My first Kickstarter project created a book called 'Clear and Present Thinking', a college-level textbook on logic and critical reasoning, which was made available to the world for free. As a professor myself, I observed that the price of textbooks was too high for some of my students.
Maintenance grants, a proud Labour achievement which made it easier for children from lower and middle income families to go to university, have been abolished in one fell swoop. To be replaced with loans.
If we choose to keep those tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, if we choose to keep a tax break for corporate jet owners, if we choose to keep tax breaks for oil and gas companies that are making hundreds of billions of dollars, then that means we've got to cut some kids off from getting a college scholarship.
The President's call for more math and science students is not being heeded by his party's leaders in Congress. They are cutting over $10 billion from student aide while refusing to fully fund No Child Left Behind. Something doesn't add up.
We can't accept that it's O.K. if only some kids get to go to college.
I am told that today rather more than 60 per cent of the men who go to the universities go on a Government grant. This is a new class that has entered upon the scene ... They are scum.
As countries embrace mass higher education, the cost of maintaining universities increases dramatically relative to an elite system.
Back in the '70s when my friends in California were at Berkeley, in-state tuition was around $700 a year.
You can give your Social Security check to any organization, public or private, or to individuals. You can donate it to your favorite political party. You can give the funds to a student scholarship - for your grandchildren, for example - or to somebody who has a medical need. Or you can invest your government check in free enterprise.
Medical research is needed, and I just saw there was a need for help that the government - state or federal - was not spending the taxpayers' money on helping people get through college.
The Republicans claim they are for strengthening Pell grants when the truth is that over the last four years, their legislation has done the exact opposite.
There's no question in my mind that there's a problem with the funding of our universities here in Quebec.
... a threat to American education .... [Colleges would become] educational hobo jungles.
Commenting on the GI Bill of Rights when FDR signed it: