Unpopular opinions you hold

[Phil]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

Bush is an idiot. Therefore he is to dumb to have been responsible for all the ills of the world. If you believe that he is then you are a simpleton. That is all. :

i know. its the Illuminati.:p

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Phil

i know. its the Illuminati.:p

Sure them and The Jews....

Originally Posted by wolf

Calling a whore a "sex worker" doesn't make him/her any less of a whore.

I don't believe in assigning moral value to sex. In other words, sex for fun or profit is not immoral, bad, naughty, or any other silly, repressed word someone wants to assign to it. A whore is someone who dates someone for money or sex while lying to them about how they feel for them, that is a whore, male or female. Prostitution is illegal because of religion and that men are afraid of women having power over them.
Another of my unpopular opinions.

[kerosene]

Actually, I agree with that one, Rzkenrage. I think what a person wants to do with their own body is their choice.

[Perry Winkle]

If we have affirmative action based on skin color, then we should extend it to people with other physically undesirable qualities (in the opinion of our culture in general [I don't subscribe to the same standards :P]). So, fat people, short people, ugly people and people with visible body-mods should get benefits under the same legislation as minorities.

[Clodfobble]

You know, they have done study after study after study and determined that it is NOT race which indicates grades, employment, or any other measure of success, but rather socioeconomic status.--i.e., it's not that minorities are held down, it's that poor people are held down and minorities are statistically more likely to be poor.

I know this looks like thread drift, but it's not, see:

I think that if we're really going to attempt to "level the playing field," (which is impossible IMHO) then affirmative action should actually be in the form of an economic rating. Give young adults a score based on their parents' tax forms, and schools/employers can give preference to the lower numbers as they see fit. After the age of 25, you've had enough years to recover and you're on your own.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

You know, they have done study after study after study and determined that it is NOT race which indicates grades, employment, or any other measure of success, but rather socioeconomic status.--i.e., it's not that minorities are held down, it's that poor people are held down and minorities are statistically more likely to be poor.

I know this looks like thread drift, but it's not, see:

I think that if we're really going to attempt to "level the playing field," (which is impossible IMHO) then affirmative action should actually be in the form of an economic rating. Give young adults a score based on their parents' tax forms, and schools/employers can give preference to the lower numbers as they see fit. After the age of 25, you've had enough years to recover and you're on your own.

That form of thing already occurs with the FAFSA. If your kid goes to college, every parent must fill this out. It tells the college exactly how much money they can get from your parents and how much they don't have to help your kid to pay through grants or scholarship.

[Clodfobble]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

That form of thing already occurs with the FAFSA. If your kid goes to college, every parent must fill this out. It tells the college exactly how much money they can get from your parents and how much they don't have to help your kid to pay through grants or scholarship.

Ah, spoken like a good parent of a college student, not the student themselves. FAFSA is in fact completely voluntary, and many parents are dicks and refuse to give their information out. Shawnee123 works in a college financial aid office and can tell you all about how parents can suck. (My own father, in fact, refused to give his information for this purpose--not to be a dick, because we already knew I was never going to qualify for any aid anyway, but because he's a privacy nut.) I'm talking about pulling the information from their tax forms, no permission required. Furthermore, FAFSA has nothing to do with admissions, only how much they'll help you pay if you manage to get in on your own. The argument behind affirmative action is not that minorities can't afford college, it's that they're being held back from going in the first place.

[Shawnee123]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

That form of thing already occurs with the FAFSA. If your kid goes to college, every parent must fill this out. It tells the college exactly how much money they can get from your parents and how much they don't have to help your kid to pay through grants or scholarship.

The Department of Education's take is that a parent is "responsible for their children's education" until the child is 24. Though that is an abitrary age, imho, I agree with the concept. I've seen parents who make in excess of 100 grand a year who can't believe their kids don't get government assistance. What? You mean I should have been saving for my child's education rather than buying a new RV, a McMansion, and generally keeping ahead of the Joneses? Clodfobble is right, some parents are dicks. She is right in every aspect of her post. The problem for some students is that the parents know they make too much for the student to qualify for grants, but low interest federal student loans are also based on the FAFSA. For the parents who did not save, a loan may be the difference between a kid going to college at all, or maybe the difference between attending the college of their choice which may have a much better program in their field of interest.

The purpose of grants is to assist lower income families. Though there are system players, financial aid administrators try hard to follow the regulations as well as understand the individual challenges that each family may face. In the end, however, we have to abide by DOE regs.

I'm a liberal with closet conservative tendencies beyond my control, because of what I see every day. For a better synopsis of my view on the subject you can refer to this post, and the one after that.

As for scholarships, though some are based solely on need, most are academic or a combination of academics and need. Scholarships are governed by the donors; as administrators we just have to abide by the donor's wishes.

I know many kids of rich parents who were tossed out on their ass at 18, some who's parents steal from them to this day even though they have more money than their kids still. Knew several of them bustin'-it through college right along with me.
It is screwed-up.

[DanaC]

There's an idea floating around Whitehall at the moment to introduce some kind of check on university applicants to see if their parents have a degree.....idea being to try and increase the number of kids from lower income/less educated households getting into uni. Fucking studid idea if ever I heard one. Please for God's sake someone shoot our PM. Y'know we used to have a really good uni system over here. Any student who wanted to go to uni and had the a-levels to get in, was entitled to a grant to assist with living expenses and their tuition fees were covered by the state. It worked. It only stopped working when people got this idea that half the population should be attending university......brilliant...now a degree is worth what an a-level used to be and will just about get you a job in middle-management. Meanwhile the huge number of people who've been persuaded to get that degree whowould otherwise not, have encumbered themselves with huge debts.

[BigV]

Originally Posted by DanaC

There's an idea floating around Whitehall at the moment to introduce some kind of check on university applicants to see if their parents have a degree.....idea being to try and increase the number of kids from lower income/less educated households getting into uni. Fucking studid idea if ever I heard one. Please for God's sake someone shoot our PM. Y'know we used to have a really good uni system over here. Any student who wanted to go to uni and had the a-levels to get in, was entitled to a grant to assist with living expenses and their tuition fees were covered by the state. It worked. It only stopped working when people got this idea that half the population should be attending university......brilliant...now a degree is worth what an a-level used to be and will just about get you a job in middle-management. Meanwhile the huge number of people who've been persuaded to get that degree whowould otherwise not, have encumbered themselves with huge debts.

Hmm. So you're saying that more education is good, just so long that the inescapable consequences of supply and demand don't dilute the value of the degree of those that got into the market early--bought low, so to speak. And that the grants are ok, but not for the people who can't afford them? wtf?

[Perry Winkle]

I'm torn on the degree issue. I think the more people that have the opportunity the better. Though I don't think anyone should feel obligated to get a degree.

I only went and completed school because "that's the good and proper thing to do." And now I want to go on for even more education.

I actually think having the market value of a degree fall is a good thing. It just means that the baseline educational level of our population is rising. The bad thing is that academic standards are also being lowered.

[BigV]

Originally Posted by grant

--snip--
I actually think having the market value of a degree fall is a good thing.

ahem. I guess i forgot to raise my sarcasm flag, grant. Degrees have a market value, I agree. But having more of them doesn't dilute their value. I don't include bogus degrees in this equation. Those are crimes of a different color.

Originally Posted by grant

It just means that the baseline educational level of our population is rsing. The bad thing is that academic standards are also being lowered.

These are two different things. They have no causal relationship. The "meaning" you mention--I'm not buying it if you're selling it as a package deal. More (valid) degrees means more educated people and more knowledge as a whole. This is completely good.

Academic standards aren't static inert objects. When they're lowered dramatically, or arbitrarily, or improperly, it is a bad thing. Just decouple those two thoughts, and we're right in synch.

[DanaC]

Hmm. So you're saying that more education is good, just so long that the inescapable consequences of supply and demand don't dilute the value of the degree of those that got into the market early--bought low, so to speak. And that the grants are ok, but not for the people who can't afford them? wtf?

No. I am saying that in the drive to ensure more people go to university (as opposed to , say, technical college or polytechnics) every higher education establishment has been turned into a university and every conceivable subject is available at degree level (e.g a degree in hospitality). The problem with grants is that they have been replaced with loans. I absolutely subscribe to the idea that students attending higher education (whether that be for a degree or a diploma) should have a grant as they did up until about 15 years ago. Because now a degree or diploma is necessary for many entry level jobs where it wasn't before, more people are attending to get such degrees/diplomas this has been used as a justification for saying that the country cannot afford to give them all a grant therefore the grant has been replaced with loans. Now anybody who wants to seek a higher education has to either accept that they will be saddled with huge amounts of debt, or be lucky enough to come from a family with wealth enough to fund them. Fifteen years ago a working class kid could go to university or polytechnic if they had the a-level grades for the course and be sure that they would have just about enough to live on whilst they were in their course without incurring substantial debts.....it was, and is, free to attend college for a-levels if you are under 18 or unemployed. Unfortunately those a-levels are now worthless for anything other than entry to university level courses. Time was a couple of a-levels was the qualification needed for many entry level management type jobs. You could get a job as a researcher at a t.v company with three decent a-levels: now they won't even look at you unless you have a degree.

I love the idea of more people seeking education.....but not because it's the only way to get a decent job. I love the idea of more working class kids going to university....but not so they can do a degree in beauty therapy. We are selling these kids short, and charging them a fortune.

As for the idea of checking whether or not applicants to university have university educated parents.....I should have explained that in more detail: the idea is that in order to strike the correct balance between those people who are from an advantaged background and those who aren't, universities should check whether or not their applicants' parents have a degree...this would mean that if your parents had a degree you may end up being refused a place. This would be regardless of your parents actual economic status or your actual advantages in life...the fact that your parents have a degree would place you in a particular category. So, all those workingclass people who struggled and went to university when they were young but never got more than an average wage at the end of it would be treated the same as the wealthy families for whom a degree is a standard accoutrement.