DEBUNKING A UNIVERSITY EDUCATION

Gary North tells you how the university system works and how you can avoid being ripped off. You can get a fully recognized degree for a tiny fraction of the usual cost if you know the ropes. A small excerpt:

"If the degree-granting system were really honest -- if it were not run by a cartel -- then accredited college degrees would be offered to any person who could pass the same exams that the tuition-paying students also have to pass. If the student could learn the material on his own, but pass the standardized exams, then he would get the degree.

Accrediting associations don't allow this. Why not? Because it would bankrupt hundreds of colleges that are protected from true competition by the accrediting associations. It would wipe out the colleges' tuition system, real estate system, and low teaching load system.

In every system, there are loopholes. Accreditation has left intact at least seven of them. Hardly anyone knows about all seven. One of them is off-campus learning.

Off-Campus Learning

Off-campus learning is a huge threat to the economics of today's campus-based system of higher education. But a few colleges do offer it in the name of democracy. The accreditors dare not ban these programs altogether, for that would be undemocratic, but they monitor them carefully to make sure that the programs don't get too price- competitive.

Only about 10% of 4-year colleges and universities offer their students as many as half a dozen degree programs by distance learning, even if they offer a hundred majors to on-campus students. Most of these schools charge the same tuition to distance-learning students that they charge to on-campus students, even though off-campus students don't use the colleges' real estate. Nevertheless, some real bargains have slipped through the cracks. But you have to know about their existence and then go looking for them.

Colleges like to pretend that off-campus learning is substandard, second-best education. But is off-campus learning really substandard? The evidence says otherwise. The most recent evidence suggests that off-campus learning is superior to traditional classroom education, from high school through college.

Maybe you think I'm exaggerating. Maybe you think there is some tremendous educational benefit that students receive by attending classes on a college campus, compared to the education gained by students who learn at home. Let me prove to you that you're wrong.

Well, actually, I won't prove this to you. Thomas L. Russell will. He has been studying this question for a long time. He has gone back and looked at the published evidence of the comparative performance of students who have taken their courses on-campus vs. those who have taken their courses off-campus. These academic studies go back to 1928.

Russell's amazing discovery is this: there is no significant difference in student performance. This is what study after study has shown, decade after decade.





GOOD FOR ARNIE

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has tapped a local charter school advocate to head a statewide effort to revitalize low-performing schools. Margaret Fortune, who spearheaded the conversion of Sacramento High School into a charter school in 2003, was named Tuesday as the director of the Governor's Initiative to Turn Around Failing Schools. Fortune served for two years as the superintendent of St. HOPE Public Schools, overseeing two Sacramento charter schools serving about 2,000 students. She left that organization in November to become a consultant with the California Charter Schools Association, where she worked with communities around the state to convert traditional schools into charter schools. Fortune said she helped convert four low-performing San Diego schools into charters earlier this month.

She said her appointment to the governor's initiative reflects Schwarzenegger's long-standing interest in charter schools. "When I was a local school superintendent at Sacramento High School, the governor reached out to me in my effort to turn around that failing school," Fortune said.

The initiative stems from Schwarzenegger's budget proposal this year in which he called for intervention by teams of educators and charter school conversions for the state's lowest-performing campuses, said Rose Garcia, spokeswoman for Secretary of Education Richard Riordan. Both of those options already exist under current law, but Fortune said her job will be to encourage communities to take advantage of them. That includes helping convert some schools to charter schools and working with teams of educators to create changes at other schools. Fortune said she will work with parents, students and teachers to reform the state's lowest-performing schools.

The process of turning Sacramento High School into a charter school sparked years of acrimony between Fortune and the local teachers union. Now that she is in a statewide education position, leaders of the California Teachers Association are questioning her role. "If they're sincere about trying to turn around low-performing schools, converting them to charter schools has not proven to be the answer," said spokeswoman Sandra Jackson. "How is converting into a charter school supposed to ensure these students get the resources they need or the support they need?"

More here

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

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