Tag Archives: Youth

News

Why is college so expensive? Why does university tuition cost so much?

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The correct answer appeared in the radically leftist New York Times, of all places.

This is by Paul F. Campos, law professor at the radically leftist UC Boulder.

He writes:

[P]ublic investment in higher education in America is vastly larger today, in inflation-adjusted dollars, than it was during the supposed golden age of public funding in the 1960s. Such spending has increased at a much faster rate than government spending in general. For example, the military’s budget is about 1.8 times higher today than it was in 1960, while legislative appropriations to higher education are more than 10 times higher.

In other words, far from being caused by funding cuts, the astonishing rise in college tuition correlates closely with a huge increase in public subsidies for higher education. If over the past three decades car prices had gone up as fast as tuition, the average new car would cost more than $80,000.

Some of this increased spending in education has been driven by a sharp rise in the percentage of Americans who go to college. While the college-age population has not increased since the tail end of the baby boom, the percentage of the population enrolled in college has risen significantly, especially in the last 20 years. Enrollment in undergraduate, graduate and professional programs has increased by almost 50 percent since 1995. As a consequence, while state legislative appropriations for higher education have risen much faster than inflation, total state appropriations per student are somewhat lower than they were at their peak in 1990. (Appropriations per student are much higher now than they were in the 1960s and 1970s, when tuition was a small fraction of what it is today.)

As the baby boomers reached college age, state appropriations to higher education skyrocketed, increasing more than fourfold in today’s dollars, from $11.1 billion in 1960 to $48.2 billion in 1975. By 1980, state funding for higher education had increased a mind-boggling 390 percent in real terms over the previous 20 years. This tsunami of public money did not reduce tuition: quite the contrary.

[…]State appropriations reached a record inflation-adjusted high of $86.6 billion in 2009. They declined as a consequence of the Great Recession, but have since risen to $81 billion. And these totals do not include the enormous expansion of the federal Pell Grant program, which has grown, in today’s dollars, to $34.3 billion per year from $10.3 billion in 2000.

The more money that is attached to students, the more money universities charge – simple.

But where is the money going? Is it mostly going to research? To the classroom? To hire more and better professors?

No:

Interestingly, increased spending has not been going into the pockets of the typical professor. Salaries of full-time faculty members are, on average, barely higher than they were in 1970. Moreover, while 45 years ago 78 percent of college and university professors were full time, today half of postsecondary faculty members are lower-paid part-time employees, meaning that the average salaries of the people who do the teaching in American higher education are actually quite a bit lower than they were in 1970.

By contrast, a major factor driving increasing costs is the constant expansion of university administration. According to the Department of Education data, administrative positions at colleges and universities grew by 60 percent between 1993 and 2009, which Bloomberg reported was 10 times the rate of growth of tenured faculty positions.

Even more strikingly, an analysis by a professor at California Polytechnic University, Pomona, found that, while the total number of full-time faculty members in the C.S.U. system grew from 11,614 to 12,019 between 1975 and 2008, the total number of administrators grew from 3,800 to 12,183 — a 221 percent increase.

If you’re going to college or trade school, go to a low-cost school. Do a STEM degree or do a trade that pays well. Try to get tuition assistance even if it means going to a less prestigious school. And work at every opportunity you get in the most serious job you can find. Don’t spend your money – save it. Especially don’t spend your money on fun, vacations and alcohol. As soon as you grow up, you’re going to wish you could have it all back.

News

New study: record high 30.3 percent of millenials live with a parent

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Those on the left assure us that the secret to creating more jobs is making it easier for more people to go to college. We have to keep taxing job creators and workers, they say, so that we can pay for more people to get a college indoctrination. I mean education! Well, we have been trying that approach for some time – tax the private sector, make it cheaper for people to go to college. And the result is that we now have a record high number of young adults with college degrees, and a record high number of young adults living in poverty and a record high number of young adults living at home.

The article from Campus Reform tells us where we are now.

They write:

An all-time high of 30.3 percent of millennials are living with a parent, according to data released from the U.S. Census Bureau’s study, “Young Adults: Then and Now.”

The study, released Dec., 4, 2014, and tracks the young adult population from the 1980, 1990, and 2000 Censuses and the 2009-2013 American Community Survey, gathering data about salary, education level, transportation habits, and more than 40 other topics.

Millennials are living at home, and more are living in poverty with lower rates of employment than their predecessors.

According to the report, millennials are more likely to live at home than any other generation of young adults. In 1980, 22.9 percent of young adults lived with a parent, while in 1990 the percentage increased to 24.2 percent. In 2000, the percentage decreased to 23.2 percent, but by 2013 it hit a record-level by jumping more than 7 percentage points.

Millennials are living at home, and more are living in poverty with lower rates of employment than their predecessors. According to the study, one in five young adults live in poverty, up from one in seven in 1980. Currently, the study claims 65 percent of millennials are employed compared to the 1980 number of 69 percent.

Yet, 22 percent of young adults have a college degree, compared to only 16 percent in 1980.

The troubling thing about this for me is how much millenials keep voting, again and again, for higher taxes and more regulations. On the one hand, they want to vote against evil corporations. Tax them more! Regulate them, to save the planet! Then, a split-second later, they go and ask these corporations that they’ve been taught to bash for work. There is work for them, all right – in other countries with lower taxes and less regulation.

Anyway, we want to be positive, so again, I’m going to provide people with useful information.

First, study STEM programs:

  1. Petroleum Engineering – Starting Salary: $103,000 / Mid-Career Salary: $160,000
  2. Actuarial Mathematics – Starting Salary: $58,700 / Mid-Career Salary: $120,000
  3. Nuclear Engineering – Starting Salary: $67,600 / Mid-Career Salary: $117,000
  4. Chemical Engineering – Starting Salary: $68,200 / Mid-Career Salary: $115,000
  5. Aerospace Engineering – Starting Salary: $62,800 / Mid-Career Salary: $109,000
  6. Electrical Engineering – Starting Salary: $64,300 / Mid-Career Salary: $106,000
  7. Computer Engineering – Starting Salary: $65,300 / Mid-Career Salary: $106,000
  8. Computer Science – Starting Salary: $59,800 / Mid-Career Salary: $102,000
  9. Physics – Starting Salary: $53,100 / Mid-Career Salary: $101,000
  10. Mechanical Engineering – Starting Salary: $60,900 / Mid-Career Salary: $99,700

And you should also start investing early, and keep investing:

The good news is there are now more millionaires than ever. But when it comes to retirement, is a million dollars enough?

“If they want to be financially independent, retire at 65 and be able to have an income of $40,000 a year in retirement for 30 years, then it’s likely that they’re going to need a million dollars to retire to generate that lifestyle,” said Bruce Allen, an independent wealth advisor.

Living comfortably on $40,000 a year in retirement, which would require a $1 million nest egg by the time you reach the retirement age, will depend on your expenses, investment returns and health-care costs.

[…]Many retirees make it work with less. According to Census data, the median household income for those 65 and older is $34,000, but that’s almost half the $66,000 for ages 55 to 64. In order to preserve that preretirement standard of living, financial experts say you’ll need more than a million dollars.

And the last piece of advice I would be this – if you are a young person, you should be looking into understanding how to save and invest, and you should be reading unbiased financial news. It’s not enough to hope that the government is going to bail you out. In all likelihood, the government will be coming to you in 15 years, looking for you to bail them out of their obligations to pay the pensions and health care costs of retirees. You should not take pride in being ignorant of economics and politics. This is your problem. Wishing and hoping that things will be OK will not make these challenges go away. Just because your friends, your favorite musicians, your favorite authors, your co-workers, etc. are not talking about these issues to you, it does not mean that these challenges don’t apply to you. They do apply to you. And just getting good grades now is NOT a guarantee that you will be OK later. You’re going to be expected to do more with less in a way that your parents never had to do. They are leaving you a worse financial world than they received.

News

Should young people vote for Democrats?

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Jennifer Kabbany describes what young people got from their vote for Democrats over at the College Fix.

She writes:

Young America’s Foundation released its annual “Youth Misery Index” findings today, and the news is not good for young people – the index has hit an all-time record high.

The foundation calculates the index by adding youth unemployment, student loan debt, and national debt (per capita) figures, and it found “young people are experiencing hardships like never before under the Obama administration, and this generation is especially suffering the consequences of this administration’s leftist policies.”

For 2014, youth unemployment sat at 18.1 percent, student loan debt came in at $30,000, and national debt per capita was the highest ever at $58,437. The foundation tallied that all up for a Youth Misery Index of 106.5. That’s far above the 2013 figure of 98.6, when the foundation added 16.3, which represented youth unemployment, with 29.4 – the average 4-year college loan debt – and 52.9, each person’s national debt burden.

“The government is largely responsible for all three problems, and we’ve found a statistically significant relationship between government expenditures and the Youth Misery Index,” the foundation states. “Each indicator can be tied to government actions.”

While the index has steadily grown over the decades, under Obama the figure has shot up dramatically.

In 2012 it was 95.1, and the year before that 90.6. When Obama first took office in 2009, it was 83.5. When President George Bush left office in 2008 – the index was 69.3. When the figure debuted in 1993, it came in at 53.1.

“Young people will be stuck paying for government debt they had no part in creating, and they’ll have to do it with less discretionary income than ever before because of record high levels of student loan debt,” the foundation stated.

If interest rates go up, it will get even worse. Interest on loans will make it harder for them to buy houses and cars. Their students loans will cost more. And the government will have to dedicate a lot more money to making payments on the national debt – leaving less money for other expenditures. Taxes might have to go up to pay for the payments on the debt. Whether they raised income, sales or property taxes, it’s bad news for young people trying to get on with their lives.