Public dollars ought to go toward degrees that make you employable

So says Florida Governor Rick Scott. Why run up huge student loan debts to get degrees in anthropology, art history, comparative literature, philosophy, or political science? I agree. If you run up a student loan tab in the five figure range and all you have to show for it is a degree in Women's Studies or Comparative Religion (albeit with a fancy diploma from a good school) but that will hang like a millstone around your neck forever, what good did it really do for you or the rest of society?

One memory I have from my misspent youth was reading Ayn Rand bitching, as reported by one of her biographers,  about the way that the newly installed Soviet regime cut funding massively for the liberal arts departments at their universities after the revolution was secure in order to beef up the fields of engineering, the sciences, and the practical arts while she was a student majoring in history and philosophy. That was one of the few good moves they made in my humble opinion.

What alternative do you have if you don't want to study accounting, nursing, medicine, mathematics, geology, or some practical subject if you can't get financial aid to study that stuff? Paying for your education yourself seem like a decent option to me but in any case asking the taxpayers to fund your study of Egyptology, renaissance poetry or mass communications should be off the table.

$9,000 a semester to go to Eastern Michigan University? Yikes!

At least that's what one student in this article in the Eastern Echo claimed to be borrowing in student loans per semester. Yikes! That's just over $70,000 for a four-year degree. I hope whatever he's majoring in renumerates enough to repay all that in a timely fashion or he/she will be drowning in debt forever. Even with a bachelor's degree in engineering, nursing, business administration or some other field where the grads get hired quick and that tend to pay well servicing that much debt is gonna be a tough row to hoe.

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Three years of student aid and a 0.0 GPA to show for it - MLive
Political fall-guy for Governor Granholm's court packing scheme baffled by it all - Det Freep
Maybe that's why he didn't get retained by the voters perhaps? Too bad. He doesn't seem that bad.
The 1970's Oakland County Child Killer story makes news again - Det News
Amid rumors of a possible cover-up.
The real slayer of empires: Public debt - Newsweek
The 10 best low-carb fruits - Daily Apple (Mark Sisson)
Assange's rape allegations and the integrity of the left - The Nation (Katha Pollitt)
The right-wing's war on net neutrality -Daily Kos (Joan McCarter) via Slashdot
London UK police claim CCTVs solve "six crimes a day" - BBC
I'd like to know what these "six crimes a day" are before I take that claim too seriously. And pissing on the sidewalk, jaywalking, skateboarding offenses and similar shit shouldn't count, either.
"The vindictive grand jury investigation of pain-relief advocate Siobhan Reynolds" - Slate (Radly Balko)
Winterizing your bike - Wired

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Buyer's remorse over borrowing $50K for an Ivy League M.A. degree - Craigslist (Anonymous)
Hoity-toity wine snobs duped out of big bucks by counterfeits - Slate (Mark Steinburger)
Proof that the FBI is surveilling social networks - BBC
"Armed police were sent to a U.K. school because "...scanning software picked up a suspicious combination of words."
Is Los Angeles still America's "city of the future"? - New Geography (Joel Kontkin)
Joe Lieberman defends his "emergency powers over Internet" legislation - CNet
"It's vital that the president can 'say to an electric company or to say to Verizon, in the national interest, "There's an attack about to come, and I hereby order you to put a patch on this, or put your network down on this part, or stop accepting any incoming from country A,'" said Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut who caucuses with Democrats."
Sign of the Times: Deranged female shooter kills 2, kidnaps 1, wounds 1 - NY Post
Didn't kill herself before being captured though.