Salaries Not Keeping Pace with Student Debt

This week, I ran into my long lost friend Mike, who just graduated in December from Savannah College of Art and Design. He crawled back to get a part time position at Beverly Hospital in the Food Service Department. Everyone seems to crawl back to our work nowadays. The college kids thing they're doing bigger and better things by getting a degree, and then to their surprise, there's no jobs available!! So Mike has a degree in animation (something like that?), yet he's back to his high school job of washing dishes and making patient meal trays.

That's not the worst part. Mike is over $100,000 in debt. So for this post I decided to research the fact that so many kids get out of college with enormous amounts of debt, yet they are making salaries no where NEAR close enough to begin to pay off these loans. And so if they are missing monthly payments, the interest is just going to go up and the debts are going to become bigger and bigger. It's overwhelming. It's really scary to know that all is definitely not solved in life once you graduate from college. When we're in high school all we hear is how a degree is going to get you so far in life. Yet now, the scary reality with our economy is that we may be paying off our college dues for the rest of our lives!! I don't want to have to struggle, drinking Natty Ice and eating Ramen Noodles until I'm 30!

The article that I read about this subject gave this statistic: "Between 2005 and 2006, average student loan debt increased 8 percent. In comparison, staring salaries increased by only 4 percent." This leaves constant worry that the graduates are not going to be able to successfully pay back these loans in a timely fashion. I also read that tuition prices are still increasing, another 6% or so this year. This means that by the time I graduate, my tuition will have been raised a total of 30%! That's insane! Loans are a scary reality for everybody, yet it is something we are all going to have to go through and manage on our own. I just hope that by the time we graduate we are all successful enough and find jobs rather fast, so we don't have to crawl back into the arms of our part time high school jobs, like my friend Mike did.


Article

Beauty School Drop Outs... or High School?!

I guess this weeks' readings got me thinking about drop- outs. I then preceded to find a very shocking article that was titled "12 Percent of U.S High Schools Could Be Labeled a Dropout Factory". I mean, I knew that there were always going to be kids that dropped out of high school, but I didn't know it was getting to be outrageous. The most drop outs occur in the southern states like Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina.

A "drop out factory" school is defined by a school that has less than 60% of it's freshman make to senior year. That, to me, is INSANE! I think maybe 5 to 10 of the kids in my senior class of around 300 dropped out! The most likely drop out areas are large cities that have a ton of students or poverty ridden rural areas. What I found more shocking was that 1,700, or TWELVE PERCENT of the high schools in the United States are considered drop out factories! That's one in ten! Utah is the only state in the U.S without a drop out factory school. Probably because not enough people live there! It bothered me a little bit to read the fact that

"Nationally, the high school graduation rate is 70 percent, but for black and Hispanic students, the rate is only 50 percent. Of the 70 percent of U.S. who do graduate high school, only 32 percent will be college ready."

It's sad to know that even still in today's society, blacks and Hispanics are struggling. But these people also make up the lower classes and much of the poverty in the U.S., so it sort of goes hand in hand with not doing well educationally.

This whole article and reading really got me thinking on what can be done about all of these drop outs. As a teacher, you can't really get too involved in a students life. That's not ethical or accepted in your duties. Even if the parents are brought in for meetings, chances are, many times they won't care enough to force their children to graduate from high school. I just hope that all of these kids who are not walking around with diplomas will not spend their lives working at Burger King or McDonald's! And hopefully, a team of intelligent and enlightened people will come up with some sort of plan to help these kids actually want to graduate.

This is the Article!!
The Education Portal of Hot Topics!

Are Class Sizes Getting to Be Too Big?

My question, though I wanted to steer towards the financial issues of teaching, I figured I'd save that for later in the semester. What I want to know is, are class sizes getting to be too big? Are the high numbers of students in each class affecting learning abilities? After observing 2nd grade today, the teacher told me that after 2nd grade, class sizes jump from 20 student max to a 30 student max. I think this is WAY too many kids to have in one elementary school class! That's not even bringing up the middle school or high school class sizes! I know that in my town alone, we used to have 2 equal sized middle schools yet 2 years ago they tore one down and now the 7 or more elementary school kids all attend ONE middle school. It must be a madhouse!

My theory is that these large class sizes must decrease learning abilities. With less time for one-on-one interactions between the students and the teacher, there are probably a lot of kids left with questions and unsolved issues at the end of the day. Having a ton of kids in one class is bound to have more behavioral issues, more chit-chatting, playing, and overall, less learning. No matter how strict a teacher may be, there is going to be some level of difficulty ruling over 30 or more kids who just won't listen!

I read an article about this issue in California, and I felt that it would also pertain to here as it had the following information: they had spent a lot of their educational funds on making sure that the lower grades (K-3) had only 20 students to one teacher. Plus, most of these classrooms has an aid or some sort of parent volunteers. The point that they were making was that if they reduced it to 26 students per 1 teacher, plus aides, without adding any more costs they could reduce the class size all the way up to grade six! I think it is unfair that the only classes that are guaranteed to be small are kindergarten, first, second, and third grade. These are important years but all kids in elementary school should be given the same opportunities to learn.

Overall, everything I've read leads to the fact that students suffer if class sizes are too large. But what can be done about this? Public education funding is already at an all time low. Budgets are always being cut, and teachers are constantly getting laid off. The way to fix the solution would be to have more teachers to teach more classes with less students. But in order to do this, they would have to lower the salaries of all of the other teachers. This isn't fair because teachers are already getting paid poorly as it is, and as much as they want to help the students, they need to provide a living for themselves and their families, too. This is a question and concern that I'm sure will exist far into my own teaching career. Unless kids are enrolled in private schools that can afford small class sizes because of the outrageous fees and tuition paid by the parents, we are going to have to deal with large class sizes and do the best we can with what we are offered.

These are the websites I use:
California Article
Research Points
College Perspective

About ME! :)

Hey Guys! I'm a pretty "happy-go-lucky" girl, as I'm often told because I'm very rarely not smiling! I'm 20 years old, and I just moved into an apartment with my boyfriend, which is very exciting and also a huge learning experience. I've changed my career goals about a million times, but I'm hoping that I'm done with all that and settling down into seeing what teaching is all about. I think it'd be a really good job for my personality because I'm laid back, I like to have fun, I love kids, and I always have felt strongly about school and learning. Hopefully this course will teach me the basics of what it means to be a teacher so I can make a decision! I'm a little nervous about this semester because I'm trying to keep up with three online classes and two jobs! Busy Busy Busy! My family, friends, live music, my boyfriend, and enjoying nice weather outside are things that make me most happy in life. :) Peace and Love.