Musings of an Educational Entrepreneur
By Benjamin Franklin
This column gives education leaders the opportunity to discuss higher education issues. For more information contact Jenny Faubert at 920-264-0199 or jfaubert@careereducationreview.net.
Ben Franklin here,
It’s a tough time for my fellow countrymen and women as I look to 2020. It is hard for me to understand the conflict and challenges facing our country that so many of my dearest friends fought to create. Political division, pandemics, civil unrest and economic uncertainty create challenges for our society that have crashed what seemed to be a country on the upswing at the beginning of the New Year just six months ago.
Nevertheless, career schools, like the colonists in 1775, face not only the evils of tortured time but the strong headwinds forced upon us by a less than honest leadership who are unable to see the benefits of a strong colonial society.
The headwinds of the career sector are led by political opportunists like Congressman Bobby Scott, Senator Dick Durbin, Senator Elizabeth Warren and others. Their interests in career education are political and ignores the reality of the students they say they defend. Like King George they use the power to destroy all that which they have no personal knowledge of. They send us their power to distract people from their real desire to destroy private enterprise and take away the freedom of choice of the American public.
Like the royal colonial government whose only interest was to perpetuate themselves and their Tory supporters, the above governmental officials want to ensure their own power and the interests of their political cronies. Why do these elected officials spend so much of their time trying to destroy the private career college sector? Why do they spend so much time and political capital to advance legislation that is clearly targeted to a small segment of higher education and ignore the decadent and corrupt elite public and nonprofit universities with bloated budgets, horrible outcomes and archaic practices that need significant reform?
We as colonists rebelled at similar incongruous policies that taxed us dearly and offered little benefits to average people. The current left-wing politicians see it as their God-given right to defend the union-dominated, tenure driven, liberal arts agenda that provide little if any return on investment to average people. Because private career school owners are entrepreneurs, small-business owners and private investors they are considered corrupt by these politicians because they divert federal dollars away from massive campus construction programs, gross featherbedding of union employees and inefficient use of taxpayer dollars. They make up stories about private career schools drawing away needed government money, when they know full well the dollars flow directly to the students and it is not the subsidy of individual institutions.
These politicians ignore that the funds for federal financial aid flows directly to the least advantaged seeking career education at private career schools rather than poorly managed social programs at community colleges and state universities. The tax money diverted to elite institutions in the form of tax-avoiding donations that make up enormous endowments that are not used for educational purposes.
This diverts money from the taxpayers which provides subsidies for the American elites who are comparable to the privileged society of England in the 18th century.
Make no mistake, the constant and consistent attack by the left-wing funded politicians and so called research groups like Center for American Progress, Veterans Educational Success, New America Foundation, TICAS, and Century Foundation are not interested in students, but they exist to protect an educational aristocracy that fosters a left-wing agenda. The capitalist foundation of the private career sector is a threat to that agenda.
Respectfully,
Ben Franklin