<p>xiggi, I think defense spending is highly relevant, especially when others make a remark about *education <a href=“of%20all%20things”>/I</a> being the hungry insatiable beast and about the need to remove government from the business altogether. The incongruity of defense spending and education spending has entered the public dialogue many times, so it’s worthwhile mentioning here.</p>
<p>Regarding your example, you’re right I had thought your claim was bolder. It’s a good idea to allow students’ salaries to be tax-free (for internships of course, not long-time employment if the student goes on indefinite leave). I’d even go so far as to say that the government even help to partially fund student salaries, which would help to strengthen the ties between industry and academia, spurring more innovation. I don’t know to what extent it’d helpful at a school like Stanford.</p>
<p>Irrelevant aside: it’s funny that you use automatic translation technology in mobile devices as your example, as it’s something I’m a bit of a champion of (the world’s languages are dying due to dominance of other languages, etc.). So I’d be in favor of research into that over tax-free salaries. ;)</p>
<p>Phanta, it’s not that the comparisons between education an defense spending are irrelevant. Political comments are only authorized here when related to education. </p>
<p>As far as my example, it was not a coincidence that I used automatic translations for the mobile market. I could have gone overboard to grab your attention, and refer to the combination of paradigms and ideas from cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and human-computer interaction. </p>
<p>You are correct that there are plenty of success stories of interaction between Stanford and the industry in NoCal. However, even more could be done in bridging the theoretical research and commercial operations. Extending the work-study or programs such as the community service funding to commercial companies might benefit the students, especially the ones who might not qualify for Pell grants but are still finding balancing the checkbook pretty hard. Companies would not have to invent new internship rules to avoid scrutiny. </p>
<p>And last but not least, such programs would not only benefit Stanford in Palo Alto, but could be even bigger for San Jose State or Santa Clara … just to name a couple.</p>
<p>@phantasmagoric: The constitution does outlaw gender discrimination. It was an amendment called the “Equal Rights Amendment.”</p>
<p>@xiggi: It may be a subsidy for the US Government to lend me money at 3-6% interest when their effective rate is 0%. The reason is that the money is in an alternative use and is being debased in correlation to inflation. Also, there may be some effort to offset the defaults by others through charging a class of people to mitigate the risk. I am sympathetic to your position, but it is not always that easy.</p>
<p>What’s frustrating to me about our President’s position is that he is demagoguing the issue of price inflation while pushing inflationary policies on a Macroeconomic level. The effects may be more acute in this sector of society, but the policies are nationwide.</p>
<p>“On the one hand, suborning the continuing support of the unions, and on the other hand, having the Mrs. sitting among poor DC children and singing Kumbaya between exotic adventures abroad with the little Friends. The educational stimuli plans are nothing else than a huge waste that simply delayed much needed reform.”</p>
<p>Xiggi, in these two sentences you have encapsulated all the problems with public education and the administration’s overly political and ineffectual response.</p>
<p>Don’t get me started about college financial aid programs. As a parent who did not qualify for most of them, I am perplexed to see other parents (who I personally know) qualify for financial aid even though they live a much more extravagant lifestyle than I do. I guess I don’t know how to game the system as well as they do.</p>
<p>federal student loans are not murky. They are created not Government but by Politicians. A distinction that all should be aware and understand. </p>
<p>Our political debate is often times directed towards Government, however I challenge anyone and everyone that our Problems are Politician derived.</p>
<p>We are in an era of constrainted budgets. And if anyone thinks that Private enterprises are more efficient with your tax dollars, then you need to look at what parents and students did in the era lot easy credit.</p>
<p>This is a surprisingly common misconception. The Equal Rights Amendment was proposed and shot down in 1972. Instead, the most we have is Title IX. Some would say that the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment implicitly covers gender, but SCOTUS has been inconsistent for a long time in how it applies that clause and strict scrutiny. In fact, some of the current justices (e.g. Scalia) believe that not even the equal protection clause guarantees protection from gender-based discrimination. This is also evidenced in cases that hinge on the application of the clause to sexual orientation and gender identity.</p>
<p>Gender identity is a hot-button issue. Imagine if I decided I wanted to “gender identify” as a woman starting tomorrow. Should I be allowed in the women’s locker room?</p>
<p>That’s incorrect. Actually, in 1972 the expectation was that the ERA would easily be ratified. Both political parties supported it. The ERA passed both houses of Congress with 90% majorities in 1972. Then President Nixon immediately signed it. Out of 38 states required for final ratification, 30 did within less than one year. In the end, only 35 states had ratified the ERA by the original 1979 deadline. Even among the 15 states which did not ratify the ERA, at least one chamber supported it at one point or another. The ERA was not really shot down but suffered a slow agonizing death!</p>
<p>Alternatively, I will offer you this: In my state, Virginia, the state is cutting support for its schools. W&M and UVA get like 10% of their operating budget from the state. They need money to function. They get it by raising tuition.</p>
<p>" . . . the Constitution also doesn’t outlaw gender discrimination and still has vestiges of an old time like the right to bear arms." - Phantas</p>
<p>“vestiges of old times”, like freedom of religion, speech? - old times for you my friend, but not for all of us.</p>
<p>This is getting far off topic, but ignorant comments need a public response. Your trivialization of gender identity is absurd. Transgender people do not wake up one morning and decide to switch genders (they always were that gender; it just doesn’t match what their biological sex is). This scenario makes no sense, and your suggestion of it only speaks to your transphobia. I encourage you to read more about gender identity and about what it means to be transgender, as you seem to have only a superficial grasp of it. It’s a lack of information - ignorance - that allows transphobia to continue in society.</p>
<p>cellardweller, </p>
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<p>Well, if we want to be really pedantic about it, technically the ERA has not been shot down completely; it’s been raised again in virtually every Congress for decades now, and there’s Constitutional precedence that would allow its ratification if the last of those 38 approved.</p>
<p>glido,</p>
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<p>You quoted my exact statement and yet you didn’t read it? Now that’s just willful instigation. I said “still has vestiges of an old time** like the right to bear arms**.” (Notice that there was no comma between “time” and “like,” indicating a restrictive modifier.) If you remember your US history, the 2nd amendment was mostly a reaction to the anger that the patriots felt over England’s attempts to suppress their weapons/ammo before the American Revolution. If that had never happened, we wouldn’t have the 2nd amendment today.</p>
<p>Now that the topic has truly gone on an irrelevant tangent, you all can stop nitpicking the small details.</p>
<p>Tuition is definitely a growing bubble waiting to burst.</p>
<p>However, if (some, not all) people decided to save money instead of wasting it on unneeded material items or spending what they don’t have, they could better afford an education for their kids. Don’t get me started on the family I know who wanted to buy a small private plane ($1mil +) yet complained they didn’t have enough money for college and wanted to make their kids take out loans for school. Or the people in mansions in my town who bought those big houses instead of saving and investing and now can’t afford their kids’ colleges. The greed (both on the sides of the government, the colleges, and families) is astounding. This instant gratification generation is running this country (and the rest of the world) into the ground. I’m ashamed of my peers and their parents for what we have done and will inevitably continue to do. Kids need an education more than they need their Ugg boots, new iPhones, and huge shopping sprees for useless items. I read an article that calculated that if, from the day a kid is born until they turn 18, their parent puts aside $20 for the kid, they’d have enough to go to a reasonable priced school (~$30k COA per year). </p>
<p>The blame falls not only on the government, but sometimes on the citizens, as well.</p>
<p>^ Agreed 100%. What gets on my nerves is certain middle-income students who have been offered extremely generous aid and still whine that their family “can’t pay for it” (i.e. don’t want to pay for it), even when the university determined, after looking at all family expenses including other children in college, that they have the means. Worse, many such students blame low-income students for their tuition prices (throwing all logic out the window), and even go so far as to suggest that low-income students are “better off” than middle-income students - as if growing up in poverty is something to be desired.</p>
<p>While I’m not a fan of the blame game, the fact is that tuition payments by the wealthy subsidizes the financial aid for the poor at some/many schools. The University of California publicly admits that fact: approximately 1/3rd of every dollar in tuition increases goes to offset the increases of the poor.</p>
<p>No, it isn’t, although I will say that the view on this is based on personal interpretation. It’s in the mission of a public university to take on low-income students. The only way that the mentality of “middle-income students subsidizing low-income students” makes any sense is if there were the possibility that the university could lower costs if it just had fewer or no low-income students. But that isn’t a possibility, so I see it as this: middle- and upper-income students will have a given price tag, no matter what, because the lower-income students are there and aren’t going away. You can view it from a budget-columns standpoint, but I think a reduction to numbers oversimplifies the issue. If you want to look at it in numbers, I’d also point out that, depending on the university, many low-income students are supported by endowed scholarships, donated by alumni who stipulated their purpose of supporting low-income students. Yet this fact escapes many of those bitter students who feel “cheated” for having to pay, despite having the means to do so.</p>
<p>As an aside: this mentality is absurdly common at Stanford (not public, I know), but makes no sense considering that all scholarship students are supported by endowment funds earmarked for financial aid to low-income students, as stipulated by the original donors.</p>
<p>My son is a freshman at U of M, and we are thankful to have in-state tuition rates (tuition alone is approximately 3x more for out-of-state students: $12,500 v $38,000). I often hear many parents from other states complain about the high cost of UM for them, yet they continue to pay it. When so many families are more than willing to pay the premium, why would universities change? </p>
<p>There are many ways for college to be affordable to most: staying in-state or attending community college (even if for a year or two) are just 2 ways. Paying for college is just one more huge financial decision for a family, similar to decisions about which house or car to buy, where to go on vacation. Oversimplification perhaps, but it is a choice.</p>
<p>U of Michigan will admit that it is admitting more “wealthy out of state students” to help offset instate students and lower income students.
So not sure where phanta gets all her data but most of it is really out there. Hard to take her seriously with some of the comments she represents as if they were cold hard facts.</p>
<p>oh and phanta please don’t sling around the transphobia label…you really have no clue.
I have relatives with these so called sexual identity issues and they would not say that they were born that way but that it is a result of being raised by their nutjob mother.<br>
Just because someone does not agree with you does not mean that they have phobias.</p>
<p>Sure it could. If colleges eliminate low income kids, they eliminate a need for financial aid and the financial aid budget. Approximately 1/3 of all of the students at UC attend for free. If those students were replaced by full payors, the Unis would be rolling on more dough.</p>
<p>Cash is fungible.</p>
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<p>That assumes that the alums would not have donated for a different purpose. If the college did not matriculate needy students, it would not be asking alums for money to support that program. It would ask alums for money to support other programs instead. Yes, not all would go for the ‘other programs’, but some/many would. </p>
<p>Again, the University of California publicly states that 1/3 of every dollar raised by tuition increases goes directly towards funding the poorer kids. That’s $0.33 of every dollar increased.</p>
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<p>I personally don’t care how students “feel”; if they don’t like the Uni’s policies, go elsewhere.</p>
<p>fwiw: Instead of whining about being wealthy, Stanford kids should recognize that the cost of their education is likely $80k/student. In a sense, they are ALL subsidized by the college’s endowment.</p>