The cost for a K through 12th grade education for a student graduating from high school in 1980, was about $75,000, in 2009 dollars. The education for a student graduating in 2009 cost roughly twice that much. As you can see from the chart, the exorbitant increase in cost has resulted in absolutely no improvement in student’s academic performance.

Read the entire article at biggovernment.com

I hope those figures shock everyone reading this, whether you are a parent or a young person. College and student loans are pushed as the solution to your future, when in reality the loans often create economic slavery.

I have a daughter that graduated from college two years ago, a second daughter that will graduate this spring, and a third daughter who is earning college credit while a high school junior, so our family has been very conscious of the expense of college and looked for ways to minimize it.

My oldest daughter was involved in a work-study program, working in a hospital and had half her tuition paid. My middle daughter chose to attend a local community college and benefited from the drastically lower tuition rates. My youngest is following the techniques recommended by College Plus and nearly has half her college credit earned already through CLEP tests. She will complete her bachelor’s degree through online college courses at Thomas Edison State College.

Those are just a few alternatives to the traditional on-campus full-time college high-price-tag track. For that matter, please consider whether a college degree is even necessary. For example rather than spending $100,000 to send your child to a private college to earn a multi-media degree, that money could purchase a lot of multimedia equipment and software as well as one-on-one tutoring with a professional in the field. My area of expertise is computers – programming and web design. The same approach could be taken there. I recently looked at the computer curriculum for a four year college program and felt that it was woefully inadequate to prepare someone for actual work in the computer field. Some careers will require a college degree, but many might not. Be willing to look for alternatives to accomplish the same or better results.

The average undergraduate student graduates with close to $20,000 in student loan debt, a 108% increase in the last decade. The biggest borrowers of all are law students and medical students, with close to $100,000 in student loans.

Fruzsina suggests that part of the problem was that Obama was not willing to forgive private loan debt or that private loans should be regulated or banned. Personally I don’t think the government needs to be involved at all. Forgiving someone’s student loan only means that someone else, taxpayers like you and me, will be paying that debt.

The answer is to be aware of what exactly it means to borrow $43,000 or more in student loans, preferably before you sign the papers. If you can’t see how you will be able to repay that much money, don’t borrow it! The selling point in the past was always how much more you would earn with a college degree. How much more would you have to earn to offset those student loan payments and interest? Is it really worth it? And even with a college degree, in the current economic decline, you are not guaranteed a job.

Don’t get me wrong, I am totally in favor of education. I just think colleges have become far too expensive and that there are viable, affordable alternatives to obtaining an education.

Fruzsina’s article

“According to the Scriptures, education is primarily the parents’ responsibility and is to be a natural part of everyday life. Education is accomplished through a meaningful trusting relationship. Education is discipleship.”

“I realized that I had blindly accepted a limited view of education, simply associating it with an academic pursuit of knowledge. Academic instruction, however, is only a small part of God’s plan—a means to an end, not the end in itself.”

To read the entire article, visit the College Plus website. College Plus has an excellent program for students 13 and over to earn college credit more quickly and at less expense than by traditional methods. Check them out!

Andrew J. Coulson of the Cato Institute argues that the actual expenditure per pupil in DC area public schools is about $24,600, comparable to the most elite private schools.

As a homeschool mother, whose per-pupil budget rarely ever exceeded a few hundred dollars per year, I often daydreamed about what I could do for my daughters educationally with that kind of money.

Tom McClintock, a state senator from California, was thinking along the same lines when he wrote his “Modest Proposal for Saving Our Schools.”

His budget was based on $10,084 per student, (2005 expenditure in CA) and included college professors as teachers, health club memberships, and leased luxury commercial office space for classrooms.

Here’s his “bare-bones” budget:

According to McClintock:

“This budget leaves a razor-thin reserve of just $216,703 or $1,204 per pupil, which can pay for necessities like paper, pencils, personal computers and extra-curricular travel. After all, what’s the point of taking four years of French if you can’t see Paris in the spring?”

His proposal is a real eye-opener. Read the entire article for full details.

Throwing more money at the public schools is not the answer to the problem!