College Transparency Act needed now more than ever.

Getting government out of the way, a tired and costly ridiculous cliché, is keeping Americans from seeking out an educational path that they can affordable, while still targeting their specific career goals.

Opposition to student data collection over privacy concerns went off the rails back in 2008 and in the debate over Common Core. Attempts to integrate privacy safe guards were tossed out as an option, leaving parents and students to throw caution to the wind deciding subject matter, career selection, and which college would get the biggest bang for their buck. Bet you didn’t know…

A 2008 amendment attached to the Higher Education Act reauthorization barred the federal government from explicitly and systemically integrating and connecting the dots between employment and enrollment, major program, financial aid receipt, and graduation outcomes on an individual student basis. There are of course concerns here about protecting the privacy of students, but these are outweighed by the huge benefits that would come from more robust data collection.

This was brought to you by the same conservatives who want to kill off the constitutionally required Census because it’s so intrusive, even if it helps spend taxpayer money wisely on schools, roads, hospitals, or even helps businesses target locations that would provide the best qualified workforce. The same can be said for collecting fire arm data...but I digress.

Oddly, for this Congress anyway, there's a bill gaining steam now that will help students make better more informed choices...

The College Transparency Act of 2017, just introduced as a bipartisan bill in Congress, would end this ban, and allow for federal data systems that track employment and graduation outcomes on a student-unit record basis. Specifically … to coordinate with other federal agencies. As a result, policymakers researchers and consumers would have access to data with more granular detail on student enrollment, retention, completion, and subsequent labor market outcomes from specific institutions. Importantly, the bill explicitly prohibits the construction of federal college ranking or rating schemes. It also incorporates robust protection of student information, with the expunging of all information that could be used to identify individual, and strict rules against the commercial use of the data.

Assessing colleges is a tricky business. As Beth Akers, Kim Dancy, and Jason Deslisle show in “The Affordability Conundrum,” a proper evaluation of the costs and benefits of a college requires information not simply on upfront net costs to students, but how long it will take to complete, the ability to absorb incidental unanticipated costs, the major pursued, and what post-graduation labor market outcomes one may be able to expect.

Whatever the arguments for and against the specific legislation in Congress, it is clear that student-unit record data would provide valuable additional information to a debate fraught with myths and misunderstandings.

After College Earnings detailed at New Obama Website.

While Republican governors and candidates for president continue to find ways to make college unaffordable or outright inferior through funding cuts, the current system is still an essential part of earning higher incomes after graduation. This might change soon, but for now, the Obama administration has put together a college report card we can all check out now, or look back on with fond memories in the future.

Below are the charts relating to the UW system. You can dig deeper into each college at the government site:

Vox: At a quarter of American colleges, the majority of students who got federal financial aid end up earning less than $25,000 per year a full decade after they first enrolled.

That startling statistic comes from an unprecedented trove of data released Saturday by the White House. The Education Department and Treasury Department combined forces to link a huge database of all students who got Pell Grants or student loans since 1996 with their income tax records, producing the clearest picture ever of how students who received federal financial aid fared in college and after.

The numbers show which colleges are living up to their promises to students, and which are not.

Adding onto the economic benefits of a college education was this just release study:

In a study published by the Economic Policy Institute, researchers Noah Berger and Peter Fisher examined correlations between educational factors and economic growth between 1979 and 2012. They found that the highest incomes were in states with the most educated workers. "There are no states with a relatively well-educated workforce and relatively low wages," the report concluded, "and virtually no states with low levels of education and relatively high wages."

The numbers don’t reflect the entire picture, that’s why creating a ratings system wasn't possible:

Standard federal graduation rates exclude students who transfer without earning a degree, a problem that's especially acute for community colleges.

The earnings also include only information on federal student loan borrowers, not all students who enroll.

Some colleges argue that graduation rates and earnings don't just reflect whether the college is doing a good job, but the students it admitted in the first place. It's not hard to have a high graduation rate when you're enrolling academic superstars from well-off families; it's much harder to help students from disadvantaged backgrounds achieve the same results.

Republicans Outraged: College Commencement Speakers mostly Liberal!!!

Anonymous conservative tweeters and commentators on my blog often jab me about my failed liberal talk radio career, blaming the constant whining and boring progressive topics. Their point is, liberal talk failed because no one was interested in it.

I was reminded of that point today when I came across this headline of phony outrage:

“Liberal speakers dominate college commencements, conservative group says”

Well the same rule applies guys: maybe no one is interested in the tired old whiny and boring conservative topics. You can almost hear Fox News viewers and low information voters mumbling something about freedom, liberty, the constitution and American Exceptionalism now.  

Liberal speakers will outnumber conservatives by at least 6-to-1 at the nation's top 100 schools as ranked by U.S. News & World Report. Ron Robinson, president of Young America's Foundation, said in a statement to FoxNews.com said, “The data shows schools and the general public are going in different directions. This trend will be detrimental to the development of our country’s future leaders. Students are not getting the full picture about government policy or learning about the Constitution, American exceptionalism, or free market economics.”

No wonder republicans are defunding education. Who would have guessed that content free, divisive, homophobic, bigoted, racist, nanny-state conservatives, guided by nothing more than their ideologically driven policies, just doesn't fit in to a schools learning environment. I'm shocked.

College debt another bad Republican idea.

I really thought I was making headway with my conservative friend in Milwaukee the other day on health care, when he ditched what we were talking about and said "government shouldn't be involved in health care."

I'm guessing he would say the same thing about student loan debt...and almost everything dragging down our economy. They don't like the obvious answers, the easier more obvious solutions that save money and free people up to do other important things. 

One Wisconsin Now has been pushing student loan reform for awhile, and now has Mary Burke, the Democratic candidate for governor on board. But even their solution is a band aid compared to what other countries have successfully done, as shown in the cartoon to the below.  

New Hope for Solutions to $1.2 Trillion Student Loan Debt Crisis in Wisconsin? Gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke has included some of the common sense solutions from the Higher Ed, Lower Debt Act in her newly released "Invest for Success" jobs plan. Specifically Burke calls for creating a mechanism to allow Wisconsin borrowers to refinance their student loans to take advantage of lower interest rates, just like you can with a home mortgage or other consumer loan. And Burke would allow borrowers to deduct student loan debt payments on their state taxes, just like you can with home mortgage loan interest.

Original research by One Wisconsin Institute found that borrowers with an undergraduate degree in Wisconsin were making average payments of nearly $350 per month for almost 19 years. The impact of this debt is dramatic and negative for the entire state economy. And freeing a generation of well-trained, well-educated Wisconsinites from the chains of crushing debt will spur the entrepreneurism and small business creation needed to break out of our economic doldrums.

Republicans Reach into the Pockets of Parents of College Kids to Pay Off Big Banks.

Republicans want banks to make money on the backs of college students, our future entrepreneurs, the supporters of our future economy. 

That would strap them with debt affecting consumer spending, their spending, and drag economic growth. But that’s somebody else’s problem I guess.

Why are Republicans and President Obama are getting a pass on doubling, even tripling student loan rates? Aren't conservative parents just as angry as liberal parents when it comes to something that’ll hit them big time in the pocketbook?

Republicans are hell bent on gouging students, all the while they're making claims in Wisconsin that they’re concerned about crushing student debt. How can they get away with that?

Democrats are bragging about this wonderful hard fought concession that proves these guys are hopeless.

HuffingtonPost: The deal would offer students lower interest rates through the 2015 academic year, but then rates were expected to climb … but Democrats won a protection for students that rates would never climb higher than 8.25 percent for undergraduate students. Graduate students would not pay rates higher than 9.5 percent and parents' rates would top out at 10.5 percent.

That’s just plain outrageous. In fact, the Democrats gave up a huge campaign issue:

Leaders from both parties, however, recognized the potential to be blamed for the added costs in the 2014 elections if nothing were done.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren would give students the same rate as banks, “Instead of helping our students, the government is making a profit on student loans,” Warren said of the profit figures during a conference filled with young people. “The federal government will make $51 billion in profits off student loans. That is wrong. It is morally wrong. That is obscene.”

“The government should not be making profits off the backs of our students," she said. "Period.”

The higher the debt load and monthly payments, the less money workers have to use as down payments for new homes, cars or to sock away for retirement.  

Warren is pushing her one year solution; students would borrow at the same rate that big banks do, around 0.75 percent. 

Private sector, for-profit Colleges love Taxpayer money.

Here's another look at how for-profit, private colleges are draining taxpayer dollars to become filthy rich, and a likely harbinger of where K-12 is headed with vouchers.

EPI: In 2009, 86 percent of revenues for the 15 publicly-traded for-profit colleges came from the Department of Education federal student aid and U.S. military educational benefit programs.

These taxpayer dollars do not primarily go toward the education of students. As the figure shows, for-profit education companies take away more in profits than they spend on education. A large share of the revenue is also used to recruit new students, most of whom get deep into debt. The committee described typical recruiting practices as “aggressive,” and “deceptive.” And, this too is paid for by taxpayers.

Taxpayer Money Pours into For-Profit Colleges!!! Love that old Free Market?

I'm catching on. Taking our hard earned taxpayer dollars so we can fill the pockets of for profit private sector businesses and CEO salaries, is okay if it supports free market principals. Especially in the education.

Republicans are big on privatizing public schools because they say competition in the free market will raise the quality of education, and get government out of the way. Government is known for stifling innovation. If you believe that you're a sucker or horrifically unqualified to influence public policy.

In what could be a precursor to privatizing K-12, see how private sector colleges are soaking taxpayers because...well, they can. If the following is okay with you, where taxpayer money is used to supercharge the free market, then I think I'm starting to understand conservatism. Paying public employees a decent wage is bad, paying a private sector CEO or corporation is good.  

NY Times: Wrapping up a two-year investigation of for-profit colleges, Senator Tom Harkin will issue a final report on Monday — a voluminous, hard-hitting indictment of almost every aspect of the industry. “In this report, you will find overwhelming documentation of exorbitant tuition, aggressive recruiting practices, abysmal student outcomes, taxpayer dollars spent on marketing and pocketed as profit, and regulatory evasion and manipulation. These practices are not the exception they are systemic throughout the industry, with very few individual exceptions.” According to the report, which was posted online in advance:

-Taxpayers spent $32 billion in the most recent year on companies that operate for-profit colleges, but the majority of students they enroll leave without a degree, half of those within four months.

-Among the 30 companies, an average of 22.4 percent of revenue went to marketing and recruiting, 19.4 percent to profits and 17.7 percent to instruction.

-Their chief executive officers were paid an average of $7.3 million, although Robert S. Silberman, the chief executive of Strayer Education, made $41 million in 2009, including stock options.

-The bulk of the for-profit colleges’ revenue, more than 80 percent in most cases, comes from taxpayers.

-On average associate-degree and certificate programs at for-profit colleges cost about four times as much as those at community colleges and public universities. An internal memo from the finance director of a Kaplan nursing program in Sacramento, for example, recommended an 8 percent increase in fees, saying that “with the new pricing, we can lose two students and still make the same profit.” Similarly, the chief financial officer at National American University wrote in an e-mail to executives that the university had not met its profit expectation for the summer quarter, so “as a result” it would need a midyear tuition increase. Republicans called the study “a hostile partisan effort.” 

For Republican voters, that’s good enough for them. But is a little more regulation and oversight needed to protect taxpayer money?

Democrats generally arguing that greater regulation is needed to prevent huge publicly traded colleges from plundering the Treasury for student financial aid while leaving students with crippling debt and credentials that are worthless in the job market. Many Republicans see such colleges as a healthy free-market alternative to overcrowded community colleges, offering useful vocational training and education to working adults who will not attend more traditional institutions. 

Again let’s be clear, spending, and basically plundering taxpayer coffers, is okay in the name of freedom and capitalism. It is not okay for taxpayers to support themselves as public employees.

Freeloading anti-tax Conservatives attack colleges because spending is based on politics, not need!

After reading through this Time’s article about possible draconian cuts to California’s state colleges, it became clear to me how irrational the right wings austerity measures were “for the good of the country,” and "for our kids future." Check out the following frightening reality:

 “I’d be lying if I said … there hasn’t been a degradation of the learning environment,” said Timothy White, the chancellor of the University of California, Riverside … Last year, plans to open a medical school on the campus were shelved after state budget cuts. Courses that used to require four writing assignments now demand half that because professors have fewer assistants to help them with grading papers.

…Some say that the state budget crisis makes it necessary (to make cuts), and may provide an opportunity for needed changes.

Needed changes? Are we talking about adding the latest innovative learning programs? Not at all; those “needed changes” refer to cut, cut, cut. And it's all driven by pure dumbed down ideology.  

Jon Coupal, the president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, which strongly opposes the proposed tax increase, said the colleges should do more to show they are cutting spending, like reducing pay for top administrators or closing programs that do not directly benefit the state.

“We’ve had the luxury in prior years of heavily subsidizing colleges,” Mr. Coupal said. “But like anything in California, the delivery of higher education is not performance based. They’ve created new campuses and programs based on politics and not need.”

And that’s the point isn’t it; spending on education is “based on politics.” This is an attack on those snooty “liberal elitists,!” You know; the educated. "Liberal” is simply thrown in for effect.

Just as contradictory; while universities are state economic engines, Republicans are trashing them. But cutting them cuts revenue?  

Nathan Brostrom, executive vice president of business operations for the University of California, said the system was now in the middle of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. In the last year, the state has cut $750 million from the system’s budget. This year, for the first time, the system receives more money from tuition than from state aid … Over all, the budget is the same as it was in 2007, when there were 75,000 fewer students enrolled. In recent years, many campuses have made a more concerted effort to recruit out-of-state students, who pay more in tuition. 

That’s what Wisconsin Republicans want to do as well; bring in more out-of-state students, edging out our own kids.  

The financial picture will grow even more dire if the tax increase backed by Governor Brown does not pass in November. While poor students are still able to obtain financial aid, tuition increases mean that the state’s colleges may no longer be the best choice for the middle class, said Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom. Charles B. Reed, the chancellor of the Cal State system who recently announced his retirement said, “This is supposed to be our work force for the state. We go down this road and we’re looking at an ugly Russian winter for the economy.” 

Which we can then blame on the next Democratic presidents policies.

After all that's happened, UW School for Workers gives in to Republican Rep. Steve Nass' Threats, cancels Art in Protest exhibit!!

Major movements in our past have been historically captured through the eyes of courageous activist artists. But in Wisconsin, that history is being criticized and quashed by the authoritarian power of our ruling party.  

I've read public educations biggest enemy and dumbest SOB in the assembly, Rep. Steve Nass' comments over and over here, and I still can't see one reason why the UW's School for Workers would cancel their art exhibit. Not one. Hello, we're recalling the governor over labor rights...?

WRN: Republican Rep. Steve Nass, who has an often contentious relationship with the UW has gotten the UW’s School for Workers to cancel an “Art in Protest” exhibit that had been scheduled for next month. “The problem with it is that it would be funded with taxpayer dollars and that’s through the Extension,” says Representative Steve Nass. Nass charges the exhibit would have provided a one-sided view of last year’s protests at the Capitol, with UW Extension taking the side of protesters. “I did indicate to Extension that if they go forward with the event, any problems that arise from that, or any misbehavior by the protesters – which I certainly would expect, it would probably be very despicable – Extension would take ownership of that, and I will be watching.” “If the unions want to fund it, I have no problem with that.”

Is there anyway to recall this guy?

Missed; Perry would use Authoritarian Force to Lower the cost of College and Raise Graduation Rates! Big Government Republican Magic?

College too expensive? Rick Perry would exert powerful political force to demand lower tuition's and higher graduation rates. So there.

Perry: "How do you force these university's to be efficient...you have to have control over those boards of regents..."

Conservatives start campaign to cut off college education for Americans.

The dirty little secret; Republicans don't want an educated pubic voting in future elections. After successfully putting in place (a temporary situation I hope) voter suppression efforts, conservatives have long held that dumb people shouldn't vote. So what better way to accomplish that, than to create uncertainty over the value of a college education, while making it harder to get in for the poor and middle class.

Rep. Paul Ryan blames federal student grant programs for fueling an unhealthy interest in going to college and rising costs due to bottomless taxpayer pockets.

What Ryan doesn't tell you is the federal money is in response to state reductions in funding, caused by austere Republican legislatures and their hatred for public education.  If states funded their public colleges, tuition would not have skyrocketed, and federal grants wouldn't be an issue. Republicans created this problem. A problem that now costs everyone more money.

This bizarre piece from ReasonTV is stunning and almost laughable in its attempt to show phony outrage over getting a college education. Their solution; make people pay out of pocket so only the elite can go to college:

Indoctrinating College Students. Is that possible? Conservative student who recorded Professor wasn't brainwashed for some reason.

After listening to the recording of UWO criminal justice professor Stephen Richards, I’m taken by the lack of interest and questions by his students, and the middle ground Richards took in explaining the effects of Walker’s plan on the UWO. I want to know why changes to the University shouldn’t be of interest to the students? But instead, recall target and philanderer Sen. Randy Hopper wants an investigation and firing?  

Northwestern: Sen. Randy Hopper on Tuesday called for an investigation into the in-class political activity of college professors along with the resignation of a University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh faculty member who encouraged his students during class to sign a petition to recall the Republican lawmaker. "Quite frankly, nothing short of this professor resigning will be adequate for the students and the parents of UW-Oshkosh," Hopper said. "People send their kids to school to be educated not indoctrinated, and this professor took state-funded time to make a political stand," he said.

You know how easily it is to indoctrinate college students, especially conservative moles willing to secretly record their professor. These are not children anymore. Indoctrination really? Ever try to tell your college age kid something? I thought brainwashing as a plot point ran its course in the 60’s?

But the party of straw men won’t forget. So things are back to normal…

…corrective action was taken by the end of March. Students have since reported classroom conditions improved, according to the statement.

Oh, and the phony “student doesn’t live on campus” argument rears its ugly head.

Senate President Mike Ellis said he was not satisfied with that response."When a constituent of mine is mislead by a professor…" The constituent Ellis referred to is a female student whom Richards encouraged to sign the petition even though she lives in Ellis' senate district. 

"If you sign this, you should sign it with your campus address. You know, if, like, instead of your parents address you use your address here on campus," he said. "This is a guy who teaches a criminal justice class and then encourages a student to violate the (election) code? That is mind boggling," Ellis said.

NO, that’s not what he did. If the student had a campus address, then she would be in that district, only if she is registered there. And that’s something even a college professor wouldn’t know.