Monday is for "Mundane"

Not much going on...

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The cries over UTEP's tuition prices are starting again.  There's an economic lesson to be learned here. 

The big ugly secret connected to tuition hikes is pretty simple.  We've been told for years that "you have to go to college if you want to be successful."  Because our society has come to blindly believe that mantra to be true, we've had to open up the college experience to everyone - among other things (like making curriculum pretty much useless so everyone can pass). 

How do you put everyone who wants to go to college into college even if they can't afford it?  Scholarships. 

Who pays for those kids to go school?  The students who actually pay tuition - that's who. And taxpayers, but mostly other the kids paying tuition if you follow the number of scholarships offered and the increases in tuition.  As colleges offer more and more and more and more and more and more scholarships, the cost of educating all those people goes up.  That cost is rested upon the shoulders of those who can afford to pay - and even those who can't afford to pay, but can get a loan to defer payment until they can afford it (student loan).

You see, we have a table at a nice restaurant and we keep adding hungry mouths, but not payers.  Those who agreed to pay are seeing their costs rise as the table gets more crowded with hungry non-payers. 

It's the dark secret nobody wants to talk about in higher education.  At some colleges they've figured this out and dramatically cut back on scholarships.  Most of them saw that the state money tied to offering those scholarships was either too little or completely wiped out due to budget cuts and decided to focus on their paying customers. 

I don't know who I feel worse for - the students who pay up front, or the ones who are financing their education (and everyone on scholarship) over the long-term.  There's more of a sting to the idea of being charged interest on money borrowed to educate someone you don't even know. 

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What's left of the "occupy El Paso" crowd is looking to leave a bad taste in everyone's mouth by not leaving when their permit runs out.  They also don't look good when they bitch that their new permit wasn't expedited post haste because they were too lazy to figure out what to do once their current permit expired. 

I hate to say it, but it's a loser snowball headed down Loser Mountain and it's just getting bigger by the minute.

I can't wait to see council jump through hoops for them again and risk setting two instances of precedent for smart asses like me to take advantage of in the future.  Something tells me that my previous blog post woke some folks up over at the city and they won't be handing over favors like that anymore.

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I enjoyed the article in El Paso Times about Paul Foster moving jobs out of town.  Lots of really bad signs for El Paso if you know how to read between the lines and understand how the business world speaks.

Those who have ever lived and worked outside of El Paso definitely get what was being said there and I've got more than a few emails telling me that I'm not only right, but that I don't know the half of it.

It sounds to me that Western is just the first local business to declare "I quit you El Paso."

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I liked Joe Muench's column this weekend.  Read it HERE. 

I'm glad Mike Rooney got a mention.  If we all had just a quarter of Rooney's amazing ability to process information without bias, this would be a different world. 

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Jaime Abeytia wrote HERE about six people he thinks should run for El Paso County Democratic Chair.  Unfortunately Jaime was taking the whole thing way too seriously, so I decided to put in my two cents in on who should be the next Dem chair.

1.  Norma Chavez - because I want nothing more in my life than to watch her destroy everything she touches.  She is a tornado wrapped inside an earthquake inside of a tsunami inside of a hurricane inside of a super nova and I love every single minute of it.  She could burn ice and by God I want to be there when it happens.

2.  Hector H. Lopez - not because he would be good at the job.  Mainly because he would bring the entire democrat system to a screeching halt with his constant need to center everything back to "having a discussion."  He's the poster child for my generation of slackers who confuse talking about stuff for actually doing stuff.  It would also be nice to see him get his ass handed to him by real people with real problems, which would contrast his coddled affirmative action existence as the token brown guy who knows in what situations he should act white.

3.  Jerome Tillman - because he's pretty much another version of Hector H. Lopez.  He has a "community conference table" where you can sit down, but you'll never leave!  He's the Hotel California of political conversations.

4.  Jaime O. Perez - Jaime O. has been a good democrat moonlighting as a republican for what I can only imagine is his own amusement.  He has even won me over by really sticking to his guns on this whole "I'm now a republican" thing.  He is fascinating to watch when he's helping someone completely destroy their own reputation.  He has left a trail of of loser candidates in his past and I hope he could work his (black) magic on all the local democrat candidates in the future.

5.  Senator Elliot Shapliegh - because nobody plays the game better than he does.  He's a true liberal. The local party is somewhere right of George W. if you have a real conversation with them.  The spectacle of a true democrat leading closeted conservatives would be TV worth watching.

6.  Marisa Marquez  - because she'd throw some damn good parties.

I'll add one more...

7.  Alex Lozano -  do I need to explain this?  I didn't think so.

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That's all we have for today.

Comments

[Texaswoman]

Alex for chair of the democratic party. You should support him as an endless amount of material will be generated for you to write about both pro and con.

[seriously]

Instead of handing kids a line of bs that they have to go to school, we should be telling them that they need to do what it takes to earn a living.

How many kids went to UTEP, took out student loans, and then failed to graduate. They end up with no degree, thousands in debt, and no hope of paying it back.

We should be making sure that kids who have no interest in college are steered toward something that will provide them with a livable wage.

We should also be making the way clear for kids who have the desire and ability to succeed in college.

But that's not going to happen because we are raising generations of kids who think everyone gets to play 15 minutes every game and everyone gets a medal at the end of the season.

Kids are not being taught that life is all about achievement - higher education or no - and if you don't achieve, you will sink to the bottom of the barrel.

[tired of spoiled brats]

Couldn't agree more with Seriously. When I went to school (the dark ages) you had 2 tracks - those who wanted to attend college and those who wanted to go to a technical school.

I am amazed that businesses require secretaries to have college degrees. I was a secretary for 20+ years. If I had graduated from college and ended up sitting behind a typewriter I think my mother would have shot me.