(no subject)

[lithera]

"College tuition is free or nominal in most industrialized, and many Third World, countries. The United States' insistence that students assume huge debts to pay for their college education is unusual enough that the Chinese government included it in its 2001 report of American human rights violations."

Go read more here...

Comments

[trilliumgrl.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, you should see the protests against "top-up fees" they've had here. It's gotten pretty ugly (no matter what though international students will still get fleeced). It's become one of the main issues on the agenda of the NUS (National Union of Students)for the year.

justice is extinct.

[quipper.livejournal.com]

this makes me so sad.

Re: justice is extinct.

[lithera.livejournal.com]

It makes me very sad as well.

Wheeefun

[seanb.livejournal.com]

"Eliminating last year's $1.5 trillion tax cut--money that would have gone to rich people who won't miss it--would pay off everyone's student loans for the next 50 years"

[archeon.livejournal.com]

as someone suffering under the oppressive tyranny of the student loans... I certainly feel violated...

[silentclarity.livejournal.com]

The article's full of factual inaccuracies. He says we're entering the third year of recession (untrue - we haven't had so much as a full year of recession yet). He also claims that 2000 dollars is the rent of a small apartment in a borderline neighborhood of NY or SF - that's an exaggeration in and of itself, and he doesn't mention that those are pretty much the two most expensive cities to live in. If you're going to talk about average monthly income (2k) nationally, you should talk about the average rent nationally (probably somewhere around 600 a month for a one bedroom apartment. People who live in NYC and SF make a shitload more than 2k a month, I can guarantee you that.

That's just crap I can come up with off the top of my head. It's reasons like that that I can't take an op/ed like this very seriously - when the author is blatantly spinning facts to support his opinion (starting with an opinion & selecting the facts that fit it) rather than drawing a conclusion from the facts I tend to ignore it.

That said, I'll buy that student loans are a problem. The thing is - it's easy to say "this is a problem." It's much much harder to identify a solution, something that I notice this guy doesn't even begin to do.

Finally, I can't take seriously *anything* China says about human rights. Frankly it's an insult to the reader that this guy brought the subject up.

JD

[silentclarity.livejournal.com]

Oh, one last thing - his analysis seems to be 100% based off of private colleges. You can go to school at a state school for much much much less money.

JD

[warpdragon.livejournal.com]

Just because he doesn't list the data against his position doesn't mean he didn't consider them in forming his position.

And all your criticisms of his facts is marginal stuff, not at all central to his argument.