{"id":3685,"date":"2006-02-03T09:33:01","date_gmt":"2006-02-03T17:33:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2006\/02\/03\/the-246-second-college-degree\/"},"modified":"2019-12-20T09:06:15","modified_gmt":"2019-12-20T17:06:15","slug":"the-246-second-college-degree","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2006\/02\/03\/the-246-second-college-degree\/","title":{"rendered":"The 24.6 Second College Degree"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:6971,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/seattletimes.nwsource.com\\\/html\\\/politics\\\/2002780385_spending03.html&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/seattletimes.nwsource.com\\\/html\\\/politics\\\/2002780385_spending03.html&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:6972,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/money.cnn.com\\\/2005\\\/10\\\/17\\\/pf\\\/college\\\/college_costs\\\/index.htm&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20240813125948\\\/https:\\\/\\\/money.cnn.com\\\/2005\\\/10\\\/17\\\/pf\\\/college\\\/college_costs\\\/index.htm&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-09 18:27:26&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:503},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-08 10:40:59&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:503}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-08 10:40:59&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:503},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:6973,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.concordmonitor.com\\\/apps\\\/pbcs.dll\\\/article?AID=\\\/20060201\\\/REPOSITORY\\\/602010312\\\/1037\\\/NEWS04&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.concordmonitor.com\\\/apps\\\/pbcs.dll\\\/article?AID=\\\/20060201\\\/REPOSITORY\\\/602010312\\\/1037\\\/NEWS04&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p><ins>Update:<\/ins> I munged up some of my math this morning and got the numbers slightly wrong. I&#8217;ve updated the post with correct numbers. They&#8217;re still scary and infuriating.<\/p>\n<p>According to this morning&#8217;s Seattle Times, the military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are costing approximately $118,000 <em>per minute<\/em> &#8212; <a href=\"http:\/\/seattletimes.nwsource.com\/html\/politics\/2002780385_spending03.html\" title=\"Seattle Times: Iraq war is costing $100,000 per minute\">$100,000\/minute for the war in Iraq, and $18,000\/minute in Afghanistan<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>CNN\/Money reported last October that the <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2005\/10\/17\/pf\/college\/college_costs\/index.htm\" title=\"CNN\/Money: College costs going nowhere but up\">average cost of attending a four-year public university<\/a> was approximately $12,127 per year, or $48,508 for four years.<\/p>\n<p>In other words, 2.69 minutes worth of the money we&#8217;re spending in Afghanistan would pay for the average four-year degree. Only 29.1 seconds worth of the money we&#8217;re spending in Iraq would do the same. So would 24.6 seconds of the two operations combined.<\/p>\n<p>Every day, we&#8217;re spending enough money in Iraq and Afghanistan to pay for <em>3,503<\/em> four-year public school college degrees.<\/p>\n<p>And yet, <a href=\"http:\/\/seattletimes.nwsource.com\/html\/politics\/2002780385_spending03.html\" title=\"Seattle Times: Iraq war is costing $100,000 per minute\">George Bush is asking for <em>$70 billion<\/em> more<\/a> to pay for those wars, while cutting education funding by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.concordmonitor.com\/apps\/pbcs.dll\/article?AID=\/20060201\/REPOSITORY\/602010312\/1037\/NEWS04\" title=\"Concord Monitor:  Bush cuts to education funding pound-foolish\">$12.7 billion<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n  The bill the U.S. Senate passed in the last hours of its 2005 session is called a &#8220;budget reconciliation&#8221; &#8211; an attempt to force the federal budget into balance with spending cuts or tax increases. But there&#8217;s no way to reconcile one of the biggest items on the chopping block, aid to education, with the long-term interests of the nation, its students, families and economy.<\/p>\n<p>  The bill includes a $12.7 billion cut in federal aid to education. The Senate passed it 51-50 with Vice President Dick Cheney casting the deciding vote. The cut, the first in federal education spending in more than a decade, accounts for nearly a third of the bill&#8217;s spending reductions.<\/p>\n<p>  [&#8230;] If the House approves them, the cuts will be very real. Here&#8217;s what they will mean:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>An increase in the federal Stafford Loan Rate from 4.7 to 6.8 percent. The will go to 8.25 percent in July.\n<p>  The higher interest rates mean that on average students will pay $2,000 more and parents $3,000 more.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Pell Grants to low and moderate-income students will remain frozen at $4,050 for the fourth straight year despite the president&#8217;s earlier promise to raise them to $5,100.<\/p>\n<p>  According to the American Council on Higher Education, Pell Grants covered 84 percent of the cost of attending the average public four-year college when they were created in 1972. They now pay 34 percent.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The cuts come at a bad time. In five years the average cost of tuition at a public university has increased by 57 percent, the cost of room and board by 44 percent. American higher education is becoming more unaffordable at a time when attending college has never been more important.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>A conversation Prairie and I had while walking into NSCC about how we&#8217;re going to afford getting me a degree prompted this little exploration. Meh. Not happy right now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Every day, we&#8217;re spending enough money in Iraq and Afghanistan to pay for _3,503_ four-year public school college degrees.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2042],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-3685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3685\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}