"Getting a college degree has long been integral to the mythic promise of American opportunity. Yet for millions, it’s become exactly that, a myth—and a very expensive myth at that. The average student leaves school carrying $30,000 in debt. More than 40 percent of students who enter college fail to earn a degree within six years, and many of them wind up in the workforce lacking the credentials and practical skills required to get ahead. . . "
-- excerpt from an article in https://reconnomics.com
Recent Read: “College is a Racket”
As you can see by the infographic at the left, in addition to skyrocketing tuition costs in public and private higher education and 2-year vocational or technical schools that are 2x or 3x higher than before, student debt to finance degrees at for-profit schools is on the rise. . . and with that more scandals and sudden "closing" of their operations plus questions over accreditation.
________________________________________________________________________
In 2018 just last year, Mesa taxpayers got hood-winked and tricked to go-into-debt to fund [in the second of two "sales-pitches" for $200M] with this image of a new building that did not or ever exist. It was a conceptual rendering - nothing more. The scaled-down price tag for public consumption was advertised at $63M - paid for by taxpayers with hikes in sales/use fees and charges + hikes in utilities rates citywide.
The truth: ASU could have easily paid for "a satellite campus" if they wanted to get it built in downtown Mesa. . . to the right is one more false exaggerated perspective for what they imagine atop a small parking lot next to City Hall - one more rendering of the make-believe "ASU @ Mesa City Center". In fact the area is an Arizona Bureau of Land Management Reclamation Project.
The original idea was so not-thought-out that the City had to hire a "Construction Manager At Risk" in a contract for about another million-buck$ to analyze the intended project with programs for virtual reality. It is interesting to note that back in 2012 then current mayor Scott Smith declared that Mesa is a College Town. That didn't happen. . . in 2014 when the Valley Metro Light Rail "Salvation Train" arrived in downtown, Hizzoner John Giles got on-board the push to deliver ASU *
_________________________________________________________________________
* The proposed plan has been contentious and questionable from the start, especially for the "lease-deals" that were negotiated with city officials
In Tempe ASU is the subject of lawsuits over real-estate deals by the Office of the Arizona State Attorney General. ASU recently posted an RFP to find "creative solutions" to finance a Sports-and-Entertainment District" with a private developer.
_________________________________________________________________________
His ticket to do that? A privately-funded $500,000+ public relations campaign ran out of his own private law practice office on 2nd Street that turned into a major a major screw-up that blew up in their faces with public scrutiny. Two years later the group of closely-connected cohorts had the time to "re-imagine" and re-package the grab-bag-of-goodies with a new sales-pitch for public safety. What it really did was to create a rush into rampant speculation in downtown real estate riding on the boom in student housing that devoured downtown Tempe. One of the main players was then-Arizona State Bob Worsley who gambled millions for his own private wealth-creation at the same time holding public office. Downtown Mesa was transformed into an Opportunity Zone.
__________________________________________________________________________________
Back to the Higher Ed Racket: Here are two references:
The Wall Street Journal
College Bloat Meets ‘The Blade’
Mitch Daniels, America’s most innovative university president, tells how he’s kept tuition from rising and how acquiring Kaplan University will expand educational access
By Tunku Varadarajan
Mitch Daniels became president of Purdue in 2013. One of the first things he proposed was a tuition freeze. . . And they did it beyond that one year; tuition at Purdue has been frozen at least through the 2021 school year. The cost of room and board was also cut, by five percent.
Now he’s being called, by the Wall Street Journal, “America’s most innovative university president”
DUBNER: Your own compensation at Purdue includes performance goals:
And last year, you hit all the goals, so congratulations, and therefore received a bonus of, I’m reading, $210,000 on top of a base salary of $430k, for a total of about $640k, which is a nice salary — hardly extravagant by college-president standards, we should say.
BLOGGER NOTE:
Michael Crow, ASU President, makes in excess of over $1,000,000
[Purdue is a large, well-regarded state university, established in 1869, in West Lafayette, Indiana. There are more than 32,000 undergraduates and nearly 10,000 grad students. It’s best known for its business and engineering programs . . ]
Millenial Magazine
Failed Policies are Fueling a Higher Education Racket
