james madison university

This weekend I dropped my daughter off to begin her sophomore year at James Madison University. I am a member of USAA and on their site, they recommend clearly establishing what the parent will pay for and what the college student will pay for. We have done this and I am paying for tuition, room/board and books.

I threw in books just being a generous parent. I sincerely wish I had not done so. The ridiculousness that is college text books is totally out of hand. We were able to buy used books for half of her requirement for this semester and it still cost over $550 for five classes.

Free markets continue to infiltrate higher education. I am not talking about the proliferation of for-profit institutions, I am talking about ratemyprofessors.com. If you do not have a child in college, you may not be aware of the power this is bringing to college students.

When people try to claim that the teacher shortage we face is a retention problem, I laugh. Don’t get me wrong – I would love to see better working conditions and even higher salaries for teachers. But that will not come close to fixing the problem.

We no longer live in a society where someone works in one job, let alone one career, for life. Based on my daughter’s college friends, it is not going to get any better.