Is America a socialist country then?
"The first misgiving usually expressed is that we cannot afford to pay
for comprehensive care for everyone. Every other industrialized nation
provides comprehensive care to everyone at a much lower cost than our
system that leaves so many out. Other nations spend 6 to 10 percent of
their Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, whereas we, the wealthiest
nation on earth, spend 14 percent of our GDP. We already have enough
funds dedicated to health care to provide the highest quality of care
for everyone. Studies conducted by the Congressional Budget Office,
the General Accounting Office, the Lewin Group and Boston University
School of Public Health have shown that, under a single payer system,
comprehensive care can be provided for everyone without spending any
more funds than now are spent."
Really?
The higher education sector, however, is facing a catastrophic
shortfall in funding. Given current trends in both funding and the
costs of higher education, the deficit in operating expenses for the
nation's colleges and universities will have quadrupled by 2015.
Assuming tuition increases no faster than inflation, by that year U.S.
colleges and universities will fall $38 billion short (in 1995
dollars) of the annual budget they need to educate the student
population expected in 2015. If, however, tuition increases at current
rates--basically doubling by 2015--the impact on access will be
devastating: effectively half of those who want to pursue higher
education will be shut out.
To address a crisis of such proportions, we call for a two- pronged
strategy: increased public investment in higher education and
comprehensive reform of higher education institutions to lower costs
and improve services. The second of these, institutional reform, is in
fact a prerequisite for increased public funding. Unless the higher
education sector changes the way it operates by undergoing the kind of
restructuring and streamlining that successful businesses have
implemented, it will be difficult to garner the increases in public
funding needed to meet future demands.
More specifically, we make these recommendations:
America's political leaders--the President, Congress, governors,
mayors, and other state and local officials--should reallocate public
resources to reflect the growing importance of education to the
economic prosperity and social stability of the United States. Public
funding of higher education has stagnated since 1976. It is time for
the nation to reverse this policy.
Institutions of higher education should make major structural changes
in their governance system so that decision makers can assess the
relative value of departments, programs, and systems in order to
reallocate scarce resources. This will entail improving
performance-based assessment, defining and measuring faculty
productivity, and integrating accounting systems.
As part of their overall restructuring, colleges and universities
should pursue greater mission differentiation to streamline their
services and better respond to the changing needs of their
constituencies. Individual institutions and parts of statewide systems
should focus on their points of comparative advantage rather than all
striving to become full-service campuses. Community colleges,
undergraduate universities, and research universities, for example,
should embrace different missions, give priority to activities central
to those missions, and reduce or eliminate more- marginal activities.
Colleges and universities should develop sharing arrangements to
improve productivity. A greater sharing of resources--requirements,
classes, services, infrastructure, libraries--could lead to
significant savings and even improve services.
It is time to redefine the appropriate level of education for all
American workers in the 21st century. All citizens planning to enter
the workforce should be encouraged to pursue--as a minimum--some form
of postsecondary education or training.
Maybe many are having a problem having ends meet, you know...
Even more effective would be to regulated, so the advertisers don't
laugh off the effort of a few powerless listeners.
Well, I see you're in favor of education...
So what you want, the Law of the Jungle?
THE LAW OF THE JUNGLE
Once upon a time, in the deep jungle, lived a Lion and a Monkey... One
day the Monkey, tired of the Lion always getting the lion share, and
seeing that such injustice represented a danger to all the species of
the jungle, demanded justice... The Lion, yawning and stretching,
said: "You would have to have paws and sharp teeth..." Then the
Monkey, who was very clever, devised a plan: He would go to the
costume store, and look like a lion...
When the Lion saw him, noticing that the new lion wasn't a match for
him, and fearing competition, killed him on the spot... before the
indifferent look of the little animals of the jungle... And that's how
the Law of the Jungle was re-established one more time...
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