Obama does Edu-care

 
Obama is making his case to do for colleges and students what he did for healthcare, by screwing it up even further. But since he does it under the guise of “encouraging”, then everything should be copacetic because they say so.

Obama Plan Encourages College Admissions to Discriminate Against Families Earning $60,000+

August 23, 2013 – By Terence P. Jeffrey

(CNSNews.com) – President Barack Obama’s college reform plan, released by the White House on Thursday, would encourage colleges to discriminate against applicants who come from families with total incomes of $60,000 or more by awarding colleges higher federal ratings and increased federal aid for admitting a higher “percentage” of students who receive federal Pell Grants, which the Department of Education says are for “low-income” students.

According to a study by the Congressional Research Service, in the 2007-2008 school year, only 2.3 percent of undergraduates who were still dependent on their parents, and whose total family income was $60,000 or more, received Federal Pell Grants.

According to the College Board, in the 2010-2011 school year, only 5 percent of all Pell Grants were distributed to dependent students whose total family income was $60,000 or more.

Colleges that admit and graduate a higher “percentage” of students on Pell Grants–as the Obama plan would encourage them to do–will necessarily admit and graduate a lower percentage of students who are not on Pell Grants.

A college that based its admissions policies solely on the merit of the individual applicant–and did not consider the applicant’s family income or eligibility for a Pell Grant in deciding whether to offer the applicant a place at the school–could be penalized under the Obama plan with less federal aid for itself and for its students if its merit-only admissions policy resulted in a student body with a lower percentage of Pell Grant recipients than other schools.

The Obama plan also would reward colleges for having higher overall graduation “rates” and for graduating a higher “number” of students on Pell Grants–which could provide colleges with an incentive to lower the academic standards for earning a diploma.

“The Federal Pell Grant Program provides need-based grants to low-income undergraduate and certain postbaccalaureate students to promote access to postsecondary education,” says the Department of Education. “A Federal Pell Grant, unlike a loan, does not have to be repaid.”

“In FY 2009,” the CRS reported, “an estimated 76 percent of all Pell Grant recipients had a total family income at or below $30,000.”

If a family of three included a father and a mother, who both worked 40 hours a week for the minimum federal wage of $7.25 an hour, and an 18-year-old son going off to college who did not work a single hour the entire year, the total annual income of that family would be $30,160. That would put them slightly above the income level of three-quarters of Federal Pell Grant recipients. […/]

– See more at: http://cnsnews.com/news/article/obama-plan-encourages-college-admissions-discriminate-against-families-earning-60000#sthash.7M4jRiny.dpuf

Oh, do I smell a shell game in the works? Here we are wanting to fun-da-mentally transform the country again.

Dems are great at these kind of schemes because they can make up the rules as they go, to suit their purposes; they can base it on income and governmental redistribution, which they love to do; and they can pander to a large demographic (target); and they can use force of government tied to government’s institutional funding, to accomplish it all. However, the tiny little objective of making schools better has little to do with it.

There are few analogies I can come up with except what they did for healthcare was so great, wasn’t it? I mean they said they were going to improve the system for everybody, and the care one gets, by using the force of government to do it. If they only knew years ago that all it needed was more government force to correct problems.

Government knows hardly anything about any of these sectors it jumps into, and then tells them how their business or industry needs to operate. It works every time, no?

In this case education, which they have been screwing up for about 60 years or more directly. (and longer indirectly) Our public school system should be exhibit F in any debate. Now they insist on doing more to screw up higher education than they are currently doing. Help it the way they help fix public education.

Where do the government-mandated failures manifest themselves? They travel right down the chain into the public cesspool to corrupt it even further. Bacteria is a good thing in septic systems, not so much in school systems. Their end product does not look so good. Then again, was the ‘end product’ or ‘process’ their real objective?

Leave it to Dems to decide that higher tuition — which they helped cause — is a problem. I know we are talking about colleges and universities here, not public schools. But hey, since they do so well on the latter, why not have them do more for the former? It’s a natural course, don’t you think? They have problems with vouchers and charter schools, but no problem providing so-called opportunities in higher education.

Really though, give Dems a few numbers or a math problem and they will find all kinds of ways to manipulate the figures and results. So this is right in their wheelhouse, and plays into their redistribution schemes. It is not about improving education, or even access, but improving a certain kind of access. (they aren’t great at picking winners and losers either)

He wants more of a certain income level… have a “right” to it. Just apply government force and coercion. This is the guy who told Hillary if a government mandate was the simple answer to the problem, they would have fixed healthcare long ago. Then he proceeded to do exactly that, use government force. Now government is chief discriminator.