You know — for someone as seemingly as bright as you are, you focus in on Pell Grants vs. the real elephant in the room:  the fact that colleges and universities are not reigning in costs at their own instititutions.  The easier the access to grants and loans, the easier it is for these institutions to systematically raise costs for students.  Where’s the outrage there?  That’s the real issue. 

 Can we all agree that this is an instance of “mansplaining”?

I’m not sure what that even means, but I take it to mean that is your snarky way of trying to somehow diminish the validity of my comments.  That would be unfortunate, and I’m pretty sure we can all agree on that.  Of course, writing a blog on a website does necessarily imply omniscience, so I guess I should be summarily chastened for even attempting to point out the obvious.  

My remarks were directed at the author’s emphasis on Pell Grants (a gratuitous political shot)  vs. the absurd and unconscionable history of colleges and universities raising their fees far out of proportion with inflation/cost of living.  Part of the reason they do so is the fairly easy availability of loans and grants.  If these institutions know that prospective students can come up with costs somewhere, they have no incentive to keep costs in check.  

Hey, who cares if students are indebted for decades?  Not the schools, obviously.  But let’s go after those mean Republicans!  Yeah; that’s the ticket!  

Newsflash:  If there is ever going to be any kind of entitlement reform, any/all entitlements have to be on the table.  Everyone’s got their favorite subsidy and can make arguments why theirs should be favored over everyone else’s.  And that leaves us running in place, running up the debts for posterity.   

I’m also curious why thejanedough would rely upon HuffPo for the “facts” of this Pell Grant claim.  Personally, I’d prefer to get some independent analysis.  I believe I’ve found it from PolitiFact:

http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2012/aug/16/eva-longoria/desperate-housewives-actress-obama-activist-says-p/ 

And a correction above:  I used “reigning” when I should have said “reining” in my original post.  

That could lead to a sour mood and lack of productivity at work, and we
all know that doesn’t do wonders for a person’s office reputation. 

http://www.losangelesmoving.info

My primary response is that I agree that currently colleges of all sorts have some major internal issues, many of them related to funding. Case in point my local community college fired their newly hired President because she was tackling the local community’s adult education classes for cuts. She was fired mid-contract and thus there’s some overlap in pay between her and the new President. The cuts/restructuring will still be happening but there was so much community outrage over the old President’s lack of finesse that the board voted to fire her. These costs will be transferred to the students in the form of fee increases as well as reductions in vital services. And yet, internally the school struggles to address the years of spending based on faculty preference (purchasing expensive MACs for English faculty who could have done their work on cheaper computers). Schools that are not managing these internal problems do seem to need external pressure in order to actually address the source of fee increases.

With regard to there being little reason not to go the community college route, it entirely depends on the quality of the classes at the community college. I did go the community college route, financially it was the better choice but the quality varied dramatically versus the lower division to upper division classes I took once I transferred.

This was probably burn out of professors as well as the incredibly easy tenure route (don’t get fired for four years). Granted, at my university there was a dramatic quality difference in the classes taught by grad students (some were enthusiastic and others were obviously stretched to their limits).
As a side note, a lot of the hard partiers in my area were actually the community college folks who had very light class loads (semesters versus quarters).

But I can’t disagree that if someone cannot afford four years at a university it is much smarter to go to a community college for the first two years. My suspicion is that there are vast differences in the quality between community colleges which are influenced heavily by the demographics of the communities they reside in. Thus who the community college focusses its attention on.