More Money To Be Wasted On Failed Community Colleges

By Professor Doom



     It really is remarkable how when a government program or agency fails, the response is to pour even more taxpayer money on it. Just as the epic failures of our CIA/FBI/Military on 911 only led to huge expansions of their already huge budgets, so too do we see the same thing when it comes to government higher education:

Reinvesting in Community Colleges



    In my book I detail the massive potential for academic fraud in our higher education system, a potential that has been almost fully realized in our community college system. Some highlights from my blog:


70% of community college students fail.


90% of community college is high school or lower level work. About 25% is 6^th grade level.


Community College is unhinged; what they put on paper  to show accreditors is nothing like what actually goes on in the classrooms.


On time graduation rates of 0.6% or 0.7% are common, and few schools break 20%.


     The above are either my calculations based on studies, or studies themselves, or actual data provided by the schools themselves. The article I’m quoting from gives different numbers, but not much different:


About 62 percent of students entering community college fail to complete a degree or certificate within six years, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.




     I say about 70%, they say about 62% of students fail to get a degree within 6 years...but either way this is ridiculous for a 2 year school. Imagine if you went to a restaurant, told you up front there was a 2 hour wait, paid exorbitantly for a meal, and got nothing after 6 hours…how long would that restaurant stay in business? Would there be calls to pour more money into it? Of course not.


      The reason why community colleges fail so hard is because they’re designed from the top-down with fraud and plunder in mind. Faculty are utterly powerless there, as they never had any power to begin with, unlike our state universities, where, for example, the remnants of that power managed to eventually reveal the systemic fraud at UNC (it took 18 years but still…).


      The gentle reader can guess that the reason we should pour more money into this colossally failing system will be diversity:


Community colleges enroll large numbers of low-income students, who increasingly are students of color.




     “Increasingly”? But the narrative is only “people of color” are low-income, or at least that’s what the narrative says. Still, why don’t they mention that these are the people being most ripped off by this system?


“The federal government continues to increase the Pell Grant, which all of us support, but there is some feeling among members of Congress that states need to do their part as well,”




     The Pell Grant scam is the most glaring example of the extreme fraud inherent in the community college system. The grant is often for more than tuition, so students get “refunds” on their grant, on a holiday that you won’t find on the academic calendar: Check Day. This is the day the refunds are given to the students, many of which disappear from campus, never to return. Attendance typically drops 50% or more after Check Day.


      There are wandering herds of students who go from campus to campus, collecting these free checks. There’s no way to track them, because our hordes of ridiculously highly paid administrators (the Poo-Bah can be paid more than the total tuition collected, due to extensive taxpayer support) don’t have time to record the names of students ripping off the system. That 90% of the Pell money goes to the college might be a factor here in why this fraud is systemic. I’ve covered this in some detail before, however.


Private, four-year colleges spend an average of $72,000 per full-time student each year, the report found, which is five times more than the $14,000 community colleges typically spend. Public universities spend $40,000 each year on full-time students.




     They might spend that kind of money, but they sure don’t spend it on the students. A typical college adjunct gets $2,500 to teach a course, and a student can easily take 4 courses a semester (i.e., 4 adjuncts). A college class can easily have 30 students (with hundreds quite possible), so we’re looking at around $666 a year being spent on the student. The rest of that $14,000 goes to admin.


     Honest, pouring more money into this system is pure stupid. Why are we doing this again?


…as we move to a higher population that is more African American and more Latino, there is less enthusiasm among some parts of the American voting public for investing in those students and communities.”




      Gee whiz, playing the RACISM card? The systemic academic and fiscal fraud has nothing to do with it, really?


“…the country should create a national lunch program for higher education.”




     Seeing as the bulk of community college work is high school or lower level material, this makes a little sense in that respect, but…NO. These students are now adults, they have cars, they have cell phones, they can feed themselves without taxpayer support, honest. Community college students have been feeding themselves for many decades now, we don’t need to waste tax dollars on that as well.


     This is honestly where we’re at now: our public education system has failed so horribly that incoming “college” freshmen read at the 7^th grade level on average. Most of them are piling into community college, where most of them fail utterly, with a few managing to pull off some worthless associate’s degree that means nothing. This system has failed horribly, and we think the problem is that the free tuition isn’t enough, they also need free lunches as well.


     And if you don’t buy into it, you’re a RACIST. 


     Unbelievable.



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