Branch - and even there, it doesn’t pay
all that well.</p>
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<p>New Hampshire is blessed with a lot of natural attractions and some
places charge parking fees to defray management costs. I believe that
this is what they do at Hampton Beach. In other areas, cities and
towns run parks and recreation and the cities and towns have to budget
for these things. There may also be non-profits that own property to
for summer camps. Our local YMCA runs a popular summer camp program
on property that it owns (I don’t recall whether they bought it or
it was gifted).</p>
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<p>The city where I work has a property tax rate of about $21 per
thousand. Median sales price for homes from Dec 11 to Feb 12 was about
$185,000 so that’s about $3,885. That’s pretty cheap if you’re making
$100K as you don’t have to pay sales or income taxes.</p>
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<p>I don’t see a lot of this in my state. People that live here know that they’re not paying a lot in taxes unless they live in expensive homes - they don’t really have a right to complain and for the most part, they don’t.</p>
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<p>I had a walkthrough of the library at a university that my son took a
dual-enrollment course at many years ago. They had a lot of new
facilities including a very nice performing arts building. I noticed
that the library didn’t have magazines and books and asked about it
and you can probably guess the answer.</p>
<p>Our local town library is actually quite nice and we’ve used it
extensively over the years. We even put up an exhibit for some of
the mathematical models that we’ve built.</p>
<p>Many residents don’t have internet access at home and use the
computers at the library for internet access and to write papers, do
spreadsheets, etc. The library has a meeting room which sees a lot of
use for lectures and presentations. The childrens section (donated by
one of my former employers) helps to get children interested in
reading in group or private settings. Our library also has audiobooks,
music CDs and a wide variety of videos, both on VHS tape (an ancient
videorecording format used in the dark ages) and DVD. So many use
the library for inexpensive entertainment.</p>
<p>So physical libraries can still be useful.</p>
<p>One more point regarding libraries,</p>
<p>my 2nd grade daughter reads at 5th grade level and she loves to read. I would go broke if I had to buy every book for her. We visited book fair at her school recently, where she bought a new “Captain underpants” book. By the time we got home, she already finished reading that book in the car. So for us, library is very helpful.</p>
<p>I am sure there are other inexpensive ways to obtain books for reading (like book exchange), but not everyone has resources to do that. 18 years ago I was in no position to buy any books, so library was the only resource I could afford at that time (I still had to pay for bus fare to get there).</p>
<p>P.S. I probably would not go so far as to suggest that libraries should be in business of renting movies and games.</p>
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<p>I strongly disagree with this. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, of the 19.7 million students attending U.S. colleges and universities, 14.6 million attend public institutions. Private colleges and universities are really just a nche player here, except at the very top end of the market. Sure, if we didn’t have public colleges and universities, privates would pick up some of the slack, but only part of it. And not necessarily in the right places. One of the first things the territorial legislatures did as new territories were formed was to establish public colleges (which in most cases later became the state flagship university). Why? Well, the private sector wasn’t rushing in to provide that badly needed public service, in part because it’s never been a money-maker. Oh, there have been the occasional for-profit colleges, but generally they do a much worse job than public universities, in my opinion. Many private colleges and universities were founded by religious institutions to train church officials; their educational mission gradually expanded, but they’ve never been particularly concerned with a broad public service mission; things like whether there are enough primary case doctors and nurses in the state to serve the public’s health needs or how to provide for agricultural research and extension services to improve the state’s agricultural base, or producing enough civil engineers to allow the state to build the highways, bridges, airports, and other vital infrastructure it needs to allow its economy to prosper, or producing enough teachers for K-12 public education, or educating the state’s young people en masse rather than at niche scales. Because private higher education isn’t really a market-based system–it consists almost entirely of non-profits, competing for the best students, the best faculty, the biggest contributions, and the most prestige, but it’s not geared toward making a profit-- it has no profit motive to respond to the demand for those things. So those great public needs are left to the public sector institutions.</p>
<p>I’m not saying private institutions don’t play a useful role here; they do, but it’s just a relatively small part of the puzzle. and by the way, they’re richly rewarded for what they do by public subsidies: in most cases they pay no property taxes, they pay no income taxes on their revenues, their contributors are entitled to tax deductions on their contributions, their endowments can grow forever on a tax-free basis, much of the research they do is paid for out of taxpayer funds, many of their students receive federal financial aid in the form of Pell grants, subsidized and unsubsidized federal loans, and federally-supported work-study (all of which of course goes pretty directly into the school’s own pocket), and on and on. So it isn’t as if there isn’t a huge amount of taxpayers support going into the “private” side of higher education—so much so that I would regard it as a quasi-public enterprise.</p>
<p>Wish I could figure out that “quote box” thingy… very helpful for addressing specific comments.</p>
<p>I just think, with online education offering much less expensive alternatives; the internet in general, changing our access to information, and “public” institutions charging 20, 30 or 40 THOUSAND dollars a year! for education? And claiming that it HAS to charge that much to be competitive and make up for the loss of public subsidy? It might be time for “the public” to get out of that business.</p>
<p>Our state flagship university couldn’t touch the private education FA offer package my D received from an equally well respected option. Something needs to radically change, or these publics will obsolete themselves.</p>
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<p>I don’t think so. Most privates don’t have big enough endowments to make much difference for most students financially. Most high school students don’t qualify for merit at the schools that offer it. In fact, some private colleges are out of business or headed that way. In Atlanta, at least two have been on probation from their accreditation agency because of funding issues. </p>
<p>One of the things that is driving the cost of education is a demanding student and parent population – new dorms, new student rec centers, small class size, etc impact the overall costs.</p>
<p>My son is taking three on line course at his state U this semester. I am not thrilled, but he has some health issues that necessitates this. I feel like I am throwing money down the drain. Online education is still not so good that it replaces a classroom.</p>
<p>Here is how to quote
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/community-forum-issues/1290677-how-quote-posts-tutorial.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/community-forum-issues/1290677-how-quote-posts-tutorial.html</a></p>
<p>You cannot read most academic journals, academic books, and the like on the net or without paying a lot to print them out later.</p>
<p>I had the same questions as #75 about NH; I have a friend who moved to Meredith, NH from Fly-Over Country and he reported that houses were quite a bit more expensive than here in the Midwest - but this is not related to taxation - and property taxes were twice our 1%. On a 200-300k house that’s $4-6k a year, which may sound a lot but then, no income or sales taxes :). On a more expensive house like mine, it’s ugly, but again, no state/sales tax. One will need to do the math because not everyone’s prop tax rate is 1%, a lot of places here are nearly NH rate…</p>
<p>Just for kicks I looked at UNH instate vs UIUC instate (UIUC is typical of Fly-Over flahship instate, around $10-11k/year (except Michigan which is around $300k/year instate and $1M/year OOS :)). UNH is $15-16k IS… So some costs are passed along.</p>
<p>Also checked education accomplishments, NH K-12 schools seem to be doing OK. But, NH is a small state, not a country-sized state like most of Fly Over states in the Midwest. </p>
<p>And then there’s the issue of big city vs not big city, environment, weather, and the like. I had an opportunity to teach at a small college in Vermont back in the 80’s and while the place was amazingly beautiful, it was not for me (the Turbo’s are very cosmopolitan, which in the Midwest means we visit Chicago often :)). My friend lasted 4 years in Meredith and just returned to Fly Over country last year.</p>
<p>no, in-state rewards local students and also helps retain talent so they don’t leave the state for good</p>
<p>Meredith is a beautiful place but it’s pretty quiet.</p>
<p>I live near the border with MA and Boston is less than an hour away with no traffic. I wouldn’t mind having a place in Boston (and the place in NH too). I found out today that one of my neighbors is dabbling in commercial real estate in Boston - we had a long talk at the grocery store today before my wife told me that she was done shopping.</p>