Back in 2011 Came across a very great article from the National Inflation Association titled: "
It's now 2014, so how are we doing TODAY, 2014????
Check out this video and then check out the comments from one below on this video below>> Titled "NIA’s College Conspiracy Documentary: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly"
Granpa Chuck
Researcher, Publisher
GPC Publication
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Watch>>NIA’s College Conspiracy Documentary
****
Review of>>NIA’s College Conspiracy Documentary:
The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly
Original Link: http://www.wiredacademic.com/2011/08/nias-college-conspiracy-documentary-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/
Film Review
by Derek Reed
The recent wave of college-is-a-bubble criticisms has been thoroughly
documented, both here and elsewhere. Coming in on the more vehement end
of that wave is a film produced by the National Inflation Association
called College Conspiracy, which has racked up more than 1.5
million views on YouTube since it debuted in May. It’s billed as a
documentary, but the film is actually more of an hour-long video
Op-Ed,
which runs through most of the familiar criticisms we’ve heard over the
past year before concluding that “college education is the largest scam
in U.S. history.” If you can’t tell already, the film’s argument is a
rather radical one, but since it does argue that the future of education
is online, it’s worthwhile for us to dig into the good, the
bad, and the ugly about it.
The Good
– The film forecasts that, by the end of this decade, 20 percent of
American schools will have closed, enrollment will decline by 15 to 30
percent, and that universities in the States will see an influx of
foreign students as the U.S. dollar continues its slide from global
hegemony. It’s anyone’s guess whether these predictions will play out,
but it’s at least interesting to see a critic of higher education coming
forth with some concrete numbers.
– In its criticism of higher education, the film touches on a small
but important issue that few people have brought up: grade inflation. A
professor shares how, at his school, students who make a 4.0 GPA are
honored by having their name engraved on a plaque. The first 60 years of
4.0 earners fit on one plaque, but now, each year requires multiple
tablets—and this sort of thing is happening at schools all across the
country. College should be difficult, so if students are finding it
easier and easier to make stellar grades, that means one of higher
education’s main tools for spurring growth is becoming dull.
The Bad
– For us at WiredAcademic, it’s of particular interest that
the film predicts the future of higher education is online, where the
best professors can come together to teach an unlimited number of
students, all from the comfort of their homes. NIA predicts that, since
this model supplies better value at a fraction of the cost, online
education should see a 25 percent jump in market share by the end of
this decade. But don’t get too excited, because the film’s
characterization of online schools is a bit short-sighted. We shouldn’t
assume that professors at online schools can adequately teach an endless
number of students, just because their lectures can be streamed over
the net to anyone in the world. At the end of the day, someone still has
to grade all of those papers, and even if F. Scott Fitzgerald himself
were your English professor, chances are he’d never even see your work
if there were a million other students in your “class.” The impersonal,
300-students-in-a-lecture-hall model has already been pointed out as one
of the university system’s flaws. Let’s not make matters worse by
moving it online and shoving more students into the class.
The Ugly
– The reason this film can’t be called a documentary is that all of
the facts, figures, and viewpoints shown in it fit perfectly into the
picture that NIA is trying to present. On an issue as
complicated and far-reaching as the “college bubble,” a true documentary
would give screen-time to people who hold views opposite the
filmmakers, and you’d better believe that there are plenty of people who
would be happy to take issue with NIA’s college-is-a-scam argument. Big
issues like these are never as simple as NIA has it here—otherwise,
they wouldn’t be newsworthy and they wouldn’t be such a pain to sort
out.
– Where other critics have explained higher education’s deficiencies
as being the product of myriad cultural causes, NIA argues that the
college bubble is actually a conspiracy drawn up by nefarious college
administrators “who are only interested in lining their own pockets.”
Textbook publishers and the U.S. government are in on it, and the
mainstream media is too, because it has helped spread the lie that
college is a good investment. It goes without saying that this isn’t
true. In times of crisis, it’s always convenient if you can pin your
woes on a scapegoat, but even though there might in fact be some college
administrators whose intentions fit NIA’s profile, this probably isn’t
the case everywhere. Conspiracy theories are fun and exciting, but on
issues like this one, we need sober and balanced solutions if we want to
see real results.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Link: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/2716696/posts
PR Newswire ^
| May 7, 2011
| Gerard Adams
Posted on 5/7/2011, 8:50:44 PM by 2ndDivisionVet
The National Inflation Association (NIA) - http://inflation.us - is
pleased to officially announce that it will soon be releasing its hour
long documentary 'College Conspiracy', which will expose the U.S. college education system as the largest scam in U.S. history. NIA has been producing 'College Conspiracy'
for the past six months and plans to release the movie on May 15th. NIA
members will be given the first opportunity to watch this must see
documentary, which we hope will change the college education industry
for the better.
NIA expects 'College Conspiracy' to take
college education by storm and expose the facts and truth about tuition
inflation to prospective college students. Almost everybody applying to
college has heard the oft-repeated statistic that Americans with college
degrees earn $1 million more in lifetime income than high school
graduates without a degree. This is one of those statistics that gets
repeated so many times that just about everybody accepts it as fact, but
nobody actually does the research to confirm whether or not it is true.
'College Conspiracy' will prove once and for all if indeed this so-called statistic is true or just a myth.
If
70.1% of high school graduates enroll in a college or university, how
does a college degree give you an advantage over the rest of the
population? Back in the early 1960s, Americans didn't need to go to
college. We were a creditor nation with a strong manufacturing base.
With an unemployment rate of only 5%, jobs were available to almost
everybody. Less than 50% of American high school graduates enrolled into
college. For those who did attend college and graduate with a degree,
it was actually something special that made you stand out from the rest
of the field, because not everybody had one.
American college
tuition inflation has been out of control for the past decade. During
the financial crisis of late-2008/early-2009, almost all goods and
services in America at least temporarily declined in price. The only
service in America that continued to rise in price throughout the
financial crisis, besides health care, was college education. Despite
real unemployment in America reaching 22%, students were brainwashed
into believing that if they were lucky enough to be blessed with the
privilege to get half a million dollars into debt to obtain a college
degree, they will be on a path to riches and have a guaranteed
successful career; whereas those who don't attend college are destined
to be failures in life.
The current college education bubble is
one of the largest bubbles in U.S. history. The college bubble has been
fueled by the U.S. government's willingness to give out cheap and easy
student loans to anybody who applied for them, regardless of if they
will ever have the ability to pay the loans back. Student loan debt in
America is now larger than credit card debt, but unlike credit card
debt, student loan debt can't be discharged in bankruptcy.
During
the 1970s, college students were able to afford their own college
tuition without getting into any debt, simply by working a part-time job
year round or by working a full-time job during the summer. Not only
that, but most college students were also able to afford their own car
and a small apartment. However, since 1970, Americans have experienced a
50% decline in their standard of living due to the Federal Reserve's
dangerous and destructive monetary policies.
You never heard of parents
setting up college savings accounts for their children 40 years ago, but
thanks to the Federal Reserve, this has become the norm.
The
biggest competitive threat to Wal-Mart today in terms of market cap
($192 billion) is not Target ($35 billion) like you might think, but is
actually Amazon.com ($89 billion). Wal-Mart is able to offer the lowest
prices out of all brick and mortar retailers, because of the size and
scope of the company, which allows them to be profitable even at
extremely low gross margins.
However, while Wal-Mart's stock price is
only up 16% from where it was exactly 5 years ago, Amazon.com's stock
price is up 470% during this same time period.
Amazon.com's stock
price has risen by a 29 times higher percentage than Wal-Mart due to
the fact that they sell their products over the Internet with
substantially less overhead costs. NIA believes that the future of
college education is over the Internet and that Americans in the future
will be able to receive a better quality education from the best
professors from all around the world at only a fraction of the cost of a
traditional brick and mortar college education.
For the vast
majority of college courses, there is absolutely nothing that students
can learn in a huge multi-million dollar lecture hall with hundreds of
other students that they can't learn at home listening to that same
professor on a computer. The only reason online colleges haven't taken
off yet in America and still have less than a 1% market share of U.S.
higher education is because America has a college-industrial complex
that cares only about profits and not educating students. The people who
control the system simply don't want the system to change, because they
are making way too much money by turning American students into
indentured servants.
Back in the 1980s when Americans graduated
high school, they would get hundreds of thousands of dollars into debt
to buy a house. Today, millions of Americans have mortgage-sized debts,
but still live with their parents. All they have is a piece of paper
called a college degree, that is rapidly declining in value even faster
than tuitions are skyrocketing in price.
'
College Conspiracy'
was made possible by the personal stories that were submitted to us by
thousands of NIA members. NIA's staff spent the past six months
traveling across the country, interviewing our country's top expert
guests in nine different states. Please tell all of your family members
and friends to become members of NIA for free immediately at
http://inflation.us so that they along with you can be among the first
to see 'College Conspiracy'.
About us:
The National
Inflation Association is an organization that is dedicated to preparing
Americans for hyperinflation. NIA offers free membership at
http://www.inflation.us and provides its members with articles about the
U.S. economy and inflation, daily news stories and blog updates, and
important charts not shown by the mainstream media. NIA is the producer
of economic documentaries that have received a combined 10 million views
including the critically acclaimed 'Meltup', 'The Dollar Bubble', 'End of Liberty', and 'Hyperinflation Nation'.
NIA provides unbiased reviews of the major online sellers of gold and
silver bullion and also offers profiles of gold, silver, agriculture,
oil, and alternative energy companies that could prosper in an
inflationary environment. NIA is the creator of 'NIAnswers', the world's
most comprehensive database of questions and answers about inflation,
currencies, debt, and precious metals.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thanks and be that
"One Small Voice",
Proud National
Coordinator of the Family Survey Program
When One Deals with
the Child Protective AGENCY>>LearnMore
Need a Document
prepared for Publication?
