A $355 Textbook!

I came across this article about a Western Michigan University religion class that requires a $355 textbook, which is written by the professor!  That's a shock there.  To continue, the total cost of the required books for his class is $638.  There are seven required books and five of them are written by the professor, 83 year-old Rudolf Siebert. 

The story gets better from there (Click to Read the Story), but Siebert contends that students don't actually need to purchase all the books, and they certainly shouldn't buy his expensive one.  That begs the question, then why make it a requirement?  College textbooks is such a scam that this story just puts more fuel on the fire.  How many books did you actually use that were "required"?  I always bought my books online from Half.com and when I had a literature class, I had my local city library find the books in advance for me to check out.  It was still a pain, and even though I think I made a profit by selling back my online books to the school bookstore, the outrageous cost of books still made me upset. 

Higher Education Spending in Michigan

Michigan spends a lot of money on colleges, $1.8 billion to be exact.  However, that is not nearly enough to off-set the striking increase in costs over the last decade.  It also is less than other states (with smaller populations) spend.  (Click Here to Read Story)  North Carolina spends $3.5 billion, Georgia spends $2.3 billion, and New Jersey spends $2.1 billion. 

I also was reading in a separate article yesterday, that college tuition in Michigan has increased over 80% from 2002 to today.  The inflation rate over that same time frame is 15%.  So clearly, the costs of attending college in Michigan has skyrocketed, effectively pricing a lot of students out of going to college.  While the price has gone up, financial aid is now 1/3 the level of what it was when Governor Granholm first began.

As a result, Michigan now has the 4th highest public university tuition rate in the country, and ranks 49th out of 50 states in total support for higher education.  All of this leads to the question: how is our workforce going to be transformed if no one can afford to attend college?

Felons in the Classroom

I wrote an entry about this issue a few weeks back, dealing with Grand Rapids and whether or not felons should be allowed to volunteer in the classroom.  Today's article (Click Here to Read Story) gave an update on the situation.  The board decided not to change the policy which prohibits anyone with a felony conviction to volunteer in the classroom.  What do you think about this?  Should someone who wrote bad checks (as the story shows) 20 years ago be prohibited from working in the classroom?  Should there be a line between some offenses, but not others?

Should Students Evaluate Teachers?

I came across another interesting blog article today that asked if students should have a voice in evaluating teachers.  (Click Here to Read the Story).  The article brought up some interesting points, although it is somewhat problematic.  For one, it said that students as the consumers should be able to offer their opinion.  It also talked about how "easy" teachers would get the best ratings, and how that's not necessarily true.  It made the comparison about "easy" teachers and "easy" teenage girls.  On the surface, students say they like them and they're cool, but deep down, no one really respects them.  The author believed the real truth would come out in the evaluations.  It also dealt with some admitted flaws.  For one, how do you have elementary students evaluate their teacher?  Also, how much should the studnets' opinions weigh on the total evaluation? 

So what does everyone think?  Should students have a say in evaluating teachers?