Rmoney says that college students want handouts.

[RandySF]

In Ohio Monday, Mitt Romney said that students are “pulling back” from President Obama and predicted that Obama will try to win students by promising “a lot of free stuff,” reports ABC News.

Romney said that the answer to financing higher education “is not to say, ‘Let’s have the federal government give unlimited loans, no interest to everybody who wants them.’”

“By the way, you’re going to hear that,” Romney said. “In an effort to try to get them engaged, he’s going to promise to give a lot of free stuff to them. And to say, ‘I’ll pay for your education,’ or ‘I’ll get rid of the loans.’”

Romney suggested he would try to lower tuition costs by increasing competition between universities. Romney has said he supports an extension of the subsidized government student loan program currently pending in Congress.


http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entries/romney-obama-will-promise-free-stuff-to-win

[DCKit]

1. "Free" loans? I guess the .001% really are different from the rest of us.

We're not all "Friends of Angelo's".

[limpyhobbler]

2. Sounds odd coming from somebody wo has gotten everything free his whole life. nt

[Quantess]

5. My thoughts exactly.

This is classic projection. Almost all of Romney's thoughts are motivated by money, how to get more stuff for himself. And here he is, accusing students of being motivated solely by getting "free stuff". You know, some people have values and morals other than making a buck.

[Selatius]

3. One way the government could lower tuition costs is require vigorous audits of account ledgers.

Find out exactly where the tuition increases are coming from. If the increased costs are going too much towards executive compensation and not enough toward infrastructure, research/development, food costs, health care for students, etc., then you'll know exactly what's going on beyond simply that the state or federal government isn't subsidizing education costs as much as it used to as a percentage of tuition.

[Zalatix]

4. Please make a thread from this comment.

More people need to seriously see this. You are more right than you realize.

[Skittles]

6. Mittens would never interfere with the 1% getting unworldly profits

it would bring questions to exactly how "hard" he worked for HIS money

[MrYikes]

7. I saw on tv yesterday

at Ball State in Indiana: a full prof gets $85k, the pres gets $415k the athletic director gets $210k.

[aquart]

12. +1000

[BadgerKid]

16. What 'they' tell us

is that in order to attract and retain the best faculty, tuition must go up and worker benefits must get reduced. Research funding from government sources keeps getting more difficult.

[longship]

8. Free stuff????

Gee, Willard. D'ya mean like tax breaks for millionaires? Or, maybe offshore accounts in the Caymens? Whatta ya talking about here? Maybe college students are all getting free unicorns who fart rainbows, eh? D'ya think maybe we ought to close down all the universities so those spoiled brat kids don't get any free stuff?

Willard, BTW. Where did you get your wealth? Wasn't it from your Daddy? Isn't that free stuff?

You're a fucking, idiotic jerk.

[HiPointDem]

9. lower tuition cost by increasing competition between universities. jeez. what a great idea.

the ruling class collludes, they don't compete. but they want everyone else to compete for the scraps from their tables.

and we're so stupid we do it, like dogs.

[David__77]

10. "increasing competition between universities" wtf?

That is a bunch of baloney right there...

[aquart]

11. "Competition between universities"?????

Please tell me we have audio and video of that insane statement.

[liberal N proud]

13. How can the pollsters even claim this race is close?

This guy couldn't run for student council and he thinks he can run for President.

[quaker bill]

14. A bizzare notion

"increasing competition between universities"

Rmoney should well know that competition in a free market only happens in situations of excess supply or for rare resources.

Universiies already compete for all star running backs and quarterbacks. They compete for kids with 4.0 GPAs and +/-1600 SATs / GREs. They will only start competing for kids with 3.0 GPAs and 1100 SATs when there are so many seats available in classes that these kids become a rare commodity. The only way this happens is if the supply of seats in classes is vastly increased.

There is an experiment underway currently with massive on-line courses being conducted by MIT and a few other schools. At least one of the courses is being prepared for as many as 100,000 students to be in attendance. This would massively expand the number of seats available and reduce the cost per student to produce the class. They believe that they may have a model which provides massive interaction and maintains quality, but it is just in the experimental stage. This obviously would only work with selected material.

In my field, wetlands ecology, at some point there is no substitute for strapping on the snake boots and getting a bit wet. With an MBA it might be a bit different.

All this aside, it is still hard to see why universities would begin to compete for average or less than average students. The "free trade" model has long depended on the unfortunate notion that we would become a massively educated workforce. You can only get there in theory by having many average kids become graduates. This requires the majority of us to successfully attend college. The sink or swim model most universities offer only works for those who can swim. As you head down the GPA / SAT / GRE scale, the proporton of swimmers declines. At some point along this scale, univertities stop competing for kids, in many majors it stops near a GPA of 3.8 to 3.9 and an SAT of 1400, or just a few hundreths of a second too long in the 40 yard dash with full pads.

[treestar]

15. How is Rmoney proposing to "increase competition" between universities?

Why does he suppose the President can just order that?

The only way to do that is more universities. Who is going to build them?