House passes higher education bill

[Grizalltheway]

http://www.ydr.com/newsfull/ci_6379513

Surprise, surprise, W will probably veto it. Anything to help big business.

[Appaholic]

I wish he would veto the Department of Education and turn their funding over to the local school districts. Federal Bureacracy within education is the largest contributor to our sorry ranking relative to other industrialized nations. Quit using our schools for social experimentation.....

[GreenDay17]

I wish that Congress would pass a law stating that for each dollar the government spends on defense/military it must include 1% for education. For every one billion dollars spent on the war in Iraq we could have also appropriated ten million dollars into the education of our future. With the cost of the war up until March 2007 projections (378 billion http://costofwar.com/numbers.html) that would have accounted for 3.78 billion to education.


Wouldn't this be great. Imagine what each state could do with, on the average, an additional 75.6 million dollars for education thanks to the war in Iraq.

[GannonFan]

IMO, it's worthless to try to subsidize college education, except for the very poor. Colleges and Universities always raise their tuitions to coincide with raises in federal contribution, and often go well beyond that. So in practice, when we say that we are trying to make college more affordable for people, that doesn't happen and the money that we peg for this endeavor basically ends up going directly to those schools who have raised their tuition. All this bill will do is to increase the profits of those schools. It's just not worth it.

As for federal spending on education, since most education in the US is handled locally, the federal government is not a huge contributor in terms of educational finances. That mostly comes from state governments and even more so from local taxes. And as for the one comment above about tying spending on education with spending on something like defense, the point being missed is that educational funding does not always tie in nicely with educational performance. There are plenty of school districts, often urban ones, that spend almost double per student that suburban districts do, and yet their performance is significantly lower than lower funded districts. Money doesn't solve a lot when it comes to education. You need smart kids, you need good home environments where schooling is important, you need supportive parents, you need quality teachers (not obtained simply by paying more) - almost none of that is affected by school funding.

[Appaholic]

IMO, it's worthless to try to subsidize college education, except for the very poor. Colleges and Universities always raise their tuitions to coincide with raises in federal contribution, and often go well beyond that. So in practice, when we say that we are trying to make college more affordable for people, that doesn't happen and the money that we peg for this endeavor basically ends up going directly to those schools who have raised their tuition. All this bill will do is to increase the profits of those schools. It's just not worth it.

As for federal spending on education, since most education in the US is handled locally, the federal government is not a huge contributor in terms of educational finances. That mostly comes from state governments and even more so from local taxes. And as for the one comment above about tying spending on education with spending on something like defense, the point being missed is that educational funding does not always tie in nicely with educational performance. There are plenty of school districts, often urban ones, that spend almost double per student that suburban districts do, and yet their performance is significantly lower than lower funded districts. Money doesn't solve a lot when it comes to education. You need smart kids, you need good home environments where schooling is important, you need supportive parents, you need quality teachers (not obtained simply by paying more) - almost none of that is affected by school funding.

Good points Gannonfan. You are correct in that most funding comes locally, which is why I say abolish the federal dept of education....merely one more bureacratic entity for our tax dollars to disappear.

Also, so true the correlation between more subsidies = increase tuition.