One more on this somewhat off-topic:
While it's true that layoffs in US schools (pre-college) and administrations charging students too much (college) are big problems, digging a few steps deeper unveils some root causes in the U.S.: an incredibly inefficient and ineffective system. While the U.S. spends more for public school education per child than any country (2010 figures showed it was 33% over 2nd place UK), the literacy rate is #2, the graduation rate is #5, and science and math performance are #9 and #10. That's the hard data.
The rest is opinion. When spending more doesn't create a better result, we've passed the point of intelligent spending increases, and it's time to take a hard look at what the heck we're doing with the money. I believe the inefficiency is largely from a federal government that believes that the best way to increase performance is to have federally-mandated standards... (that part is ok, but then...) and federally-administered curriculum, and federally subsidized (meaning taxed and then spit back out at 30% efficiency) programs, and... ! So we (U.S.) have a bloated top-heavy administration of education. Then we have state education administration, all burdening taxpayers, doing stupid stuff like removing potentially offensive words from books and tests, inspecting schools for compliance to state standards, and who knows what else. Then local school administration, which is fine. Couldn't we just mandate performance without the programs and overhead? If we let the local school districts figure out how to execute their own curriculum, that'd just be the same people who now scratch their heads over the federally mandated material, and we'd be eliminating a lot of cost in the pyramid above that local level. But nooooo, laying off government workers once they are in place, that is one of the hardest things to do in this political system.
Anyway, if we left the How up to local school districts, the majority (instead of the minority) of public schools would be performing at the private school level. Funny how competition works. Of course, that's my opinion, unsupported by government or media.
As for uni's, I went to private uni's for bach and a second grad degree, and a state uni for the first grad school. Far as I can tell, the tenureship dynamic makes for some wacky politics. Research is important, but *teaching* is the purpose of the school from the perspective of most students. I think the research focus has tapped out the teaching talent, and you get a lot of sloppy teaching, even at (especially at) the high caliber schools, of which I am a graduate. And why the high tuition? Biggest costs are facilities and salaries, and I believe that Professor Salary per Student head is driven up by prof salaries that aren't supporting teaching. Even with tenureship tracks, there are a lot of profs who are researching maximally and teaching minimally. IMO, research should be funded by grants, and that's that. Teaching should be funded by tuition. I suppose some mixing of the two does make sense economically, but it should be tracked carefully so that borrowing from one does not result in a long-term deficit in the other. And state versus private, it doesn't matter - private gobbles high tuitions, and state gobbles high tax dollars. Either way it's coming out of our pockets, the private citizen.
Yeah we're looking at huge bucks for our kids' colleges, and current private schools aren't cheap either (public schools around here are pretty bad; I know other areas are better, like my bro's city).
Oh, one more thing. When I went to engineering grad school (state), 80% of the grad population was from outside the U.S., looking to return to their home countries to work. WTF? Out of state tuition was a little higher, but still a bargain for someone who wanted to jump in for a few years, get a high powered degree, and head back to homeland. I hear that these alums don't cough up a lot of annual donations compared to U.S. students. Given that the skills go back to support a different country's GNP, these students should be charged quite a bit more.
In California state uni's, there's this silly thing about illegal immigrants getting in-state tuition. Uh, that would tend to drive up tuition for the rest of us. Funny, I don't see Occupy movements protesting THAT!
Just my 5 cents. Well, maybe $1.75 in this case. Sorry for the ramble. I just hate that I'm looking at house-sized tuition bills for each kid when they hit college in 10 years. I certainly can't afford it outright, so much will go on loans.
Manfred