Comments

1
Keep in mind that UW held the line on tuition far long than other states' public universities. UW News and World Report always ranked UW in the top tier of "best value" because of how good UW is and the cost of tuition.

Not saying the hikes are good, won't hurt students, etc. but compare the tuition to other states and you can see a big difference.
2
I'm pretty sure I remember a 100% increase in tuition over about six years in the very early 1990s, though I can't rapidly find the numbers online, and we're talking about less than $5,000 a year after the doubling.
3
The results are in: don't invest in a college degree, spend your money investing in insurance industry stock.

Want to know why the costs have skyrocketed, despite staff & faculty pay remaining normal? Insurance premiums. It's licensed extortion, which beats any other money-making plan around.
4
UW's a joke. It's basically become a farm for rich foreigners and dumb-n-rich local kids. Smart, local kids leave the state and take their intelligence/skills elsewhere. Smart foreigners go to quality universities on the east coast. UW is now just churning out idiots that have the $$ to pay. Well done, Washington state. Your school was once on the up-and-up. Now, the only thing it's up for is the highest bidder.
6
@5 Yeah! I should just say, "Fuck you, biology degree!", because why contribute more to a society that takes my tax money and keeps telling me to fuck myself, even though I persevere? A career at McDonald's is much more valuable to society.
7
@#4
My own time at the UW is now long in the past, but while the campus was teeming with dumb kids looking to coast their way into a meaningless degree they could use as a license to wear a suit in their future careers, it also had a huge number of extremely dedicated, interesting students. In particular, the nontraditional students I met, people returning to school after some years or even a lifetime away, were uniformly interesting, serious students, but also many of the traditional 18-to-22-year-olds.
The UW is a major public research university, and it's also a factory for the issuing of diplomas to snotnosed kids who've kept their noses reasonably clean for four years. It was absolutely possible to graduate without learning much of everything - but the resources were awesome, and the professors were positively eager to help when they encountered a student seeking an education, rather than simply to whine about the grading of their exam.
From a position of significant ignorance, and influenced by tremendous marketing, I have this notion that at the small, fancy, elite private schools mechanisms force the students to get an education. This is not the case at the UW, but a tremendous education is there to be had for the student who seeks it.
9

The unemployment rate for college graduates is less than one-third of the general population:

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t…

Despite claims to the contrary, getting a degree at a accredited public institution is a better investment than the DOW, real estate, or almost anything else.

Given that -- it's wrong for other members of society to be forced to fund someone else's golden ticket.
10
And it's even lower for advanced degree holders.
12
@9: You could use that same argument against publicly funding K-12 education.

What you miss is that society as a whole benefits from these well-educated workers, both in the higher taxes they pay and in the economic benefits they produce. Communities with a higher percentage of college graduates are wealthier across the board, even those without college degrees.

But you'd obviously rather destroy our economy on principle than pay for investing in human infrastructure.
13
Goldy's last sentence in @12 for the win.

Which is why they're called al-Qaeda USA.
15
In trying to strangle government, the Republicans don't see that their hands are wrapped around all of our necks.
16
@8,

You cannot get a white collar job without a college degree.

@14,

Let me Google that for you.

From The New York Times:

The United States used to lead the world in the number of 25- to 34-year-olds with college degrees. Now it ranks 12th among 36 developed nations.


Canada now leads the world in educational attainment, with about 56 percent of its young adults having earned at least associate’s degrees in 2007, compared with only 40 percent of those in the United States.


22 percent of Americans have four-year college degrees.

In the '90s we had a supposed labor shortage, despite all the people who wasted their education on four-year degrees (according to you).
17
Why do they even need to raise tuition ever when they have a $2 billion endowement? If a space alien were to look at the UW they would see a financial investment firm with an education arm. 80% of the UW's $2.5 billion wealth is in their endowement. The other 20% is in the school. When the market went bad the first thing they did is contract their education spending. What's up with that?
18
I think an argument could be made for ending subsidies for UW Law School. More lawyers decreases the GDP of a nation.

But more engineers or more doctors increases the GDP of a nation. So jacking up tuition for those is just plain wrong.

Both are pretty expensive, but good investments in our nation.

Now, of course, we should offer full citizenship to anyone who graduates with a PhD in Engineering or Medicine, but that's another discussion.
20
"80% of the UW's $2.5 billion wealth is in their endowement. The other 20% is in the school."

This couldn't be more wrong. UW's total annual budget is twice what's in their endowment, let alone land and buildings.
21
@19,

Every white collar job has a B.A. as a bare minimum requirement, but go ahead and keep telling yourself lies to make yourself feel superior to everyone else.
23
"I know plenty of college drop outs that have found they way into respectable middle class careers"

Not recently you haven't
24
@22: Yes, anecdotally, you can find people without BAs who have gone on to rewarding white collar careers. I know a couple myself. And then there are people like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.

That said, no, on average, most white collar jobs require college degrees.
26
@25 That's because German secondary education involves actual education, not proms, football and lawsuits.

It used to be that a legit high school education in America was a significant level of education. Now, it's as useful as a birth certificate.
If the point you are trying to make is that we should focus on elementary & secondary education instead of college, it is a valid point, but you aren't making it very well.
28
Exactly why I'm doing my masters program out of state!

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