The Growing College Gap

The Growing College Gap

This essay written by Tamara Draut (pictured left), provides some good insight into the rising tuition costs and strict academic requirements held by reputable employers. She is the director of the Economic Opportunity Program at Demos, a nonpartisan public policy reasearch and advocacy organization. In her essay she explores the challenges of lower income famililes in sending children to college.

Not particularly mentioned in her essay but an issue that is of importance, is the quality of high school education lower income students are provided. Low income families and households are generally restricted to the poorest high schools and elementary schools that provide their students education. As a result, these students that were unfortunate enough to receive this situation are clearly less likely to receive the "merit" based scholarships that more and more institutions are turning to. This decline in need based scholarships in combination with a cost of tuition rising much faster than aid is allowed to provide is brushing away students that would otherwise be able to afford college. How are these already financially burdened students when the average amount of student aid only covers 33% of the costs of tuition? This forces students that do enroll in colleges to work full or part time while attending school full time. I can tell you from experience that this situation does not work, and will result in poor grades in the majority of students. Students are constantly burned out, agitated, exhausted, and have trouble keeping up with all the tasks they are required. With education advancing, students are required to take courses that demand time and simply should not be subjected to an excessive work schedule (greater than 10-15 hours per week). It is my opinion that every student should devote the majority of his/her time to studying and applying themselves academically to reap the full benefit of attending college without the burden of financial distress.

Students working excessive hours run into other problems as well while attempting to put themselves through college. They typically have problems registering for the next semeseter because they have not generated enough money to pay their current obligation. As a result, and while their credit is damaged in the process when their student accounts are transferred to collection agencies, they are at a disadvantage to every other student that may register on time. They pick up the teachers with the poorest teaching abilities in the school, they have a tough time enrolling in the classes they need to fulfill their majors, and have no flexibility in the timing of their schedules. It seems reasonable that a student that typically works later hours (such as a waiter and bartender) will likely rise and go to sleep later in the day. If this student had the flexibility to pick the schedule they wanted, they could maximize their opportunity to learn by taking classes at times that suited them best.

This poor performance of financially burdened students paired with the growing number of college hopefuls that are discouraged by financial distress present real problems in our economy. Human capital is typically referred to as an important dynamic in the output of any economy. Until these problems are fixed and students can find the financial aid they need to make it, grades will decline, and the "growing gap" between graduation of the richest and poorest students will continue to diverge.

Improvements in Drug Addiction Services

In Philadelphia and other parts of the country, private and public agencies are cooperating to improve the services and programs used to treat drug addiction. New improvements to these systems are providing better, more effective care to patients as well as cutting costs substantially from an economic standpoint.

This article in the New York Times tells the story of the man addicted to various drugs including heroin, cocaine, and others. His addictions stemmed from a rough childhood and relations to gang activity. Drug treatment programs were the only solution for this man, and until recently they had been ineffective. Ultimately this particular man, Keith Garrett, came to the conclusion that no one cared whether he lived or died, and checked in to drug rehabilitation. Anyone who has experienced the terrible effects of these powerful narcotics on family members and loved ones, as I have, knows the enormous struggle it is to break these addictions.

These new programs are developing the parts of drug rehab programs that occur after the patient would normally discharged under the traditional 30-60 day programs. The typical 30-60 day program is usually court mandated while the costs are covered by insurance. The rehab programs only have to deal with them for 30-60 days until their benefits run out, then they are released with "little more than a mandate to join a 12-step group like Alcoholics Anonymous". These traditional programs offer little support during the crucial restructuring period where the addicts fights the urges to relapse and fall back into bad social ties. The new program offers counseling, housing, and recreational activities for individuals released from treatment. The costs of this project are trimmed by the addition of volunteers to counsel and guide recovering addicts through their transition to come "out of that darkness". These costs are also cut by the decrease in potential relapses requiring additional treatment programs.

It is good to see the public taking an interest in the individuals that were raised with shaky childhoods. Often times the potential drug addicts have underlying mental disorders, in Garrett's case, bipolar disorder. These benefits give hope to cleaning up areas plagued by drugs and gang related violence, while helping individuals create a better life. As peer specialist William Baker says best, "There’s nothing more beautiful, than seeing someone come out of that darkness.”

Hedge Fund Insider Trading Lawsuit

For those that are so inclined, today's blog post will be regarding corporate finance, and more particularly, the recent allegations of insider trading against several people. The U.S. attorney in cooperation with the F.B.I. has charged hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam and 6 others working with Raj with a hefty $20 Million case. The current case is being coordinated by the U.S. Attorney's office, the SEC and the FBI. The article can be found here on cnbc.com.

Hedge fun manager Raj Rajaratnam(above)

This case is of particular importance both to those with an interest in the stocks affected, and also to the general morality issue at hand. The stocks of companies involved in these proceedings, such as Intel Corp., IBM, AMD (advanced micro devices, involved in the manufacture of several types of computer hardware, mainly central processing units.), to name a few. These stocks subsequently experienced a drop in percentage values in the range of 2.5% to as much as 8%, whether or not these drops were exclusively caused by this case is another topic of discussion. These percentages are of significant proportion, because a seemingly small percentage drop in a short time period for these major companies could represent tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in shareholder equity.

These allegations are also very concerning due to the nature of their implications on the current financial system. The case being conducted has been in the works for several years and brings the issue of hedge fund managers hiring employees with inside information on the companies to which they are trading. This is very important because in these circumstances, very wealthy hedge fund managers are allegedly using this inside information to drain the value of shareholder equity to the general public, something that is very inefficient and bad to the general economy. The scale of these operations are enormous, citing that Raj had about $7.1Billion dollars under his management at one point. The various strategies that can be used with this extreme amount of capital can be very maniuplative of the market with inside information. These financial managers can take their capital and leverage it several times, (trade with 2 to 3 times as much money as they have available) to manipulate the market by shorting stocks and making huge short term gains. They have an unfair edge against the typical investor both in the information they hold and their capital solvency, with as much as 1,000-100,000 times more money than the majority of investors on the market. This type of activity would not be destructive to the market without the addition of the insider trading. With inside trading these hedge funds can make incredible amounts of profits in very short periods of time, effectively draining the equity from the general public shareholder. This is not too much unlike a ghost buying and selling stocks in incredible quantities when they are undervalued and overvalued. This unknown force in the market then holds the securities for brief periods of time (perhaps hours or a few days) until the stock prices react to market activity. After the information has been distributed through the market under the normal discourse, then they take appropriate action to sell or buy at their benefit. This can be very unprofitable for those outside the loop.

The practice under scrutiny of hiring managers with insider knowledge about the companies they trade, is directly related to this issue. Raj is valued at $1.3Billion dollars currently, which is disheartening to the general state of the economy and the public at large. If he is indeed convicted, there will be vast implications and the SEC will have to develop major changes in policies to control these apparent practices in financial markets.

I am very concerned about cases like these, because they present a very real problem to both the economy and the average American's pocket. This cannot be tolerated and must be eliminated for the sake of our economy and progression.

Graff Ch 5 and 6

Reading chapters five and six in Graff, I learned new material I had not previously known. The author provides clear insight and examples into each of the topics he addresses throughout his book.

Chapter five discusses the various ways to incorporate other views and quotes into your paper. The need to address when the writer is speaking and when someone else is speaking in your paper seems to be a fundamental skill. This distinction influences the views that are expressed in your paper through the eyes of your potential readers, making your points clear. I found Graff's discussion of first-person perspective to be most interesting in chapter five. Graff argues that a paper may be just as self-indulgent without the use of the word I (referring to the first person), as a paper that expresses the writer's first-person. Graff further writes, the use of the first person should be limited in certain circumstances to maintain the flow of the paper or article. This first person discussion was very informative to my knowledge regarding this area.

Chapter six addresses the topics of adding critics and "naysayers" to your persuasive argument. Graff discusses adding these critics into your paper to enhance your credibilty, while displaying that you are indeed "open minded." This chapter was very helpful in showing how to refute opposition to your argument, while strengthening your views. I think it is particularly imporatant, after reading this chapter, to display an "open minded" argument to the reader. By not stereotyping various groups (liberals, femenists, etc...) you can also present an open minded argument and may even change your stance during the writing process.

Overall, these two chapters were quite helpful in developing a thought process to write the persuasive argument assignment.

Response to TV articles

In response to these two articles discussing the effect of television, there are clearly two ends of the spectrum. On the one hand you have the conservative Steven Johnson claiming T.V. is "nourishing" the mind. On the other hand you have the more liberal Dana Stevens arguing most of Johnson's points to be "deeply, hilariously bogus" with several criticisms.

I have several comments regarding Johnson's article, Watching TV Makes You Smarter, that I would like to emphasize. Johnson's example of the dialogue in ER is a good description of engaging dialogue that makes the viewer think about the storyline. This argument makes sense to me as the more engaging and complex the "threading" is in these stories, a more intuitive approach the viewer can take from the experience. Other portions of Johnson's article appear to be somewhat ridiculous. For example, the graphs of threading in modern television shows depicted by shaded squares in a coordinate plane (graph). These arbitrary graphs do little to reinforce the author's point and have little explanation as to how these graphs were conceived. Overall, Johnson's article seems to point out some advancements in the television content explained today, but generally does not prove the point that TV actually makes you smarter. His article also seemed to drag on, and towards that latter parts of the article, stagnated a bit.

Dana Stevens' response to Johnson's article, Thinking Outside The Idiot Box, aims at tearing down Johnson's argument. For the most part, from a literary perspective, I find Stevens' article to be more convincing. She criticizes Johnson for failing to address the racial profiling and torture depicted in "24", which seems to be a valid point. I particularly like the stance she takes against the anti-tv puritan groups. To my understanding, she finds it hard to sympathize with a group of people that is actually promoting a remote control that can deactivate most public televisions. In my opinion, no one has the right or authority to go into a public place and tamper with commercial products, (a t.v. in an airport for example) just because you feel strongly about the issue! I think that it is absolutely ridiculous, I can just picture some angry disgruntled parent walking into a bar and switching off monday night football because they felt the need to be righteous today.

Stevens' conclusion is most convincing for me, "But shouldn't grown men and women be trusted to judge their own dosages, just as they would decide on the number of drinks they can handle at the bar?" Grown men and women can make the judgements about how much t.v. they should or should not be watching, its a simple as that. I find Stevens' article to be most convincing of the two articles. Her article seems to better written and developed as a piece of literature. She also conveys an open minded response in between the two extremes of anti/pro t.v, while limiting the length of the article to maximize its effectiveness.