Don't knock it. Ask, "what if it's really true?"

There is always an answer that never gets media attention. Why?

Don't knock it. Ask, "what if this is really true?"

The Great College Hoax by Kathy Krist of Forbes Magazine

Higher education can be a financial disaster. Especially with the return on degrees down and student loan sharks on the prowl.

As steadily as ivy creeps up the walls of its well-groomed campuses, the education industrial complex has cultivated the image of college as a sure-fire path to a life of social and economic privilege.

Joel Kellum says he's living proof that the claim is a lie. A 40-year-old Los Angeles resident, Kellum did everything he was supposed to do to get ahead in life. He worked hard as a high schooler, got into the University of Virginia and graduated with a bachelor's degree in history.

Accepted into the California Western School of Law, a private San Diego institution, Kellum couldn't swing the $36,000 in annual tuition with financial aid and part-time work. So he did what friends and professors said was the smart move and took out $60,000 in student loans.
Kellum's law school sweetheart, Jennifer Coultas, did much the same. By the time they graduated in 1995, the couple was $194,000 in debt. They eventually married and each landed a six-figure job. Yet even with Kellum moonlighting, they had to scrounge to come up with $145,000 in loan payments. With interest accruing at up to 12% a year, that whittled away only $21,000 in principal. Their remaining bill: $173,000 and counting.

Kellum and Coultas divorced last year. Each cites their struggle with law school debt as a major source of stress on their marriage. "Two people with this much debt just shouldn't be together," Kellum says.

The two disillusioned attorneys were victims of an unfolding education hoax on the middle class that's just as insidious, and nearly as sweeping, as the housing debacle. The ingredients are strikingly similar, too: Misguided easy-money policies that are encouraging the masses to go into debt; a self-serving establishment trading in half-truths that exaggerate the value of its product; plus a Wall Street money machine dabbling in outright fraud as it foists unaffordable debt on the most vulnerable marks.

College graduates will earn $1 million more than those with only a high school diploma, brags Mercy College radio ads running in the New York area. The $1 million shibboleth is a favorite of college barkers.

Like many good cons, this one contains a kernel of truth. Census figures show that college grads earn an average of $57,500 a year, which is 82% more than the $31,600 high school alumni make. Multiply the $25,900 difference by the 40 years the average person works and, sure enough, it comes to a tad over $1 million.

But anybody who has gotten a passing grade in statistics knows what's wrong with this line of argument. A correlation between B.A.s and incomes is not proof of cause and effect. It may reflect nothing more than the fact that the economy rewards smart people and smart people are likely to go to college. To cite the extreme and obvious example: Bill Gates is rich because he knows how to run a business, not because he matriculated at Harvard. Finishing his degree wouldn't have increased his income.

All the while students have been lulled into thinking of the extra $1 million that will be theirs, they have been forced to disgorge an ever larger fraction of it in pursuit of the degree. While the premium that college grads earn over high schoolers has remained relatively constant over the past five years, the cost of acquiring a degree has risen at twice the rate of inflation, dramatically undermining any value a sheepskin adds.

Offsetting that million-dollar income discrepancy is the $46,700 four-year cost of tuition, fees, books, room and board at a public school and $99,900 at a private one--even after financial aid, scholarships and grants. Add all this to the equation and college grads don't pull even with high school grads in lifetime income until age 33 on average, the College Board says. Even that doesn't include the $125,000 in pay students forgo over four years.

"I call it the million-dollar misunderstanding," says Mark Schneider, vice president of the American Institutes for Research, of the prevailing propaganda.

Not only are college numbers spun. Some are patently spurious, says Richard Sander, a law professor at UCLA. Law schools lure in minority students to improve diversity rankings without disclosing that less than half of African-Americans who enter these programs ever pass the bar. Schools goose employment statistics by temporarily hiring new grads and spotlighting kids who land top-paying jobs, while glossing over far-lower average incomes. The one certainty: The average law grad owes $100,000 in student debt.

"There are a lot of aspects of selling education that are tinged with consumer fraud," Sander says. "There is a definite conspiracy to lead students down a primrose path."
Warped as the numbers are, they don't begin to account for the hidden cost of higher education: financing it. Borrowing has doubled over the past decade, to roughly $85 billion in new student loans in the 2007--08 academic year, bringing total student debt owed to well over half a trillion dollars. The average borrower went $19,200 into debt for a diploma in 2004, a 58% increase after inflation since 1993, according to the Project on Student Debt.

This Is Women's History Month

In the essence of the month I will be posting articles, videos and what have you on women you should know now and throughout our time. Enjoy.

Major General Jeanne M. Holm

Major General Jeanne M. Holm is director of the Secretary of the Air Force Personnel Council. In this position, she assures proper administration of the council and functioning of its boards and serves as president of the boards - the Air Force Discharge Review Board, Personnel Board, Board of Review, Physical Disability Appeal Board, Decorations Board and the Disability Review Board. She takes final action for the secretary of the Air Force on the majority of matters referred to the council; advises the secretary, chief of staff, and directorates of the Deputy Chief of Staff, Personnel, of personnel trends and recommends policy action when appropriate.

General Holm was born in 1921, in Portland, Ore. She enlisted in the Army in July 1942, soon after the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps was established by Congress. She attended Officer Candidate School at Fort Des Moines, Iowa, and in January 1943 received a commission as a "Third Officer," the WAAC equivalent to second lieutenant. .

During World War II, General Holm was assigned to the Women's Army Corps Training Center at Fort Oglethorpe, Ga., where she first commanded a basic training company and then a training regiment. At the end of the war, she commanded the 106th WAC Hospital Company at Newton D. Baker General Hospital, W.Va. She then left active military duty in 1946 and attended Lewis and Clark College for two years, returning in 1956 for her bachelor of arts degree.

In October 1948 during the Berlin crisis, General Holm was recalled to active duty with the Army and went to Camp Lee, Va., as a company commander. The following year she transferred to the Air Force and was sent to Erding Air Depot, Germany. There she served as assistant director of plans and operations for the 7200th Air Force Depot Wing, and later was War Plans Officer for the 85th Air Depot Wing, during the Berlin airlift and the early phases of the Korean War.

General Holm returned from overseas in 1952 and became the first woman to attend the Air Command and Staff School at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala. She was then assigned to Headquarters U.S. Air Force in Washington, D.C., as a personnel plans and programs officer in the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff, Personnel.

Her next assignment was as chief of manpower in Allied Air Forces Southern Europe, a North Atlantic Treaty Organization headquarters, in Naples, Italy, where she served for four years. She returned to Headquarters U.S. Air Force in 1961 and was assigned as congressional staff officer for the director of manpower and organization. For her work in this assignment, she was awarded the Legion of Merit.

General Holm was appointed director, Women in the Air Force, Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff, Personnel, in November 1965. She was extended in that position twice. She was responsible for overall staff cognizance of and advice on matters concerning military women in the Air Force. During her tenure, policies affecting women were updated, WAF strength more than doubled, job and assignment opportunities greatly expanded, and uniforms modernized. She has been an active exponent for expanding the opportunities for women to serve in the Armed Forces and a catalyst for changing their roles and career opportunities within the Air Force. For her exceptionally meritorious service in this assignment; she was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal.

On March 1, 1973, General Holm was appointed director of the Secretary of the Air Force Personnel Council. .

She is a member of the Board of Trustees, Air Force Historical Foundation; member of the Board of Directors of Camp Fire Girls, Inc.; member of Board of Directors of the Pentagon Federal Credit Union; and member of the Air Force Association. She received the Distinguished Alumni Award from Lewis and Clark College in 1968; Citation of Honor from the Air Force Association in 1971; and the Eugene Zuckert Leadership Award from the Arnold Air Society in 1972. General Holm is an accomplished snow and water skier, student of ancient history, scuba diver and skipper of her own power cruiser. Prior to entering military service, she was a professional silversmith.

She was promoted to the grade of brigadier general July 16, 1971, the first woman to be appointed in this grade in the Air Force. She was promoted to the grade of major general effective June 1, 1973, with date of rank July 1, 1970, and is the first woman in the Armed Forces to serve in that grade.


Jane Addams

Susan E. Rice

U.N. Ambassador, foreign policy advisor. Born Susan Elizbeth Rice in Washington, D.C., on November 17, 1964, to parents Lois Dickson Fitt and Emmett J. Rice. Rice's family is well renowned among the Washington elite; father, Emmett, is a Cornell University economics professor and former governor of the Federal Reserve System, while mother Lois is an education policy researcher and guest scholar at the Brookings Institution.

Growing up, Rice's family often spoke of politics and foreign policy at the dinner table. Her mother's job also brought notable figures through the house, including Madeline Albright, with whom Rice's mother served with on a local school board. Albright would later become a pivotal figure in Rice's personal and professional life.

Rice attended National Cathedral School, a prep academy in Washington, D.C. She excelled in academics, becoming her class valedictorian, and showed her aptitude in the politic realm as president of the student council. She also loved athletics, competing in three different sports, and became a star point guard on the basketball team.

After graduation, Rice attended Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. In college, she pushed herself to excel. She not only earned Departmental Honors and University Distinction, but also became a Harry S. Truman scholar, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and earned a Rhodes scholarship. She turned the heads of top administrators when she created a fund that withheld alumni donations until the university either stopped their investments in companies doing business in South Africa, or the country ended apartheid.

After she received her bachelor's degree in history in 1986, she went on to attend University of Oxford in Oxfordshire, England. Here she earned her M.Phil and D.Phil in international relations, and wrote a dissertation that examined Rhodesia's transition from white rule. Her paper won the Royal Commonwealth Society's Walter Frewen Lord Prize for outstanding research in the field of Commonwealth History, as well as the Chatham House-British International Studies Association Prize for the most distinguished doctoral dissertation in the United Kingdom in the field of International Relations.

She finished her schooling in 1990, and started work as an international management consultant at McKinsey & Company in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. On Septmber 12, 1992, she married her Stanford romantic interest, Ian Cameron, who was working as a television producer in Toronto for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The couple lived in Canada until 1993, when Rice took a job with the National Security Council in Washington, D.C., under President Clinton.

She began work as the director of international organizations and peacekeeping for the NSC, where she had what she calls her "most searing experience" when she visited Rwanda during what was later classified as a genocide. "I saw hundreds, if not thousands, of decomposing corpses outside and inside a church," she says. "It was the most horrible thing I've ever seen. It makes you mad. It makes you determined. It makes you know that even if you're the last lone voice and you believe you're right, it is worth every bit of energy you can throw into it." She took the lessons learned from her peacekeeping position to a new post as special assistant to the president and senior director for African affairs in 1995.

She quickly advanced ahead of her peers and veteran officials when her friend and mentor, Madeline Albright, recommended Rice for the post of assistant secretary for African affairs in 1997. With her appointment, she became one of the youngest assistant secretaries of state ever. Many elder politicians disagreed with placing a young woman in the position, arguing that she would be unable to deal with older, male leaders. But Rice developed a reputation for her direct, plainspoken opinions, and an ability to bring people to her side of the table. "They have no choice but to deal with me on professional terms. I represent the United States of America," she says. "Yeah, they may do a double take, but then they have to listen to what you say, how you say it and what you do about what you say."

During her tenure in this post, she also became well acquainted with the actions of the extremist group, Al Qaeda; she was the top diplomat for African issues during the 1998 terrorist bombings of embassies in Tanzania and Kenya.

Her involvement and rise into politics mirrored that of Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state under President George W. Bush. The two are both female, African-American, foreign policy experts who have ties to Stanford University. However, the two are not related. The mix-up has happened so often that Democrats have a saying about the confusion: "They've got their Rice, and we've got ours."

Rice left the public sector in 2002 to become a senior fellow in foreign policy for the Brookings Institute, a nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington, DC. Their mission is to conduct independent research and provide recommendations to the government based on their findings. As a fellow, Rice specialized in research on U.S. foreign policy, weak and failing states, as well as the implications of global poverty and transnational security threats.

Rice took leave from Brookings in 2008, to become the senior foreign policy advisor to Barack Obama during his presidential campaign. After Obama's successful election in November of 2008, Rice was nominated to be the U.N. Ambassador for the United States. The position will be made a cabinet position, as it was during President Clinton's presidency.

This Is Women's History Month

So I apologize for recognizing this at the beginning of the month. No excuses, I should have made this a priority. So in the essence of the month I will be posting articles, videos and what have you on women you should know now and throughout our time. Enjoy.

Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune

Jean Chatzky

Jean Chatzky is an award-winning journalist and best-selling author, has created a global platform that is making significant strides to help millions of men and women battle an epidemic with a devastating impact—debt. Ms. Chatzky is the financial editor for NBC’s Today, a contributing editor for More Magazine, a columnist for The New York Daily News, and a contributor to The Oprah Winfrey Show. The most recent of her five books, Make Money, Not Excuses,is a Wall Street Journal and New York Times best seller. Among several national recognitions, she has been named one of the country’s best magazine columnists by the Chicago Tribune. Ms. Chatzky is also on the Literacy Partners board of directors and lends her expertise to several women's services groups.

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Jody Williams

Asking for Prayers, Kindness, Love and Care

Hannah is 4 yrs old and was diagnosed in late October 2008 with a rare and aggressive cancerous brain tumor called glioblastoma multiforme. To date (November 20) she has had 2 surgeries to remove the tumors. She is in therapy to work on her walking, which has been effected by the tumor. She has frequent headaches from the pressure on the brain.She is on steroids to help with the inflammation, which is causing her to gain weight rapidly. The doctors have given Hannah 2-3 months to live without treatment and approximately 11 months with radiation. She needs a miracle! Hannah's father's name is Darin and she has two older siblings - Brittany and Jordan. She has 3 sets of grandparents, 2 sets of great-grandparents and a large extended family and supportive church family. Her mother, Chris, passed away several years ago from cancer. Please pray for the family as they deal with cancer in the family once again.






To learn more about this story and find out what you could possibly do this holiday season to brighten up this situation as many others, go here: http://www.caringbridge.org/cb/viewHome.do

Seriously People, WHAT'S YOUR BACKUP PLAN?

Sometimes people get mad at me when I tell them I will never give into the philosophy of working for someone else. I understand at the end of the day, yes, it pays the bills, allows you to do other things, and finance your future. The thing is, all of things are said hopefully. I am a Entrepreneur at heart simply because at the end of the day I can't rely on someone else to take care of me. I need to build something that in 10 plus years won't go anywhere no matter what I do or the economy does, or any one single person or groups aka Franchise Boards choose to do. I'm building my backup plan while working because at the end of the day, THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS THE PERFECT JOB.