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Back to Quack Off
Quack Off
by
Free
Market Duck
Cheap Community College
"need" is a hoax...BSU rated cheapest university in the nation by US News &
World Report
(Jun 14,
2007)
Boise, ID – Sob, sob,
oh Margie lend me a size 54 hanky, we need a new Community College system in
Boise's Treasure Valley because Boise State University costs waaaay too
much, cry the supporters of last month's blank check to build yet another
level of public education bureaucracy in Idaho.
But wait.
Run down to your local magazine rack and pick up a copy of US News & World
Report featuring America's Best Colleges 2007
and, ding dong, you will discover that BSU's annual tuition is
only $4,000, the cheapest college tuition in the nation...by a landslide.
Going down the list, USC's tuition is $34,000, Stanford is $33,000, Notre
Dame is $32,000, UC Berkeley is $26,000 and so on through all the best
public and private colleges in the nation.
Idaho's
not building a Boise Community College system because Stanford costs too
much; they're building it because in-state BSU
supposedly -- I'm giving you supposedly
-- costs too much. At least that's what the YES supporters' voting ads
said.
$4,000
for tuition at BSU in year 2007? That's cheaper than the $5,000 I paid
at Berkeley over 30 years ago, 6.5 times cheaper than Berkeley's tuition
today. And Boise needs a new Community College system because BSU is
too expensive? Pardon me but that's just a crock of bulls***!
Oh, I got
it. Room and board. Room and board costs a lot more in Boise
than in California or Massachusetts or Washington, right? Buzz, wrong.
BSU room and board costs about $6,000 per year, Berkeley costs $13,000 and
USC and Stanford cost $10,000. Nope, it's not room and board that's
the big cost culprit.
The
4-year total cost for a U.S. college education ranges from $173,000 at
Stanford to $158,000 at Berkeley to $113,000 at the U of WA. Total
cost for BSU? A whimpy $40,000 for 4 years, 4.3 times cheaper than
schools such as Stanford.
Hey,
don't even ask me about the cost to attend Harvard, although the per student
cost per year for Harvard is cheaper than some of Idaho's per student costs
per year in the boonie school districts because 15 kids in Nowhere's Ville
have to have a trillion dollar school bus that nobody rides, a billion
dollar gymnasium for two kids to shoot hoops in the winter when they're not
busy trapping beaver and hunting Elk, and more landscaping than the San
Diego Zoo.
So the
myth that Boise needs a 2-year Community College system because 4-year BSU
costs too much is simply balderdash. And the myth that
local employers need to hire
local college graduates was dispelled this
year as Micron, Idaho's largest private employer, headquartered in Boise,
just froze all U.S. hiring after opening its new computer chip fab plant in
China and announced a $4 billion merger with Intel to build another fab
plant in Singapore. Poof, there goes the local hiring myth down the
global economic drain.
Idahoans
in Ada and Canyon Counties: surprise, you've been punked again with
the Mysterious Myths put forth for a new Community College system. But
the real estate brokers, building developers, politicians, and five
power-happy new CC Board members are peeing in their pants with glee over
your next increase in property taxes. -- FM Duck
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