More college enrollment news

Remember when I said schools might price themselves out of the market and apply to state schools.  Well turns out more people, in Massachusetts anyways, are applying to the state school this year.  Mostly, this has to do with the economy starting to tank but I wanted to point out how I (and probably millions of other people) said that state schools would get a boost due to high private school costs.

Did we ever talk about how a good economy might of driven up the costs as well?  Seems plausible, people making more money allows schools to be more liberal in tuition increases because schools knew people would pay the costs.  Now as the economy sours people need cheap alternatives.  People will drop the classism just to get the education it would seem.

 

The Auto Bailout and Unions

If you get a chance read this Salon.com article.  The article talks about the Senators who blocked the auto bailout from going through. The reason the bill failed was because Republicans want the union to take a pay cut.  While this may seem reasonable to some people, one should remember, no one (Republican or Democrat) made any provision for bankers to take pay cuts when that money was given away.

From a strategy standpoint, I am not sure what the Republicans are going for here.  They will not look good coming out of this and in fact will look like they are against your average working citizen.  Why?  Because they haven’t asked CEO’s to take the same sort of pay cut.  They had a chance to create some good will going forward into 2009 but it looks like they just want to play defense until the 2012 election.  This attitude will not serve them well.  Especially because the American people are right on the middle of this issue.  If the auto industry goes down, the Democrats will blame the Republicans for being obstructionist.

What I also don’t get is why the Republicans are so hellbent on destroying unions in the United States?  I mean it is pretty clear that the Republicans who blocked this are in anti-union states.  I am sure the UAW would negotiate in good faith but the Republicans want to make the union out to be the enemy.  They do not want to focus on the fact that the auto industry is using outdated business models and making inferior quality cars.  While we have heard that the CEO’s of the big three will change their plans and become all new and shiny, they haven’t been pressed all that hard by Congress.  All in all I think the Republicans went for an easy target and it will backfire on them.