Saturday, May 11, 2013

Good Saturday, All.  Feels colder than it really is.  Temp on the patio is just below 50F.  But everything seems to be still standing in the gardens.  All the tender plants are under cover or in the mini-greenhouse.  The patio is wet but drying off.  But since we expect more rain later today I don't plan on any gardening.

As you probably know, I have become very skeptical of our "education industry."  It doesn't really educate anyone--not for anything meaningful.  It is an industry firmly situated in the industrial ideology--put as much product through as possible in as little time as possible.  For years the players in the industry have survived on debt.  The purveyors of the commodity they passed off as education raised the price year after year without restraint because the customers were still convinced that education was the royal road to advancement and worth the cost.  The customers received loans (for the most part) from banks (at first) and the Federal government on what seemed to be attractive terms--low interest rates and long term.  After decades of a (supposedly) expanding economy, the customers expected that to continue so repaying the "good" debt with rising incomes.  That was an illusion and has been for the last 30 years.  I don't often agree with William Bennett, former Secretary of Education, but his latest is interesting.  Only 150 of the 3500 colleges or universities in the U.S. are worth the money it takes to get a degree from them based on a calculation of the return one would get on the investment.

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