Education Reform Act (Passed)

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Tuition inflation is a big concern and it is the primary reason why so many people cannot afford an education. Market forces don't work to drive down costs because of the prestige and what not, people willing to spend extra money to get that degree from the most well regarded schools and the end result is out of control inflation and the squeezing out of the middle class from a college education leaving just the rich and whoever is lucky enough to be subsidized by the government.

I support PiT's amendment. It is vitally important that we consider the viability of the fields in which degrees are being subsidized in order to 1) not throw that blank check out and 2) to most benefit the economy with mininal downside in terms of the economics of that field.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I support PiT's amendment, but I am interested in knowing how much mileage that can be obtained with regards the $5 billion?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I see, very well then.



What is "a relevant authority"?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I would point out that I had a 3.9/4.0 GPA but scored just below 600 on all three sections of the SAT. I did virtually no prep and certainly did not have access to kinds of resources some had, since it was the middle of the Great Recession. I took the PSAT twice instead of once and thus was able to use that as a sort of practice, of course they were a year apart.

So indeed those scores aren't reflective.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

How accruate have those projections been historically? I have heard stories like "The top 12 professions, half of them didn't exist fifteen years ago".

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

     What better suggestion do you have here? We can just sit on our hands and be left with a populace that is largely unprepared to meet our labor needs, holding large numbers of degrees in shrinking, glutted fields. This is a point where we're talking about doing something. The projections may not be accurate for 10 years later, but they can at least be accurate for next year.

I agree with your point entirely, PiT, my point is try and quantify at some level, the degree of improvement in this regard.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Indeed and you pointed it out on the other forum that it is likely several technical and trade skills will probably do better than many fields require college degrees.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Does everyone in this body honestly agree that the federal government should be in the position to write direct, legislative funding prescriptions for degrees in certain types of fields? I believe that we should establish mechanisms to allow funding to flow toward in-demand degrees and programs. Income share agreements, expanded tax benefits for corporate scholarship/training programs, etc. If we're trying to advocate for workforce development, let's not pass a law that is meaningless in three or four years.

Preferably, no. However, as I see it, the purpose of this bill is two fold and aims to avoid flooding over crowed fields while at the same time ensuring an appropriate level of skilled professionals.

I will be honest, a lot of this whining about lack of skills is a cover for labor expense minimization. Companies want to outsource all the training and educating to tax payers and acquire employees as cheap as possible. It is fundamentally impossible for us to train someone 100% for a specific job like these employeers want these days, and especially if that company plans to dispose of them within two or three years.

I would not oppose tax benefits as you say, but to me, it seems like an incentive too small to reverse a corporate trend thirty years in the making.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Unless some kind of arrangement regarding including incentives towards worker training programs on the part of employers, can be reached, I don't see where there is much more room to go on this bill unless I have missed something. Which is of course possible, since I have been missing a lot of things lately.

Senator Truman, in an earlier you post were you objecting to both a motion to table and a final vote, or objecting to the former and calling for the latter?