Jargon "Incomprehensible jargon is the hallmark of a profession." -- Kingman Brewster (1919-1988), diplomat and president of Yale University.

Renegades triumph on will and intimidation, not education. The winners succeed on personality, it's still not about education. But education buys you safety, and the established always want safety, especially for their children. That's what happens when you get a mature society.

It's the nobodies that change the world. And that's why our world today is stagnant. It's peopled by the scions of the rich, the poor have very few opportunities. But when everybody gets an even, fresh start . . .  remember that's what the California educational system was about, that was what President Lincoln's land grant was to Colorado State.

What kind of bizarre world do we live in where you overpay for college, unable to discharge the debt in bankruptcy, solely to get in line for a job. That's the dirty little secret of higher education, it's not about learning, it's about getting a leg up. And at the elite colleges making relationships, establishing a network that the rank and file can never penetrate.

College used to be cheap, everybody could go. And this is good, because you never know where revolution will come from.  

College is a joke. Jobs was right, the world runs on the humanities. And that's one of the reasons Apple eclipsed Microsoft. It wasn't only about the code, but usability, the focus on the end user was constant.

Success lies on the razor's edge of risk, a place those with experience and wisdom too often refuse to tread.

How the
world really works

 

 

Anybody who hustled their way from the bottom to the top knows the rich and powerful believe the game is to be manipulated, that the rules are an amorphous amalgamation they can bend to their will. That's what they don't tell you. 

Which is why despite Ivy League graduates being pillars of society they rarely effect change, they so often don't rule, because this is anathema to their being. You see on the east coast where you went to college is important. And sure, you try to pull strings, if you're wealthy enough you donate a building, but mostly you do what's expected of you, you play by the rules, you get good grades, study up for the SATs, do a ton of extracurricular activities, and when you're accepted at the august institution you think you've made it.  Only you haven't. Sure, you can get into medical school, or law school, maybe even get a gig at the bank, but that's not where the action is today. Finance might make you rich, but it rarely gives you power, and power is everything.  Which is why those seeking it can be found outside the traditional system, in Los Angeles, in San Francisco, not in Miami, a haven of hedonism. Hunger is palpable on the west coast and it's pooh-poohed by the east. Whether it be the slimy entertainment types or the Silicon Valleyites wreaking havoc on what once was and never more will be. The revolution is effected by the can-dos, and most of those playing by the rules are the can-nots.

You don't become the biggest star in the world because you have the most talent, but because you've been anointed by the machine, that's the dirty little secret. And you get into position by hustling, telling everybody how great you are, making loyal friends and working the angles.

Of course luck counts. 
Fame eclipses money. Say something long enough and loud enough and most people believe it, even if it's untrue.  Either you're gushing for dollars or speaking the truth, usually you can't do both.

SHOULD YOU GO TO COLLEGE?

TIP! People associate academic credentials or employment with status
--  instead you should associate it with merit, accomplishments and lifestyle.

President Hennessy on Peter Thiel's ideas about dropping out of school:
"Do you know how many Stanford degrees Peter Thiel has? Three."

Advice on careers, finance, and life from Harvard Business School's Class of 1963

As the 50th reunion of Harvard Business School's Class of 1963 approached, we asked the class members if they had any advice to pass along to younger generations. So, while all the graduates have their own take on what he or she knows now that escaped them in 1963, there’s a bigger message that those who are still finding their true path should take to heart.  That message is that it’s not about the diploma, the bank account, the résumé, the summer home, the books authored, the stock options, the wine cellar, or the luxury sedan in the driveway. "Keep your perspective," they say. "Realize that your purpose in this world is, first and foremost, to make a better life for others."

We live in a homogeneous society where it's every person for them self. Like rats in a cage we try to climb the greased pole. 
Even  Mr. Bob Dylan sang that we've all got to serve somebody.

YOU ARE OLD ENOUGH TO THINK FOR YOURSELF

By now you have developed a critical psychological trait called "self-efficacy" that is “the belief in one’s capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to manage prospective situations.  ~ Psychologist Albert Bandura 

 

THE PRO'S AND CONS

THE CONS

 

Military and the University Complex 

The reach of the military-academic complex goes far beyond schools like West Point and Annapolis; today almost 350 civilian universities conduct Pentagon-funded research.  Since 1961, thanks to President Dwight D. Eisenhower, we've all been cognizant of the "unwarranted influence" of the military-industrial complex in America. Later in that decade, Senator J. William Fulbright spoke out against the militarization of academia, warning that, "in lending itself too much to the purposes of government, a university fails its higher purposes," and called attention to the existence of what he termed the military-industrial-academic complex or what historian Stuart W. Leslie has termed the "golden triangle" of "military agencies, the high technology industry, and research universities."

also find 

• 2017 Report College Complaints Unmasked  - 99 Percent of Student Fraud Claims Concern For-Profit Colleges 98.6 percent of 98,868 borrower defense-to-repayment claims were from students who said they had been defrauded by for-profit colleges. Even when Corinthian was removed from the analysis, for-profit institutions accounted for 94 percent of the claims. When TCF analyzed the new data, it found a disproportionate concentration of predatory behavior among for-profit colleges. This report summarizes these findings, shedding new light on patterns of predatory behavior, and raising serious concerns about the federal government’s current approach to providing relief to students who have been defrauded and misled. Despite making up the overwhelming majority of borrower defense claims, for-profit schools account for only about 10 percent of enrollment and 18 percent of the outstanding federal loan volume.
• 2017 Student Debt Giant Navient to Borrowers: You’re on Your Own
  The servicer says publicly it wants to help you pay debt. In a government lawsuit, it has a different message.
• Education Inc. CEO and their Salaries
• Digital Diploma Mills:The Automation of Higher Education
  history of how this got started & the connections
• For-profit colleges Monsters in the making?
  Washington grapples with a booming education industry.
• Cloak and Gown: Scholars in the Secret War 1939-1961
  Robin Winks expert on theory and development of espionage shows Yale University has historically had links to the intelligence community 1

Harvey A. Silverglate Attorney-at-law & Writer
607 Franklin Street Cambridge, MA 02139
T (617) 661-9156   Ass’t: (617) 876-5610   Fax (617) 492-4925
Easy to find source of student debt crisis Bureaucrats behind high cost of college
Unconscionable and unsustainable increases in college tuitions have either deprived many students of access to higher education, or else saddled them and their families with enormous and in many cases life-altering debt. There has been much speculation as to the causes of these increases. My experience dealing with colleges and universities during the half-century (so far) of my legal career has told me a large part of the reason – the massive growth in campus bureaucracies (especially in the student life sector) that, from my vantage point, do very little other than “make work.” And, in fact, the growing army of bureaucrats actually cause more problems than they solve. They diminish, rather than increase, the quality of higher education. (This is a topic to which I plan to return in future writings. For now, here is my take on the sheer numbers at issue.)

 

WHO GOT RICH OFF THE STUDENT DEBT CRISIS

WHAT THE U.S. STUDENT IS UP AGAINST

There are 11x more Chinese undergraduates in the US than 7 years ago (110,000!). All are ready to pay around $44,000 (for yearly fees and housing costs)—the equivalent of nearly ten times the average annual disposable income of urban households.  The ambitions of Chinese students are shifting: no longer are they attracted just by the glittering names. Pursuit of education abroad is becoming an end in itself. (President Xi Jinping’s daughter went to Harvard). Four out of five of China’s wealthiest people—those with assets worth more than 10m yuan—want to send their children to study abroad, according to Hurun Report, a Shanghai-based firm.

"I Kind of Ruined My Life by Going to College." JACKIE KROWEN, 32 $152,000 IN STUDENT DEBT
42 million people owe 1.3 trillian in student debt." ~ Consumer Reports 8/16
45% of people with student debt say it wasn't worth the cost.

The college debt crisis is even worse than you think
We tell students they need a bachelor’s degree to get ahead. But for too many, the numbers no longer add up.

At $1.2 trillion, student-loan debt in the US exceeds car loans and even credit-card debt. the average borrower will graduate in 2016 $26,600 in the red.  While we’ve all heard the screaming headlines of graduates with crippling debt of $100,000 or more, this is the case for only about 1% of graduates.  That said, one in 10 graduates accumulate more than $40,000

7 of the most expensive degrees in the world - A degree from Bard College will cost you $253,520. Here are 6 other costly programs.

2016 These Are The Tech Jobs With The Highest Salaries (And Where They Are) 

“Good news if you’re a technology worker or planning to be one: Average salaries in the U.S. jumped 7.7% to $96,370 annually, according to the annual salary survey by Dice, a careers site for tech professionals."

HOW TO BECOME A DATA SCIENTIST FOR FREE !! 

Learn programming for free online. For Python programming: There are also lessons on API's, what's in a computer, etc. They contain some examples from Hear Me Code: slides If you want to learn web programming, Girl Develop It has great online curriculum: girldevelopit.com

ENDOWMENTS NOT HELPING THE KIDS

2017  REPORT: How elite colleges limit enrollment & jack up tuition, all while raking in $19 BILLION A YEAR in tax breaks 

“Wealth And Extravagance At Very Wealthy Universities”

In the last three decades, college endowments have grown to more than half a trillion dollars — and they reflect the economic inequality that defines America’s larger society. According to a 2015 Congressional Research Service report, roughly three quarters of endowment wealth is now held by just 11 percent of universities.

Eaton’s data shows that the growth in endowments — and the concentration of wealth at a handful of expensive elite schools with relatively small enrollments — coincided with the expanded use of three federal tax breaks formulated in an era before higher education became a major industry.

One tax break that costs $1.2 billion a year exempts donations to college endowments, meaning that wealthy benefactors of these schools can donate large sums and enjoy big write-offs.

Another annual break that costs $12.9 billion exempts universities’ investment earnings from capital gains taxes.

2015 Yale Endowment Posts 11.5% Return as It Reaches $25.6 Billion 

Dartmouth College had an 8.3 percent investment return, while Harvard University, with the largest endowment in higher education at $37.6 billion, posted a 5.8 percent gain for fiscal 2015. Some elite colleges bested those schools, such as Bowdoin College with 14.4 percent, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at 13.2 percent. The median return for endowments and foundations with more than $500 million this year is 3.6 percent, according to an estimate by Wilshire Trust Universe Comparison Service.

Dear Dad, Send Money – Letters from Students in the Middle Ages

The idea that students were asking their parents for money is not a new phenomenon – it began soon after the emergence of universities in medieval Europe. There are many examples of letters home with demands for support, along with a few replies in which the parents send money along with admonitions against spending it too quickly. Perhaps the best example of a medieval student asking a parent for money comes from the French writer Eustache Deschamps (1346-1406). In his youth he attended the University of Orleans before going on to work for the King of France. As one medieval Italian father puts its, “a student’s first song is a demand for money, and there will never be a letter which does not ask for cash.” Here is a typical example from the 1220s:

A Push to Make Harvard Free Also Questions the Role of Race in Admissions

Should Harvard be free?  That is the provocative question posed by a slate of candidates running for the Board of Overseers at Harvard, which helps set strategy for the university. They say Harvard makes so much money from its $37.6 billion endowment that it should stop charging tuition to undergraduates. The politically charged data holds the potential to reveal whether Harvard bypasses better-qualified Asian-American candidates in favor of whites, blacks, Hispanics and the children of the wealthy and powerful, the group argues.  “Our focus is entirely on greater transparency in admissions,” Mr. Unz said, “namely urging Harvard to provide much more detailed information on how they select the very small slice of applicants receiving offers of admission, in order to curb the huge potential abuse possible under the entirely opaque system.”

The Disadvantages of an Elite Education
Our best universities have forgotten that the reason they exist is to make minds, not careers By William Deresiewicz https://archive.is/TYMXB
The last thing an elite education will teach you is its own inadequacy. The message, as always, is the medium. Before, after, and around the elite college classroom, a constellation of values is ceaselessly inculcated.

Elite colleges relentlessly encourage their students to flatter themselves for being there, and for what being there can do for them. The advantages of an elite education are indeed undeniable. You learn to think, at least in certain ways, and you make the contacts needed to launch yourself into a life rich in all of society’s most cherished rewards. To consider that while some opportunities are being created, others are being cancelled and that while some abilities are being developed, others are being crippled is, within this context, not only outrageous, but inconceivable. At the same time, because these schools tend to cultivate liberal attitudes, they leave their students in the paradoxical position of wanting to advocate on behalf of the working class while being unable to hold a simple conversation with anyone in it.

Witness the last two Democratic presidential nominees, Al Gore and John Kerry: one each from Harvard and Yale, both earnest, decent, intelligent men, both utterly incapable of communicating with the larger electorate. 

 

THE CONS ----

The College Loan Bubble  -- Is College Worth It

Robert Reich Demolishes Myth that College Is Gateway to the Middle Class

The suffering kids experience over college admissions is intense and largely unnecessary By Robert Reich May 23 2015
I know a high school senior who’s so worried about whether she’ll be accepted at the college of her choice she can’t sleep. The parent of another senior tells me he stands at the mailbox for an hour every day waiting for a hoped-for acceptance letter to arrive. Parents are also uptight. I’ve heard of some who have stopped socializing with other parents of children competing for admission to the same university. Competition for places in top-brand colleges is absurdly intense. With inequality at record levels and almost all the economic gains going to the top, there’s more pressure than ever to get the golden ring. A degree from a prestigious university can open doors to elite business schools and law schools – and to jobs paying hundreds of thousands, if not millions, a year. So parents who can afford it are paying grotesque sums to give their kids an edge.
They “enhance” their kids' resumes with such things as bassoon lessons, trips to wildlife preserves in Botswana, internships at the Atlantic Monthly. They hire test-prep coaches. They arrange for consultants to help their children write compelling essays on college applications. They make generous contributions to the elite colleges they once attended, to which their kids are applying  – colleges that give extra points to “legacies” and even more to those from wealthy families that donate tons of money. You might call this affirmative action for the rich.
The same intensifying competition is affecting mid-range colleges and universities that are doing everything they can to burnish their own brands – competing with other mid-range institutions to enlarge their applicant pools, attract good students, and inch upward on the U.S. News college rankings. Every college president wants to increase the ratio of applications to admissions, thereby becoming more elite. Excuse me, but this is nuts. The biggest absurdity is that a four-year college degree has become the only gateway into the American middle class. But not every young person is suited to four years of college. They may be bright and ambitious but they won’t get much out of it. They’d rather be doing something else, like making money or painting murals. 
They feel compelled to go to college because they’ve been told over and over that a college degree is necessary. Yet if they start college and then drop out, they feel like total failures. Even if they get the degree, they’re stuck with a huge bill — and may be paying down their student debt for years. And all too often the jobs they land after graduating don’t pay enough to make the degree worthwhile. [snip]

Billionaire Mark Cuban Warns Of Massive Economic Crash That Will Wipe Out America’s Colleges

The end result, according to Mark Cuban, will be a bursting of the debt bubble, a significant drop in college tuitions, and an outright collapse of America’s institution of higher learning: College tuitions have exploded because of easy money guaranteed by Sallie Mae. So, if any student can borrow more and more money, and it’s guaranteed by the federal government, why wouldn’t the colleges take it all? The problem is that bubble has led to over a trillion dollars in student loan debt, which is having a significant impact on the economy and it’s really holding us back in the economy’s ability to grow.  It’s holding back housing, it’s holding back apartment building, it’s holding back car sales, it’s holding back clothing sales… anything that’s not an absolute necessity, kids can’t spend their money on. That’s a real problem for the economy and I think that bubble is going to burst. I think it’s inevitable at some point there’ll be a cap on student loan guarantees and when that happens you're going to see a repeat of what we saw in the housing market when easy credit for buying or flipping a house disappeared. We saw a collapse in the price of housing and we’re going to see the same collapse in the price of student tuition and that’s going to lead to colleges going out of business.

School isn't Everything! Smart is not everything. Nor is a CV.

Get a degree that allows you to learn how to think however, this has nothing to do with having a career.

If you want a career be prepared to go to graduate school. Most importantly, know that our society is run on information. And it's all on your screen. Want to win? Stop tweeting and Facebooking and read. Everything you want to know about how the world works is right in front of your face, for free. You can win. If you put in the time.

The fact that you went to a good school and can crunch the numbers is worth something, but not everything.  Just becasue you may have gone to  Stanford, got an MBA and a law degree, does not mean you know what's going on. 

The world has changed. Smart means something. But not as much as personality. People want to work with those who are warm and understanding and realistic, and that's got nothing to do with what school you went to.  Now my point is not to denigrate education. Nor to say intelligence is irrelevant. But everything you need to know you cannot learn from books. And people can be really smart in some things, and totally ignorant in others. Just because you did not go to the best school, just because you're not the smartest person on the block, that does not mean you can't be successful and rich and happy.

Quotes from #HouseOfCards

• Power is everything. ​
• How quickly poor grades are forgotten in the shadow of wealth and power. 
• THERE IS ONE RULE: HUNT OR BE HUNTED, CHASE OR BE CHASED.
• We'll cleave you from the herd and watch you die in the wilderness. ​
• You know what I like about money? I can stack it on a table.
• Put another way, negotiation is just another means of saying 'nice doggy' until you can find a cudgel.​​

This pro dog walker makes $110,000 a year -- and will teach you to be a better pet owner

 

 

2016  U.S. #Higher #Education Bubble update - The Self-Serving Apologists for Student Debt-Serfdom

The economy has changed profoundly and structurally in the past 15 years, and the breezy cliche that a college degree automatically boosts lifetime earnings by $1.5 million is no longer supported by current realities. Just having a college diploma offers little advantage, especially when compared to those with real-world skills. Even those with STEM degrees find themselves in a Darwinian struggle to get a job in these fields, a struggle that forces many to get deeper in debt to secure a Masters or PhD.

• 2016 State Report Cards
• 2016 ACCOUNTING FOR THE RISE IN COLLEGE TUITION
  Recent NBER paper finds entire increase in college tuition since 1987 can be explained by changes in govt loans
• 1/11/16 College Football: Public Universities Spend Millions On Stadiums, Despite Slim Chance For Payoff

2015 Why states are cutting back on higher education funding 
The reasons for the cutbacks (or in two cases, the growth) in spending on colleges and universities vary based on state budget constraints, revenues and other factors. 

@kevincarey1 Education wonk. The Fundamental Way That Universities Are an Illusion 
The fact that universities hardly exist as unified teaching organizations should not be confused with the question of whether going to college is “worth it.” The typical student who graduates from a college somewhere fares far better in the job market than the typical student who doesn’t. People can learn a lot in college, and many do. But which college matters much less than everyone assumes. As Mr. Pascarella and Mr. Terenzini explain, the real differences exist at the departmental level, or within the classrooms of individual professors, who teach with a great deal of autonomy under the principles of academic freedom. The illusory university pretends that all professors are guided by a shared sense of educational excellence specific to their institution. In truth, as the former University of California president Clark Kerr observed long ago, professors are “a series of individual faculty entrepreneurs held together by a common grievance over parking.”
When college leaders talk about academic standards, they often mean admissions standards, not standards for what happens in classrooms themselves.
The whole apparatus of selective college admissions is designed to deliberately confuse things that exist with things that don’t. Many of the most prestigious colleges are an order of magnitude wealthier and more selective than the typical university. These are the primary factors driving their annual rankings at or near the top of the U.S. News list of “best” colleges. The implication is that the differences in the quality of education they provide are of a similar size. There is no evidence to suggest that this is remotely true.
Because universities aren’t as they appear, systems designed to improve them tend to fail. Consumer protection in higher education is accomplished primarily through accreditation, in which colleges, through nonprofit agencies, are examined by members of other colleges who certify that they meet minimum standards of quality.  In other words, accreditors are charged with an impossible task: to certify that a whole college, which doesn’t really exist, educationally speaking, is educationally sound. Inevitably, many colleges with full accreditation nonetheless graduate students with substandard skills. All of the for-profit colleges that have made headlines in recent years for predatory and fraudulent practices were accredited. So is, needless to say, U.N.C. Chapel Hill. This kind of profound dissonance can knock askew the moral compasses of people who have ostensibly dedicated their professional lives to education. How else to explain the many people at Chapel Hill — including, incredibly, the director of a center on ethics — who abetted or ignored rampant fraud? More broadly, it degrades the quality of education students receive in a time when learning is more important than ever.

10/14/15 Meet the People Navigating Adult Life in the U.S. Without a Bachelor's Degree
The recession hit those without a bachelor's degree much harder than it did those who pursued post-secondary education, the Los Angeles Times reported in 2012. Once jobs began to return, they came back much faster for people with degrees. According to the Los Angeles Times, "Nearly a quarter of young high school graduates [were] unemployed, compared with 7% of colleges grads."  Kruger said that financial reality and his lack of a degree motivated him to learn the craft on his own and work hard at it.

 

THE BAD NEWS . . . FOR PROFIT COLLEGE

How to Defeat Non Profit School Debt for pennies on the dollar.

Student borrowers refuse to repay for-profit schools

 

Tuition Tracker shows what it really costs to go to school.

2/23/15 'We won't pay': students in debt take on for-profit college institution Nathan Hornes and others sought degrees from Everest, a Corinthian subsidiary, which is now in court as team of former students fight back - Strike Debt
It is exciting to witness the dawn of debt strike activism! I really hope the momentum keeps building! If you're on Reddit you can help organize student debtors at www.reddit.com/r/studentloandefaulters Keep in mind that default is not the only option for resistance. You can also fight back by leaving your loans in deferment.

1/31/14 Screw U: How For-Profit Colleges Rip You Off The for-profit college industry makes a killing while handing out expensive degrees that fizzle in the real world.

1/5/15 Student Tuition Now Outweighs State Funding At Public Colleges During the fiscal years 2003-2012, "median tuition rose 55 percent across all public colleges," while state funding decreased by 12 percent, the General Accountability Office reports.

7/2/14 Why you should mistrust for profit universities.
For-profit colleges received $32 billion from the US government in student aid in the 2009-10 academic year. They also charge far higher tuition fees than comparable state universities. Yet they spend much less per student on instruction. Indeed, they typically spend a lot more on marketing their courses than they do on teaching them.

HIGHER EDUCATION IS TREATED LIKE A COMMONDITY 

Higher ed as a commodity? Colleges have only themselves to blame 

6/8/15 The Department of Education has broad authority to forgive debt in cases where schools have committed wrongdoing.

Government to Forgive Student Loans at Corinthian Colleges
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/09/education/us-to-forgive-federal-loans-of-corinthian-college-students.html

The Education Department’s decision, announced Monday, is a rebuke to members of Congress who have steadfastly defended these companies, which have feasted on federal student aid, despite clear evidence that many earn their profits by preying on low-income students and veterans.  The flaws in this system have long been clear. For-profit colleges account for only about 12 percent of student enrollment but for nearly half of student loan defaults. In addition, an analysis of federal data by the Institute for College Access and Success, a nonpartisan policy organization, shows that graduates of for-profit schools are much more likely than graduates of other institutions to have debt of $40,000 or more. In other words, the problem of excessive debt goes well beyond schools that may be guilty of fraud.  The schools compound the problem by misleading students about the value of their degrees. This spring, for example, the Department of Education fined Corinthian $30 million for misrepresenting job placement rates in one of the chains it owns, saying that the company had “violated students’ and taxpayers’ trust.”
In April, nine attorneys general petitioned the department to forgive the debts of students harmed by schools that have broken the law and to pursue large companies that “seem to exist largely to capture federal loan dollars and aggressively market their programs to veterans and low-income Americans.”
The department’s proposal promises forgiveness to students who were enrolled in Corinthian schools that closed after June 20, 2014, or who withdrew after that date without completing their program. Students at other institutions who believe they were defrauded by their schools may seek debt relief, whether their schools closed or not. The department will appoint a special master to design and manage a system for processing those claims.

2/28/15 The Inside Story Of How A For-Profit College Hoodwinked Students And Got Away With It
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2015/02/28/3628028/whats-the-deal-with-government-helping-corinthian/

Bowers and 14 other Corinthian students launched a debt strike, informing the Department of Education (DOE) that they have no intention of repaying the debts incurred through their tortuous Corinthian experiences. The “Corinthian 15” hope to convince many thousands more students buried in educational debt to band together and refuse to pay, triggering a broad reevaluation of how America finances higher education. Organizers from activist group The Debt Collective are helping to coordinate the strike and provide legal counsel to the strikers. But this isn’t a conflict between students and a private company, or not merely that. It’s also a battle between the Corinthian 15 and the federal government. The strikers are not just fighting back against the company that buried them in debt, but against the government that is enforcing those debts. And beyond whatever ethical interest the public might have in these stories, we also have a financial one: the for-profit industry relies almost entirely on taxpayer money in the form of federal student loans.

10/19/14 Preditory For Profit Colleges Suck

Students at for-profit colleges graduate at about half the rate of students at public and nonprofit four-year colleges and universities, according to the Education Department. The most recent data show that about 34 percent of students at for-profits earned bachelor’s degrees after four years, compared to about 55 percent for public institutions and 65 percent for nonprofit schools.

6/17/14 College tuition bills have soared some 130%.

6/26/14 The crisis of student loans is real, no matter what pundits tell you

A recent report downplays a generation's $1tn crisis, using misleading data on a problem shackling the economy at large.
The best reason to take student loan debt seriously – as the crisis it is – is so that we don't blind ourselves to the consequences of rising defaults, longer debt repayments and how this affects the psychology of a whole generation.  Having a significant segment of the economy preoccupied with debt hurts the economy as a whole: if it means that large purchases get put off, young people don't start businesses or form new households, and everyone stops taking risks. Playing it safe is, in general, very bad for economic growth.  Let’s start with where everyone agrees: there are $1tn of student loans outstanding, and too many people are not paying them back.

9/22/14 Education With a Debt Sentence For-Profit Colleges as American Dream Crushers and Factories of Debt
for-profit graduates fare little better on the job market than job seekers with high school degrees; their diplomas, that is, are a net loss, offering essentially the same grim job prospects as if they had never gone to college, plus a lifetime debt sentence.

 

For-Profit College Group Sued as U.S. Lays Out Wide Fraud August 8, 2011

U.S. Files Complaint Against Education Management Corp. Alleging False Claims Act Violations

Education Management Corp. (EDMC), the second-largest U.S. for-profit college chain, defrauded U.S. taxpayers by paying illegal bonuses to recruiters who cited falsified job-placement data to lure students, a former employee claimed in a lawsuit.

The Department of Justice and four states on Monday filed a multibillion-dollar fraud suit against the Education Management Corporation, the nation’s second-largest for-profit college company, charging that it was not eligible for the $11 billion in state and federal financial aid it had received from July 2003 through June 2011. the case is the first in which the government intervened to back whistle-blowers’ claims that a company consistently violated federal law by paying recruiters based on how many students it enrolled. The suit said that each year, Education Management falsely certified that it was complying with the law, making it eligible to receive student financial aid.  “The depth and breadth of the fraud laid out in the complaint are astonishing,” said Harry Litman, a lawyer in Pittsburgh and former federal prosecutor who is one of those representing the two whistle-blowers whose 2007 complaints spurred the suit. “It spans the entire company — from the ground level in over 100 separate institutions up to the most senior management — and accounts for nearly all the revenues the company has realized since 2003.”
Education Management, which is based in Pittsburgh and is 41 percent owned by Goldman Sachs, enrolls about 150,000 students in 105 schools operating under four names: Art Institute, Argosy University, Brown Mackie College and South University. According to the 122-page complaint, Education Management got $2.2 billion of federal financial aid in fiscal 2010, making up 89.3 percent of its net revenues. Publicly traded for-profit college companies have recently been a target both of government scrutiny and whistle-blower suits. In 2009, the Apollo Group, which owns the University of Phoenix, the largest for-profit college, settled a whistle-blower case for $78 million.
The complaint noted that Todd Nelson, the chief executive of Education Management, previously headed the University of Phoenix. At Phoenix, he signed a $9.8 million settlement with the Department of Education, which had found that Phoenix had “systematically and intentionally” violated federal rules against paying recruiters for students. Phoenix never admitted any wrongdoing in either that settlement or the larger whistle-blower settlement two years ago.  
 The Justice Department complaint said Education Management’s compensation system was similar to the one at Phoenix; company officials have said it was set up long before Mr. Nelson joined it in 2007.  
​ In 2003, Education Management’s chief executive was Jock McKernan, a former governor of Maine who now serves as chairman of the board. Mr. McKernan is married to Senator Olympia J. Snowe, a Maine Republican whose 2010 financial disclosure form lists Education Management stock and options worth $2 million to $10 million.

eCONomics

 

"Starting teacher salaries are consistently $4k below the living wage for a single mother w/ 1 kid. 

"With money alone you don’t get power," he argued, saying that the NSA sees a "threat to cashed up industrialists who are not part of the military industrial system". ~ Julian Assange

6/29/14 Economists and reports get the 'dismal science' wrong all the time 
Economists overestimate their own prowess, official reports have major flaws, and much of the fuss is really just noise​. Economists and their forecasts may be more useful than gazing into a crystal ball if you have to make big economic policy decisions about where a business or a nation will be in a few years’ time. As far as the rest of us are concerned? It’s background noise.

 

FILM "IVORY TOWER"
is the documentary about college costs and exploding tuition rates in the United States, and we look at the trailer and footage direct from the movie's premiere at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. Filmmaker Andrew Rossi discusses how the United States has gone from a nation that emphasized accessible higher education, to a country where the big business of education has made economic and social mobility less fluid than ever. We also discuss the potential for alternative models of affordable education and the sacrifices that people are having to make to go to college in this BYOD--the world's only talk show all about documentary films. 1 Hundred and eighty four million dollars off our children's education. Nothing is discussed about collecting and selling "Online MOOC" students information, and these Moocs aren't accredited. 

ALTERNATIVES
THAT MAKE
GOOD MONEY
TOO!!!

 

​Dirty Jobs' Mike Rowe on the High Cost of College (Full Interview)

-- WORK SMART AND HARD --

Published on Dec 13, 2013 "If we are lending money that ostensibly we don't have to kids who have no hope of making it back in order to train them for jobs that clearly don't exist, I might suggest that we've gone around the bend a little bit," says TV personality Mike Rowe, best known as the longtime host of Discovery Channel's Dirty Jobs.  "There is a real disconnect in the way that we educate vis-a-vis the opportunities that are available. You have - right now - about 3 million jobs that can't be filled," he says, talking about openings in traditional trades ranging from construction to welding to plumbing. "Jobs that typically parents' don't sit down with their kids and say, 'Look, if all goes well, this is what you are going to do.'"

 

JUST PLAIN

OLD THINKING

 

How do educators teach critical thinking to college students?

It's an important task, and one that can be done creatively and in a fashion that speaks to a wide range of learners. This website created by the University of Texas at Austin's Teacher to Teacher initiative compiles fourteen modules: ten focused on specific critical thinking skills and four on specific teaching methods. The Explore tab can be used to look around the modules as organized by class size, type of module, or location (such as in class or out of class) Each module contains a definition and exploration, an annotated bibliography, real classroom footage from the University of Texas, and reflective commentaries from teachers. The modules are divided into four sections dedicated to critical thinking and metacognition.Teacher to Teacher: Critical Thinking in the College Classroom

 

2014 At Test-Optional Colleges, Students Surpass the Scores They Didn’t Submit

At nearly three dozen colleges that do not require applicants to take the ACT or SAT, researchers have found only “trivial differences” between the long-term performance of college students who submitted test scores and those who did not. “The large social-ethics piece in all this,” he told The Chronicle that year, “is whether the testing is truncating pools of applicants who would be successful if admitted.”  Ten years later, the same question is posed in the report’s conclusion, which offers a resounding “yes.”

2014 Angela Duckworth it’s resilience, not IQ, that is the best predictor of success 

Duckworth’s findings – that it’s resilience, not IQ, that is the best predictor of success – are helping to change education, as chronicled in the New York Times bestseller, How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity and the Hidden Power of Character, by Paul Tough. Duckworth has developed the Grit Scale — a deceptively simple test, the results of which have been profoundly predictive of success at such wide-ranging domains of achievement as the National Spelling Bee and the U.S. Miilitary Academy at West Point.

 

EVALUATE THE COST OF A COLLEGE EDUCATION

USA Today ran a page 1 story about the cost of higher education and student loan defaults saying Student loans outstanding will exceed $1 trillion 2013 tying in to a report by , EducationSector -- an education think tank. There is no accountably in Higher Ed. More people who got loans and are in debt actually graduate if they go to a 4 year not for profit college than anything else and then pay back the loan. The Fed doesn't know this and hands out the money to all 2 year, 4 year, for profit and non profit schools without knowing their numbers. Its a racket at the tax payers expense. People can apply for a school loan then go buy a car and never pay back anything but no one keeps track of this. The cohort default rates increased for all sectors: from 6.0 percent to 7.2 percent for public institutions, from 4.0 percent to 4.6 percent for private institutions, and from 11.6 percent to 15 percent at for-profit schools.

Borrowers who need assistance in repaying their federal student loans can visit studentloans.gov or can contact the holders of their loans to learn about repayment options. For help locating their loan holders, borrowers may access www.nslds.ed.gov or contact the Federal Student Aid Information Center at 1-800-4-FEDAID (1-800-433-3243).

Information on the national student loan default rate, as well as rates for individual schools, states, types of postsecondary institutions, and other sectors of the federal loan industry are available at:/federalstudentaid.ed.gov/datacenter/cohort.html

FICO

After seven years, the item will fall off your report. And, as the collection item ages, its impact diminished over time. Whether you pay the item or not has no impact on your score. 

FICO admitted that only two things matter for your score: “has a collections appeared on your credit report, and when it was reported. So, whether or not you pay your collections off is really a personal decision.”  FICO does not reward people who pay off collection items. As a result, collection agencies have started a side business. If you can agree a good deal with the collection agency, they will offer a “pay for delete” deal. That means the agency will remove the collection item from your credit report.  This system is a mess.

5 Reasons New Lenders Are Ignoring FICO Credit Scores

A survey revealed that more than a third of people under 30 years old do not have a credit card. However, millennials who decide to save money and avoid credit can actually be an excellent credit risk. A lender who quickly realized this is SoFi AND Earnest AND MAGNIFY MONEY

FICO recently announced that their new score, FICO 9, will reduce the impact of medical debt on credit scores. However, new lenders have quickly realized that medical debt should be treated in a completely different way in their underwriting models.

YOUR APPLICATION

 

Alltuition Estimating College Costs and Applying for Financial Aid From 13 hours to 10 minutes.

2014 College education is worth the debt of admission, says New York Fed study

A "new" study finds that a degree benefits each graduate $1m more in earnings than a non-graduate, but problems remain.
Comments: Free Market Myth

- Question: Wouldn't payments on the portion of $120k borrowed for my son's four year degree from a State School, which includes room & board, actually eat up most of that extra $1 Million that he will earn over 30 years ? Specifically, at what loan amount would it no longer be a benefit to choose a four year degree over a two year degree ? I ask because I think that time is now! Especially, if your pride and joy lives at home.

- The study discussed in the articles uses old data (from the last 40 years) to make extrapolations about the value of a college degree in the future. This is a fundamentally flawed analysis because the economy has fundamentally changed. As the article notes, many more people today earn college degrees than at any other time in America's history. Further, the economy has shifted significantly away from jobs requiring manual labor to mental labor; and, within the latter category, knowing how to use a computer is no longer a unique skill - one must know how to program and manipulate it. Computers now make the workforce in many industries (e.g. law) much more efficient, and the demand for labor has subsequently decreased. A college education is only worth the debt of admission if you study one of the Applied Sciences - Engineering, Medicine (debatable), Computer Science, etc. While there obviously will be jobs in other fields, there will not be enough to justify the numbers who study them. Universities are party to this imbalance because their institutions do not have the faculty or structure to accept 70-80% of their students into these fields. The primary reason for this is universities are loath to view themselves as professional schools; they are interested in the quest for Knowledge, and this requires justifying disciplines that will not lead students to a lucrative career, or any career at all. This aspirational quest is important, but as a culture (and I think we are beginning to do this) we need to stop lying to our children that this is a quest for the elite. We are so loath to acknowledge real class distinctions in this country (being part of the elite has much more to do with where you come from than what you do) that we continue along this pass of delusion, and so many suffer dearly for it when they have the realization too late. And, it is also true that it is easier for certain individuals to enter into the elite than others. Members of ethnic minorities, individuals with strong regional accents, individuals without the initial capital to move to major city and look the part of a fit, well-heeled professional, have a harder time breaking in because of pervasive stereotypes and passive prejudice that posits "cultural differences" even in cases when there are none. We live in a highly stratified society - focusing on the 1% doesn't begin to capture it. The more accurate way to view class in America is the top 20% and the rest. Upper middle class Americans live a life on par with the wealthiest of most other countries, including those in Europe.

- It is the height of conceit for the New York Fed or for that matter any branch of the Federal Reserve to comment on what is a reasonable value for an education. Where are the credentials of a professional background with any demonstrated experience in predicting the value of education as a substitute for work-related experience in securing employment? For that matter, failing to provide a demonstrated history of relevant experience in the profession of financial planning, how does this report's author explain his/her lack of expertise when it comes to considering the outsized debt that comes with admission into a school of so called "higher learning"? What is true, is that someone who is attending school is not seeking employment In other words the Fed want to push the burden of unemployment on individual families to counter sign college loans and keep their children off the unemployment roles and therefore keep the unemployment statistics lower than they would be otherwise. That the author of this report presumes to tell us, what instead amounts to fanciful thinking without any apparent basis in reality tells you something significant about the caliber of staff at the Federal Reserve who are trying to stay relevant in these times when so many are out of work, and they don't have a clue for a remedy, except to publish this report.

- Yes, this is what happens when businesses lie in order to attract customers. As the number of people with a college degree skyrockets due to massive recruitment and throughput by colleges, the financial value of the degree plummets. When everybody has one, it's worth nothing on the market. However, if the topic that you studied is intrinsically interesting to you, you'll have benefited from college regardless of the effect (or lack thereof) on your career.

- You can get "educated" for free using MOOC. The only reason people shelling out 100K is to get a well paying job, not to become more "educated". Most people never use 90% of what they learned in college.

- Most of the loans FAFSA gives are with interest rates higher than home loans. And how can the kid take much of the burden, minimum wage jobs aren't enough to make a dent in all but the cheapest colleges (only a limited number of those anywhere). The ultimate fact is, the corporations and government want a large number of debt slaves. And unless we unify and expel them from their positions of power, they'll get their wish. Bear in mind, to eliminate all tuition fees for all college, professional, graudate, and community college programs would cost the same as the Bush tax cuts. That we have to pay tuition is a political and social, not economic scheme.

THUGGEE NETWORK

 

The Secret of an Elite College:

HERE'S THE THING ~ Bob Lefsetz
It's hard to be around people smarter than you. Because you feel uncomfortable, you feel inadequate. We're wired to find comfort, to be accepted, but that doesn't lead to progress.
That's why people come to L.A. and New York. Now, with the Internet, you can make it from anywhere... But can you be stimulated enough to create great work? It's like going to an Ivy League college, discovering that even though you were the smartest person in your high school, you're positively middle of the road in your new environment.
And that's the secret to an elite college. It's not the professors, it's not what you learn in class, it's what you're exposed to in the student body. You learn how to interact. I grew up in the melting pot suburbs of Connecticut, I thought a doctor was rich, then I went to Middlebury. Eileen Rockefeller, Betsy Bass... The guy whose father ran Green Giant. I'm not telling you to impress you, but to tell you I learned how to interact with these people, such that when I'm with a rock star or world class manager I'm not a sycophant, but do my best to play on their level. That's a secret. Tell a rock star how great he is, go on about every time you've seen him, and you'll be brushed off and ignored. But relate to him as a person, and you've got a chance.
Everybody's so busy pooh-poohing the elite, the winners, that they're holding themselves back. If all you can do is criticize those who are on top, you're never gonna advance. Get to know them. Get to know how they got from there to here. There's a story behind the story, always. Find the person who can tell it to you.
And know that if you're down the food chain you've got to earn entrance. Knocking on the door is not enough, it's closed to you. How can you open it? If you think persistence is the key, you're reading too many self-help books. What do you have that the person above you needs? A record exec is only interested in your music if it can make him money. Instantly. If it can't, if you just want kudos and encouragement, stay away. Money is always a good entrance point. But few have it. You've got to find your entrance point.
If you're hearing the same damn thing every day, having the same experiences, do something different. Take a risk. Take a class. Hell, I went to UCLA Extension not because I was gonna learn anything, and I didn't, but because I wanted to meet like-minded people, which I did... And it opened a few doors, but it taught me first and foremost that I could play.

 

THUGGEE 1% NETWORKS - FEEDER SCHOOLS AND THE FRATERNITY / SORORITY

Do you know what Phillips Academy in Andover is? Do you know Exeter? Lawrenceville? Groton?

NETWORKS FEEDER SCHOOLS The Phillips Family

John Phillips (1701-1763), born in Salem, married Margaret Wendell, a royal descendant of King Edward of England. (Americans of Royal Descent. By Charles Henry Browning, 1891, p. 170.) He was the uncle of John Phillips (1719-1795), Harvard 1735, the first major benefactor of Dartmouth College and founder of Phillips Exeter Academy at Exeter, N.H. in 1781. His nephew, Samuel Phillips Jr., had founded Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass. in 1778. (Memoirs of Prince's Subscribers. The New England Historical & Genealogical Register, Apr. 1852, Vol. 6, p. 273.) The two academies were the main feeder schools for Harvard and Yale, respectively. John Phillips' great-grandson, Samuel Phillips Blagden, married the sister of George C. Clark, the first president of the American Society for the Control of Cancer.

Go to an Ivy. Because that's where the networking takes place.
You learn how to interact with these people. But even more, you're inducted into the brotherhood / sisterhood. You're a member of a club that looks out for each other, gives each other advantages, that pays dividends for your entire life. It's the best way to get a leg up other than to be born rich to begin with. You need a leg up. I'm telling you, because no one other than hopefully your parents is.

CLARK PERKINS
2013 The "New York Times" featured a story wherein female students at Phillips Academy in Andover were upset there was little place for them in the official student hierarchy, i.e. they could not be elected president. The article mentions https://www.facebook.com/clark.perkins1 Clark Perkins, 17, from Fairfield, Conn. who goes on to win the election. [WAS] http://www.phillipian.net/printpdf/articles/2011/10/13/class-2014-elects-lower-reps-clark-perkins-14-and-junius-williams-14" He says: “I really want to improve the amount of class trips seeing that we did not go on one last year. I also think that continuing to build are class identity is very important looking forward."
[SEE]  The NYT article never mentions his family background. In one way or another Clark is a descendant of Colonel Thomas Handasyd Perkins.

PERKINS OPIUM SMUGGLING CARTEL

The Perkins opium syndicate made the fortune and established the 1% in America.
Perkins (Boston) syndicate in 1830 and moved the primary center of American opium smuggling. By the 1830s, the Russells had bought out the Perkins syndicate and made Connecticut the primary center of the U.S. opium business. Massachusetts families (Coolidge, Sturgis, Forbes and Delano) joined Connecticut (Alsop) and New York (Low) smuggler-millionaires under the Russell auspices. There is a long list of names of the Opium Drug Smuggling PIRATES American and European family fortunes which were built on the "China"(opium) trade.

Alphonso Taft was a Bonesman alongside William H. Russell in the Class of 1833. As U.S. Attorney General in 1876-77, Alphonso Taft helped organize the backroom settlement of the deadlocked 1876 presidential election. The bargain gave Rutherford B. Hayes the presidency (1877-81) and withdrew the U.S. troops from the South, where they had been enforcing blacks' rights.

Young William Howard Taft at Yale (S&B 1878) was U.S. President from 1909 to 1913 and the only man who has served as both President and Chief Justice of the United States. His father, Alphonso Taft (S&B co-founder 1833) was appointed Secretary of War by President Ulysses Grant, and later U.S. Attorney General. As Attorney General, Alphonso helped fashion the commission that decided who won the 1876 election. The commission found in favor of Rutherford B. Hayes, a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon, (DKE), originally a junior secret society at Yale, and the only national Greek letter fraternity initially founded at Yale. In 1882, Alphonso was appointed U.S. Minister to Austria-Hungary. He then moved to Russia for two years, leaving in 1886. He died in 1891. His son, William Howard Taft, appointed by President McKinley, to be the first civil governor of the Philippines, displaced a disgruntled General Arthur MacArthur (General Douglas MacArthur's father) who had been the military governor.
William Taft was elected President of the United States in 1909. During his administration, lawmakers sent Constitutional amendments to the states which provided for the direct election of Senators and a Federal Income tax. The foundation for the Federal Reserve System was laid during Taft's administration and was signed into law furtively by his successor, Woodrow Wilson on Christmas Eve 1913. W. H. Taft was appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court by President Harding in 1921, and served until his death in 1930. Teddy Roosevelt (DKE), who became president after McKinley's assassination, appointed Taft to serve as Secretary of War (1904-08). While Secretary, he was the "master overseer and troubleshooter" for the Panama Canal; provisional governor of Cuba; and acting Secretary of State, while the Secretary of State John Hay was ill.
President Taft made Henry L. Stimson (S&B 1888) his Secretary of War (1911-13). Stimson was appointed to high government posts by seven presidents. He was Governor General of the Philippines (1926-1928), Secretary of State under President Herbert Hoover (1929-1933) and Secretary of War under Presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman (1940-1946). He was "ultimately responsible" for the internment of Japanese-American citizens in WWII and oversaw the Manhattan Project, America's atomic bomb program. Stimson also took credit for swaying Truman into dropping "the bomb" on Japan. Henry groomed a generation of "cold warriors," in what was known as "Stimson's Kindergarten". Among Stimson's students were General George C. Marshall, John J. McCloy, Dean Acheson (DKE), three "Bonesmen" from the Bundy family, and Robert A. Lovett (S&B 1918).

 

RESOURCES

 

• 1% Power Elite the number one US trader, the J. & T.H. Perkins "Boston Concern" in 1829.
• Perkins families Skull and Bones History
• Tom Perkins creates the modern clipper ship
• Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, who remains the most celebrated money machine since the Medicis
• Frances Perkins
• The founding families of Skull & Bones included the Russell and Perkins families
• James and Thomas H. Perkins Company of Boston, acquires his wealth from smuggling Turkish opium to Canton.
• In Robert B. Forbes's autobiography Personal Reminiscences (1882), he talks about talking a trip to visit "constituents" in Europe, in 1841. His uncle, merchant T.H. Perkins went with him. In London they met with Forbes, Forbes and Co, Barings and the Rothschilds, "who were valuable constituents of Russell & Co."
• John Murray Forbes was born in Bordeaux, France. His parents were Ralph Bennet Forbes and wife Margaret Perkins, niece of Thomas Handasyd Perkins, founder of a Boston Brahmin family merchant dynasty involved in the China trade. His brother was Robert Bennet Forbes (1804-1889), sea captain and China merchant was a devoted opium pirate. John Murray Forbes supplied money and weapons to New Englanders to fight slavery in Kansas and in 1859 entertained John Brown.

 

12/14/13 Career Development You Don’t Need To Learn To Code + Other Truths About the Future of Careers 

There’s a reason most “conventional” career advice sucks: the world is changing at a rapid clip. When well-meaning mentors give advice based on their experiences decades ago, it’s kind of like teaching someone how to drive using a horse and buggy.

<snip>

The bulletproof “soft skills” needed for next era of careers:

Don’t learn to code, learn how to work with technology. A common refrain from those in the tech industry is that everyone should learn to code. There are a multitude of organizations (e.g. Code Academy, Treehouse, and Udacity among many others) set up to help mid-career professionals pick up this new skill as well as a growing demand that we include programming in our primary school curriculum.   If becoming a programmer is appealing to you, great. But seeking employment based on any one “hard skill” is an outdated way of thinking. The rapid evolution of technology forces us to constantly reconsider which hard skills are in demand. (And we should). Staying on top of the hard skills needed is a necessity in the short term, but one of the best ways to position yourself for success in the long term is to focus on the soft skills needed no matter what technology you are working with.

ENGLAND The self-funded master's student: your stories

 

SILICON VALLEY'S 
GIG ECONOMY 
IS NOT THE FUTURE OF WORK 

IT'S DRIVING 
DOWN WAGES

 

7/23/14  Sites like TaskRabbit are isolating workers and paying them less.
But that might just form the high-tech union of the future. This "revolutionary" work built out of Silicon Valley convenience is not really about technological innovation – it's just the next step in a decades-old trend of fragmenting jobs, isolating workers and driving down wages.