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PostPosted: Thu Aug 26, 2010 9:08 pm 
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Location: Dunmore, PA
I agree! A four year University college cost $21,000 to $35,000 per year!! A trade school is a third of that with skills to be able to create something. Even so, I still believe in apprenticeship. Nothing beats learning hands-on from someone with experience.


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PostPosted: Sun Jan 23, 2011 6:20 pm 
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long but good......




January 12, 2011

College Bubble Set to Burst in 2011

The National Inflation Association believes that the United States has a college education bubble that is set to burst beginning in mid-2011. This bursting bubble will have effects that are even more far-reaching than the bursting of the Real Estate bubble in 2006. College education could possibly be the largest scam in U.S. history.

NIA's advice to the youth of America today is to think for yourselves. Don't get suckered into overpaying for a college degree that is worthless because everyone else has one. College is only worth attending if you plan on actually learning something there. If you are only going to college because you think a piece of paper is going to help you find a job, you would be much better off skipping college and entering the workforce right now at any entry level job. Your experience will benefit you more than any piece of paper.

The median U.S. home price is currently $170,600, down 26% from its peak of $230,200 in July of 2006. The Dow Jones is currently 11,672, down 18% from its peak of 14,198 in October of 2007. Oil is currently $91 per barrel, down 38% from its peak of $147 per barrel in July of 2008. After the financial panic of 2008, the U.S. saw a collapse in the prices of just about all assets, goods, services, and commodities. Between lost stock market and home equity wealth, Americans lost $10.2 trillion in paper wealth in 2008, and have only recouped a fraction of it since then.

College is the only thing in America that never declined in price during the panic of 2008. It actually rose in price substantially. The annual tuition for a private four-year college was $21,235 in the 2005-2006 school year. Despite Real Estate beginning to collapse in late-2006, college tuition rose by 4.6% in the 2006-2007 school year to $22,218. Despite the stock market beginning to collapse in late-2007, college tuition rose by 6.7% in the 2007-2008 school year to $23,712. Despite oil and other commodities collapsing in late-2008, college tuition rose by 6.2% in the 2008-2009 school year to $25,177. Even after the Dow Jones crashed to a low in early-2009 of 6,469, college tuition still rose by 4.4% in the 2009-2010 school year to $26,273.

Annual tuition for a private four-year college in America is now $27,293, up 29% from five years ago. Meanwhile, the employment situation in the U.S. has deteriorated. There are currently 130.7 million non-farm jobs in America, down 3% from 134.5 million U.S. non-farm jobs in December 2005. 3.8 million jobs have been lost, while the U.S. population has grown by approximately 14 million people during the same time period. We would need to have seen the creation of 6.7 million non-farm jobs just to stay even, but now we are 10.5 million jobs short.

All across America, thousands of students are graduating law school each year with $250,000 in debt, but with no jobs at law firms available to them. 15,000 attorney and legal staff jobs have disappeared since 2008, yet 43,000 law degrees are being handed out each year. Law degrees are losing their value faster than the U.S. dollar is losing its purchasing power. Lawyers are non-producing workers that do nothing to create any real wealth for society. The artificially high incomes of lawyers are made possible entirely by inflation, which steals the wealth from hard working goods producing middle-class Americans and transfers it to those who add no real value to society.

The service sector currently makes up 76.9% of the U.S. GDP. Agriculture, which in 1933 made up 28% of GDP, currently makes up only 1.2% of GDP. The wealth of any country is primarily created at first from the production of food, oil, and precious metals. Secondly, wealth is created from the manufacturing of real consumer goods. After a country generates wealth by producing real things and builds a large domestic pool of savings, it can begin growing a service based economy, just so long as it has enough savings to support it.

During the past decade, an unprecedented number of Americans went to school to become lawyers, because they thought if they became a lawyer they would immediately become rich. 60% of the U.S. Senate and 37% of the House of Representatives are lawyers. The reason we have so many lawyers in Washington is so that they can pass as many new harmful laws and regulations as possible, in order to provide enough work for all of their lawyer friends. All of the needless legislation that is passed each year in order to provide work for lawyers, has the devastating unintended consequence of destroying what little is left of the free market. Small businesses are the backbone of the U.S. economy, but it is now nearly impossible for a small businessman with limited financial resources to build a large successful corporation in any sector, because their legal costs would eat up all of their profits.

Many law students got suckered into going to law school due to deceptive marketing practices. Some law schools are advertising that 90% of graduates are employed within one year of graduating. Sure, maybe 90% of law school graduates were employed a year later, with half of them working at McDonald's, but no law school degree is required for that. Schools are using dozens of unethical tactics to manipulate their numbers while encouraging alumni to falsify the surveys they fill out about their employment situation. Just like we are now seeing countless class action lawsuits against mortgage companies that misled customers about the loans they signed up for, we will soon see a massive number of lawsuits filed against colleges that lied about their job placement rates and average starting salaries of graduates. (At least there will be some work for law school graduates.)

Most Americans today are sheep who believe that the key to success and happiness in life is following the same career paths as everybody else. While everybody went to school to become a lawyer, nobody went to school to become a farmer because Americans didn't see any money in farming. With prices of nearly all agricultural commodities soaring through the roof in 2010 and with NIA expecting this trend to continue throughout 2011, the few new farmers out there are going to become rich while lawyers are standing at street corners with cups begging for money.

The college tuition bubble has been fueled by the U.S. government's willingness to give out easy student loans to anybody who applies for them. If it wasn't for government student loans, the free market would force colleges to provide the best quality education at the lowest possible price. By the government trying to make colleges more affordable, they have actually driven prices through the roof. Colleges have been encouraged to spend recklessly on wasteful construction projects, building new libraries, gyms, sports arenas, housing units, etc. Colleges spent $10.7 billion on construction projects in 2009. Although this is down from an average of $14.7 billion per year colleges spent on construction projects from 2005 to 2007, colleges are still struggling to pay off their old construction related debt. When interest rates start to rise, it will add further upside pressure to college tuition prices.

College students borrowed $106 billion in total student loans for the 2009-2010 school year, up from $96 billion in 2008-2009, $94 billion in 2007-2008, $87 billion in 2006-2007, and $83 billion in 2005-2006. Total student loan debt in the U.S. currently stands at $830 billion and now exceeds credit card debt. President Obama's new student loan bill that was passed last year now makes the government the primary lender to students. By taking the free market out of the student loan business and allowing students to receive loans from the government at artificially low interest rates, colleges will be encouraged to spend more recklessly than ever. None of this wasteful spending is doing anything to improve the quality of education in America.

Over a year ago when NIA was filming 'The Dollar Bubble' in Los Angeles, violent riots broke out at UCLA over a 32% increase in college tuitions (from $7,788 to $10,302). We went to the protest in order to video tape the shocking footage to show you. While we were there we remember thinking to ourselves, why on earth are these students protesting at all? If tuitions are rising by 32% and they are unhappy about it, why don't they quietly and peacefully enroll someplace else for college next semester. If not enough students enroll into UCLA, the university will be forced to either dramatically cut their costs or shut down. UCLA decided to completely ignore the riots and went ahead with the 32% rise in tuitions. Did the students decide to enroll someplace else? Nope, most of them simply took out larger student loans and went back to UCLA. In fact, UCLA reported that they received a record amount of freshman applicants for the next semester.

With all of the technological advancements taking place around the world today, the cost for a college education should be getting cheaper. Americans today can purchase just about any type of product they want over the Internet for substantially less than they can find it in a retail store. When the U.S. dollar collapses and the college bubble bursts, NIA predicts we will see a boom in online education where Americans take all of their courses over the Internet from the comfort of their own home at a fraction of the cost of traditional college.

Later this year, NIA is going to be producing a documentary about America's college education crisis and the college tuition bubble that is about to burst. In the weeks ahead, NIA is going to begin searching for people who deserve to be featured in our documentary. If you are a college student, a recent college graduate, or a current or ex-college professor with an extremely shocking, interesting, and important story that the whole world needs to know about in what will be the most viewed college documentary in world history, please send an email to collegebubble@inflation.us. We would also love to hear from any NIA member who has any ideas of topics that we should cover in this new documentary. Please send all ideas and suggestions to collegebubble@inflation.us.

This will truly be one of the most important documentaries NIA has ever produced. We need to change the mindset in America that only those with college degrees have any chance of becoming successful. Americans have become so brainwashed that even after graduating college with over $50,000 in debt and not being able to find a job, many of them are wasting even more years of their life and getting even deeper into debt to attend a graduate school, for a master's degree that is just as worthless as a bachelor's degree. It is like comparing a $10 bill (master's degree) to a $1 bill (bachelor's degree), they are both worthless pieces of paper with no intrinsic value.

NIA believes that any recent high school graduate with $30,000 saved for college who invests that money into silver and becomes a minimum wage apprentice for the next 4 years, will likely have enough money in 4 years to buy a median priced U.S. home. Not only that, but they will have work place experience that is far more valuable than the worthless college degrees of any of their friends. We must work hard to educate America to the truth if our country is going to have the wherewithal to survive the upcoming bursting college bubble and Hyperinflationary Great Depression.

It is important to spread the word about NIA to as many people as possible, as quickly as possible, if you want America to survive hyperinflation. Please tell everybody you know to become members of NIA for free!

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PostPosted: Sun Jan 23, 2011 6:22 pm 
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Location: WILKES-BARRE PA
.......great

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PostPosted: Sun Jan 23, 2011 7:11 pm 
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Location: SW Indiana
Eric,

Don't dispare. A good degree can't hurt. Everyone may end up riding a shovel, but if things turn around guess who has an advantage.

Now a degree in basket-weaving or rock-throwing is another thing.

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PostPosted: Sun Jan 23, 2011 7:36 pm 
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id like to post my story......

went to a local technical school after hs for 2 years for electronics. 18 grand. got a job at the airport after much pestering to do clean up work. they learned that i was working on planes for several years and upgraded me to an apprentice mechanic working with another. theres 2 ways you can get an aviation mechanics licence. work full time for 3 years, or go to a 2 year school for it. i chose to get paid for 3 years and get mine. got my licence in 2002. now, a buddy of mine at work that we hired a few years ago right out of school has the same license as me however working in the field to get it i learned much more real world stuff than the way the book says it should be. heres the point of the story, and its a big one so its going to get its own paragraph!!

i worked for 3 years and got paid decent money for 3 years to get the same license that a guy has who went to a penn state school for 4 years to get an aviation degree that he had to finance the entire thing and put himself 100 grand in debt. but, yes, he has a "bachelors degree" now.

i believe mike a. has a similar story.......

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PostPosted: Sun Jan 23, 2011 7:48 pm 
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I'll not debate the issue. There are examples.

But if you want to change directions or a young person who is unsure of what direction they want to go, A degree, especially a BS will allow more freedom in years to come.

Vo Tech degrees / 2 yr certificates or BA degrees are mostly throw away. OK for specific things but not flexible.

I know you youngsters disagree with me, but I well understand getting locked in a position you don't want to be.

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PostPosted: Thu Feb 03, 2011 2:05 pm 
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Location: Above the Sterling Hill Mine
I think it all depends on the job and what field you want to go into. In the case of Chris and working for a smaller company, they probably care more about the license, experience and abilities than they would for someone who went to tech school to get the same license.

If someone is applying for a larger company, especially for a non technical area, a lot of Human Resource departments and non-technical managers who are just looking for the best person "on paper" for the job, they are going to look at your schooling and years of education and experience to determine if they think you are fit for the job.

For a more technical job like in computers, server admin, etc., a company might have a requirement that you have some sort of college degree, but may lean more on your resume and years of experience to determine if you are fit for the job or not.

My recommendation would still be for the college degree, but the way I view it, it is the piece of paper that counts. In most positions, it doesn't matter if your piece of paper is the local county college or a very expensive university, it is the fact you have a college degree and experience that gets you the job. Going to an expensive school doesn't really help these days. It might look better for your first job, but once you are in the field working job to job to job, it really doesn't matter what school you went to 10, 15, 20 years ago. I know a friend I work with in the computer field that graduated with a degree in music! It really doesn't matter what the 'piece of paper' is, but most larger companies want something.

Miner Greg


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