Many Idahoans are still under the impression that we are still a “Red” state when indeed we have crossed the Rubicon of liberalism in our most populated counties a long time ago. In my opinion, this change has taken place because of the universities that promote liberalism in their curriculums. This is how many conservative red states have become purple and then blue—because of the influence of their higher learning institutions that turn out an army of liberal-thinking young men and women every year.
This indoctrination starts in our public schools, where federal education money comes with Memorandums of Understanding which requires teaching our kids liberal concepts like Critical Race Theory and Wokeness. This indoctrination is reinforced and expanded in our colleges and universities for another 4 or more years. The irony is that we the taxpayers have funded these education indoctrination programs that have changed our country for decades.
Idaho’s colleges spend 6 million dollars a year on DEI, and we wonder why our state is changing. We tell our children to go to college on borrowed money sponsored by the government—that borrowed money at 1 or 2% yet loan to our students at 6 to 8% or more. After they graduate, they find out that they can’t find a job because they have a master’s degree in underwater basket weaving and have to take a position as a barista at Starbucks or a stock clerk at Albertsons.
Now we have millions of college graduates who are indebted to the government with no way to pay it back. Many of these graduates wind up going to work as teachers or bureaucrats who make all of the onerous rules and are responsible for indoctrinating our children so that after 10 years of service, their debt will be forgiven. We need to ask ourselves, did the government take over the college loan industry to educate our children or to enslave them?
We have become our own worst enemy by allowing this cycle of indoctrination through our public education system to continue. If we don’t change the way our public school systems and colleges operate, we are going to find out what it is like to live in a socialist country. We need to dump our current public education system which depends on the federal government and turn the education back to the local level with the money being controlled by our states.
The cost to educate our children has continued to soar in the past 20 years with no substantial change in their learning scores. We have more administrators both in our public schools and Colleges than are necessary. In Idaho, 30% of our schools’ budget goes to fund administration. Our colleges and universities are reaching the point where administrators are more prevalent than actual teaching professionals. Education spending per student has doubled since the 1970s with the average cost per student bumping up on $16,000 per year. The Tuition figures below for private and National Universities come from a U.S. News report from September 2023. https://usafacts.org/topics/education/
Not adjusted for inflation
- Tuition and fees at private National Universities have jumped about 132%.
- Out-of-state tuition and fees at public National Universities have risen about 127%.
- In-state tuition and fees at public National Universities soared by about 158%.
Adjusted for inflation
- Tuition and fees at private National Universities have increased about 40%.
- Out-of-state tuition and fees at public National Universities have risen about 38%.
- In-state tuition and fees at public National Universities have grown about 56%.
Many of the most elite Ivy League colleges have or are about to reach $100,000 a year tuition, making them totally out of reach of the average middle-class family.
We are, however, seeing a shift starting to take place as more high school graduates are looking to attend technical schools to find careers as electricians, plumbers, or welders. The cost of attending a 4-year college has become so high that many potential students are looking for alternatives to a college education. The bureaucrats in Washington have disillusioned our young men and women into thinking that the only way to be successful is to earn a college degree. What they didn’t tell them is that they will be indoctrinated into an attitude of liberal thinking and will be indebted with student loans for decades to come.
The information below on loan debt comes from Forbes Advisor and every parent and potential student should understand how onerous this type of debt can be to becoming financially secure in the future.
https://www.forbes.com/advisor/student-loans/average-student-loan-debt-statistics/
Average Student Loan Debt in the United States
- $1.75 trillion in total student loan debt (including federal and private loans)
- $28,950 owed per borrower on average
- About 92% of all student debt are federal student loans; the remaining amount is private student loans
- 55% of students from public four-year institutions had student loans
- 57% of students from private nonprofit four-year institutions took on education debt
Before you decide to encourage your children to take on education debt think about how it will burden their lives if things don’t quite work out the way you or they expected. If it doesn’t work out you may have your grown children living in your finished basement so they can pay off their student loan debt.
“We Get the Government We Deserve”
