Wonkette
Since it’s the Depression and all, get ready for skyrocketing educational costs! State governments have no munnies for their public schools, and all the private schools wasted their endowments on AIG stock, so increased tuition costs get passed along to you, the consumer! And since there are no jobs waiting for you at the end of your fancy four-year degree anyway, why bother? Soon it will cost approx. 14 kajillion dollars to get your diploma from some middling liberal arts school, so that you can send literally two-thirds of your take-home pay to your student loan consolidator while you work behind the counter at Enterprise Rent-a-Car, a job you could have easily gotten with a high school diploma and half a brain.
The cost of college rose over 400 percent in the 25-year period from 1982 to 2007, while American incomes rose about 150 percent. Should this trend continue, we are all doomed to mortgage our worthless houses plus maybe a couple of our worthless children, maybe have them boiled down for copper or whatever, so that we can send our remaining kids to “college” because “trade schools” are shameful institutions where people learn actual skills. (To be fair, many trade schools are hella expensive as well.)
Either that, or nobody will go to college anymore except for extended members of the Bush family, while the rest of us revert to our feral, be-tusked state and roam the streets in savage packs looking for lawyers to consume.
College May Become Unaffordable for Most in U.S. [New York Times]
Enterprise Rent-A-Car? Try Thrifty! Gawd I dream of hittin’ the Big Green.
C’mon Sarah, nobody’s buying copper anymore! Hand-made, organic French Milled Soaps however….
…phew! Thank god I stopped paying my student loans 12 months ago!
sarah, we just had a post earlier about how worthless copper is. im sure what you meant to say was mug your elder relatives for teh gold in their teeth.
“The cost of college rose over 400 percent in the 25-year period from 1982 to 2007, while American incomes rose about 150 percent.”
It’s OK. This way we can have a permanent underclass to do all the grunt work. We can’t have equal access to education for everybody, that would be socialism and wrong.
The “College Affordability Index,” whatever that is, says that 49 out of 50 states has completely FAILED. The only one that passed, with a “C” no less, is California. I can tell you people as a veteran of our system, getting a “C” sucks balls too.
That’s not a secret hobo sign…
he’s playin’ table top blunt football and his opponent just nailed a field goal right into his yap.
Is it wrong that I kind of like the sweater the hobo is wearing? I wonder if he got it at Macy’s.
I’m going to start paying my loans with dead bear carcasses, and maybe put political signs on them.
Actually, I werk at a college, and the student werkers get pretty surly when they see me Wonkin’-Off. To ameliorate them, I do their homework. Now half of them are failing.
Not being able to afford an education will prepare those young folks for not being able to afford a house. Actually, we should just saddle them with unbearable debt as soon as they pop out of the womb. Wait — Dubya’s done that for us.
American College professors will finally assume their rightful position to become the richest people in the world. Too bad no one will be able to afford to hear them speak. Or understand what they say since they can’t afford education.
Long live the true elitists
AngryBlakGuy: You stopped paying them or you paid them off? If the latter, huge mistake, you could take a private jet (or 2) to DC and demand a bailout. Shame on you for paying off your debts
We’re looking at paying back a fat six figure tuition bill for my about-to-graduate daughter with a degree in dramatic arts. She’s talented and quite good looking. Do any of my fellow commenters have a job for her? Starring in your homemade pr0n movies is not an option.
When are corporations going to get with it and open “colleges” (sweatshops) where kids can earn a FREE DEGREE just for ten years of minimum wage work. You might think I’m being snarky, but I bet this would do better than National American University or Phoenix University Online.
Sarah Palin didn’t get a college education, and look what she’s become!
The world needs ditch diggers, Danny.
“…The world needs ditch diggers too, Danny”
Theodorick Of York: Score!
Skills? You need marketable skills? Learn how to cook meth. In the coming depression years everyone will want to get high. Why? To escape that sinking feeling they get when looking at that “diploma” earned from that fancy “university”.
Thegreatbacon: As long as they pad the advertising process with plenty of hooks for “advancement” like Teach For America.
According to an earlier article in the NYT, all the cool kids are going to college in thrifty Scotland or somesuch anyway. Or all the prep school kids who want to spend four years at a pub far far away from Mummy and Daddy, on their tab. One or the other.
Tusks? I always wanted to be a saber toothed tiger! ROWR
I thought the hobo was Jack Nicholson.
Jeez, no more college education for anyone. Good news for Republicans! That means Republicans will win every election from here on out.
BillyClubb:
Dope’ll getcha thru times with no money better than money’ll getcha thru times with no dope!
bitchincamaro: It’s either politics or waitressing. I suggest starting with a state House run.
…at this rate there may actually come a time when the girls at the strip joints really are just stripping to put themselves through school!!!
hedgehog: HA!dano: Double HA!
I’ll just get a little more oil.
BillyClubb: i know how tyo cook meth but the guvmint is makin that next to impossible with their 2 box rule.
Looking for lawyers to consume? I can assure you, we are mostly tough and tasteless. Try the roasted haunch of Alaska governor, instead.
So, no more comparative literature doctoral candidates serving me iced tea in Austin, TX in their eighth year of an “education” at a state run school? Hmmmm…what will I do?
I said a few threads down that we’re all slaves now.
This was how I knew that.
Whew! Glad I got that beauty shop degree, I can trim tusks!
I shall go forth to become a wandering Hobo Preacher, teaching gigolo math in the lotus position (which is one rotation and a twist from the ‘69 position’) for the edification of all.
sanantonerose: Lost minds think alike.
rev_matt_y: I thought is was Christopher Lloyd.
smellyal8r: It may be MBA candidates instead. Plus the Harry Ransom Center no longer has room for any students; it’s too full of old papers & Ezra Pound’s chess set and such.
bitchincamaro: you know i was going to say something snarky about the dramatic arts and a ‘viable financial future’ but with today’s job market as it is? she’s better off.
and at least she’s prepared for the odds.
Hella.
This is great news because now I can just walk the earth, meet people… get into adventures. Like Caine from “Kung Fu.”
Sara K. Smith: Utopianist
I know Photoshop. I’ll make my Neo-Depression fortune falsifying transcripts and diplomas for everyone! I mean… Dubya graduated Yale; how hard can it be to fake that level of education, right?
For an extra $50 I’ll throw in two gallons of authentic homemade moonshine brewed right in my bathtub. Or you can pay me in squirrel carcasses so I can make stew and fine fur apparel for use in the shanty towns. (How I will keep my Mac running in the shanty town I have not yet figured.)
What a shame that future generations will not have the privilege of being drunk and stoned, 24/7, for five years.
rev_matt_y: sanantonerose:
Nick Nolte mug shot?
hedgehog: You have learned well, grasshopper.
chascates: Hey, where’d they put all that memorabilia that Robert De Niro gave to UT?
The other NYT piece on the subject I didn’t read was about people going to college abroad. Chancy, especially if you don’t know the language, although I understand that the University of Limerick has a decent pun department.
hedgehog: are you a Bad mother fucker too?
Looked into consolidating my wife’s Sallie Mae loans, well, SM no longer finds loan consolidation “uneconomical” and has since supended it. Want to know what we find “uneconomical”? Paying $800/month. Fuck you Sallie Mae! …cheap bitch.
I read this while working behind the counter at a Ryder-Truck-Rental. With a co-worker who easily got the job with a high school diploma and half a brain. Thank you Baby Jesus!
Thegreatbacon: No, silly, hobos don’t go to Macy’s. They shop at Old Navy.
“Nearly two pounds of still-green plant material found in a 2,700-year-old grave in the Gobi Desert has just been identified as the world’s oldest marijuana stash, according to a paper in the latest issue of the Journal of Experimental Botany.
A barrage of tests proves the marijuana possessed potent psychoactive properties and casts doubt on the theory that the ancients only grew the plant for hemp in order to make clothing, rope and other objects.
They apparently were getting high too”
sanantonerose: That’s in the Harry Ransom Center also. With the crap from Gone With the Wind and Hermann Goering’s copy of Mein Kampf and all the other cultural artifcats that make the expensive University of Texas such a valuable education. To the regents of UT, that is.
hedgehog: Don’t forget your crown, cape, and folding chair.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hd7y6A-5uTY
…get your diploma from some middling liberal arts school, so that you can send literally two-thirds of your take-home pay to your student loan consolidator while you work behind the counter at Enterprise Rent-a-Car, a job you could have easily gotten with a high school diploma and half a brain
If you added “read Wonkette” and changed the job, you’d be telling my life story.
That hobo looks like Santa on a weekend bender in mid-January.
chascates: Wow. I didn’t realize that the HRC was on par with the Alexandrian Library.
Didn’t this already happen about ten years ago?
NoWireHangers: This sounds so familiar.
“while the rest of us revert to our feral, be-tusked state and roam the streets in savage packs looking for lawyers to consume” until we are given hope by clever lawyers - the hope of gunning down people in the 3rd world.
As Ricky Gervais said on his HBO Special “how does it feel to be a third world country?”
Dagnabbit. Without college how will America’s youth perfect their World Of Warcraft skills?
This is the end of the world as we know it.
Oh Enterprise… I worked at one for about six weeks until I got a DUI and lost my license. You know? “Enterprise - We’ll Pick You Up!” Well, not without a license we won’t. Jebus that was a horrible job anyways.
I think I know that guy in the photo! How bizarre. Seriously, I think it’s a friend of a friend of mine in England, a guy called ‘Onion’.
all snark aside, i want to throw up when i read this. the amount of loans i had to take out for school keeps me awake at night.
polichi: Well, you should be working at night anyway.
How many job you got? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jpu5_3qk4KM&feature=related
jagorev: The watch cap is Old Navy, that’s for sure, but I don’t think the sweater is. I’m amazed he can keep a white sweater that clean. Hobos these days are cleaner than I remember them being. Back in my dad, a hobo would have given that sweater a good “browning” within a day of putting it on.
All these heartless fuckers…i fucked up a little yeah, but i am strapped for a whopping 40.000 after I borrowed, like, 14,000. All because they CAN. I give them 200 bucks a month, and if they ever call, i just go ” i’m keeping up with my agreement” and they get all, where’s your payment? and i’m all in the mail-good luck finding it.
One of the greatest pleasures and priviledges of life is totally a thing of the past for a working-class person in America now.
I guess i’m supposed to start sewing ugly shirts somewhere or something…oh. There aren’t any factories anymore…wait..wha??
I meant, “Back in my day…”
Looks like our new Secretary of Education
or CIA Director.
Glad that’s done.
And the winner for best use of the word “be-tusked” goes to… Sara K. Smith of Wonkette. Congratulations, Sara. This must be a dream come true for you.
Speaking of hobos AND Harry Ransom Center at UT, HRC has a copy of American tramp and underworld slang. Words, and phrases used by hoboes, tramps, migratory workers and those on the fringes of society, with their uses and origins. With a number of tramp songs
I want my own copy soooooo bad.
Oh the plus side, I will have my handy degrees to lord over the hapless mouthbreathers of future generations. We can be like the Greatest Generation, and hold on to our jobs as long as we possibly can just so no one else can have it.
bitchincamaro: Teach English in China.
Zhu Bajie
sanantonerose: All the other libraries on the UT campus are stuffed with old copies of the Utne Reader.
JamesMichaelCurley: Herodotus, in the Scythian chapter, told us all about it millenia ago.
Zhu Bajie
College is ALREADY unaffordable. The fact that most private institutions cost $50,000 a year is inexcusable. There is absolutely no way that the cost of educating one student even comes close to that cost. I’ve been on many campuses in the last few years and every one looks like a resort, not a college. Buildings of wall to wall marble and gyms that are nicer than the fanciest private club are NOT educating our children. In addition, why does the president of every institution have to live in an outrageous mansion? These colleges have been hoarding huge amounts of money in “endowments” that just keep growing. It is insulting and arrogant for any institution to claim that they have to raise tuition because of the economy. If you pay tuition for your children to attend these schools NEVER donate anything to them-half of what you are paying is already a forced donation.
smellyal8r: haha. Seriously, steal me that hobo book!
Hooray For Anything: “As Ricky Gervais said on his HBO Special “how does it feel to be a third world country?”
Damn. I actually had a conversation on a plane to London in 1978, on the way to my first trip to England (I had a degree in English history so I thought, WTF, go have a look at the place. Must be better than Okrafuckinghoma) and actually had this very conversation with a Brit. I offered that, since our empire was fading, I hoped we went down gracefully, but feared it would not be so and in our wake would leave people around the world hating us and wanting to get even.
Fuck! That was 1978!!!! I am fucking prescient! Why don’t I have a Noble prize? Or at least a lucrative consultant job as a “futurist”?
Except, anyone half-ass smart can be a futurist these days. The future is fucked, and we who are in it are fucked.
I have now exhausted my daily quota of “fuck,” and will be signing off.
“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”
Mark Twain
On the plus side, I can finally justify my English degree: “I wouldn’t have a job anyway.”
I am Jacks life.
I enslave Jack to the cost of things he could learn at the library for nothing.
I follow Jack everywhere he goes.
If Jack dies and has noone to pass me on to, where do I go?
If Jack fakes his death while moving to another country, does he abandon me like an onery teenager at a Nebraska hospital?
Lawyers have a really oily aftertaste, besides do you have any idea how many times you have to scrub one before he’s clean enough for the oven? Granted, their livers make a delicious pate but post the impending apocalypse, where are we going to find a cracker?
Give me a wall street trader any day of the week. The lifelong combination of fine food and no physical work makes them roughly analogous to grain fed veal. A little red wine, perhaps a picante sauce….now that’s hobo heaven baby.
bitchincamaro: If she’s not afraid of heights and can handle power tools, a lucrative career as a satellite TV installer can be hers.
Anyone want to bet we’re gonna be bailing out colleges next?
Caption: “My dad went on the road with Jack Kerouac, and all I got was this lousy sweater.” OR
“This is your lumberjack on meth.”