Cash-Strapped State Schools Being Forced to Privatize
time.com
time.com
With money from the states going down, do you continue to let in under qualified students from your own state? Or do you go private and run admissions as a true meritocracy, and make a few bucks in the process? What will the people of the state think when their "top 5% of her high school class" daughter gets a letter telling her to hit the bricks? Keep in mind, they don't know that the top 5% in an American high school is not the same thing as the top 5% in say . . . a secondary school in Singapore. Do Universities have an obligation to educate the people of the states they serve?
There is no denying that the current system is, in effect, affirmative action for white people. Supported by a level of public expenditure that is probably unsustainable long term. The question is, does everyone deserve a shot at a good education no matter how much money you have, or where you went to high school? If so, what is the best way to make that happen?
My own opinion was that the best thing for these states to do is to go private with their Universities and use them as immigration magnets. That way the state and its businesses benefit by having some of those students stay on after graduation. The University thrives, since, at least in Wisconsin's case, it would have the funds to support its teaching mission. And finally, the public expenditures being made to support these facilities are eliminated. You keep some level of affirmative action, and you expand the qualifications to include say 'people from the state we serve'. There is a quota, so not everyone who wants to would get in, but there would be some number of state residents in the student body. Added benefit, you really would get only the better students from that state since competition would be so fierce.
I realize that each University's situation is different. Even with that in mind I think that, at the University level, privatized education can work extremely well for the student, the University, local businesses, and the community.
I deny it.
Are you asserting that entrance to state schools disproportionately helps whites? Affirmative action standards work to boost under qualified blacks and hispanics, and hold back qualified Asians. The net effect on whites is, if anything, a bit of a penalty.
Are you asserting that whites, taken as a whole, get more dollar value out of state schools than they pay in taxes? If so, I'll assert that whites pay a higher percent of taxes than whites make up a percent of state school student bodies.
Of course, I'm not a big fan of this whole train of logic, because it tries to create (even if just implicitly) group classes that pay costs or receive benefits, and I dislike any world view that attributes costs and benefits on groups larger than an individual.
I respect that position. In general, I do too. I didn't mean to come off like that. I used the affirmative action comparison, because we are all familiar with it.
>"Are you asserting that entrance to state schools disproportionately helps whites? Affirmative action standards work to boost under qualified blacks and hispanics, and hold back qualified Asians. The net effect on whites is, if anything, a bit of a penalty."
So going back to my post, perhaps I should say that currently, residents of the state of Wisconsin, who happen to be white but could be any color, get into the University of Wisconsin with less qualification than let's say . . . the typical foreign student applicant. At the same time, the foreign student will pay more in tuition. Now affirmative action was the first familiar label in my head that could be used to describe such a system. There may be others, or we may want to come up with a more politically correct term for it to use during the course of the discussion.
Again, affirmative action was a comparison I used to provide context. I didn't assert that the affirmative action program at UW helps whites, just that the ADMISSIONS program at UW helps Wisconsin residents. Who happen to be white, but could be any color for the purposes of the discussion.
>"Are you asserting that whites, taken as a whole, get more dollar value out of state schools than they pay in taxes? If so, I'll assert that whites pay a higher percent of taxes than whites make up a percent of state school student bodies."
Again, I am not asserting that white people get more out than they put in. I am asserting that Wisconsin residents, "taken as a whole, get more dollar value out of state schools than they pay in taxes". Absolutely. The amount of money the state gives the University of Wisconsin is, by design, just a token amount. Enough to claim the University as public. So very few of your tax dollars actually end up at the University. For that small amount, tens of thousands of Wisconsin residents are, every year, given an education that anyone else would have to pay 3 to 4 times as much for. Surely you can see the asymmetry there. If there were no asymmetry, in fact, there would be no debate on going private.
Not sure I agree, but last I checked, affirmative action for white people was just called "racism".
That means the university would have to raise a lot of money to buy itself from the state and go private. And, since the university's reason for going private is to make it harder for Michican residents to attend the university in favor of out-of-state students with more money, there's no reason for the state to be charitable with the sale price.
The article claims that the University of Michigan is somehow doing the state a favor by buying a bunch of construction. Yet, the university is a whole-owned subsidary of the state, so really the state is simply shuffling its own money around. The state could just cut the university's funding and use that money to buy buildings somewhere that is probably much more beneficial to the average Michigan resident.
If they assume a 5% return, the endowment needed is $6.5 billion.
Instead I think states should adopt a four-year community college model. Hire people to teach and not to research. I know most university educated people look down at community colleges as little more than extended high schools but the people I've know that have attended community colleges said the quality of instruction they received was much better than at the university level (most went on to get a university degree).