When You Hear Someone Say, “Easy As Pie”, Ask Them, “Is That Pie or Pi?”

Apple Pie is easy to eat.

Pi, the Algebraic Formula, is not so easy to digest. Here is a little taste of Pi not Pie...

There are many formulas of Pi of many types. Among others, these include series, products, geometric constructions, limits, special values, and pi iterations.

Are you not relieved to know I am now going to go Algebraicless (yes, I know that is not a word).

Let’s get back to Pie (the easy one)...

The Governor of New York Has Proposed To Give Free Tuition To Middle-Class Students Attending The State’s Public Colleges.

What could be simpler?...

Ø Free Tuition...We all love Free.

Ø Middle-Class Students...Those are the folks that politicians always make speeches about during political campaigns.

Ø State’s Public Colleges...Not Private.

In New York, Pie is like Pi.

I will not take a position about Free Public College Tuition Proposal in this Blog Posting. What I will do is bullet point the complications my newspaper laid out to me about this “Easy As Pie” Proposal...

Ø The plan for tuition-free college merely redistributes income while giving the middle class little actual help.

Ø Many of the putative beneficiaries may be harmed. (You know your ability to understand is headed south when they start throwing around words like “putative”.)

Ø To qualify, students must come from families earning less than $100,000 ($125,000 by 2019).

Ø Students must attend school full-time.

Ø Students must graduate on time.

Ø Only a fifth of its undergraduates would be eligible.

Ø A mere 2% of students at the City University of New York would qualify—in part because of low graduation rates.

Ø At the end of each year, scholarship recipients who don’t complete 30 credits—a full course load for two semesters—could lose their grant award for that second semester and get stuck taking out loans to pay back the state.

Ø Students also have to commit to living and working in New York after they graduate for as many years as they receive the scholarship.

Ø If they leave the state, again the grant turns into a loan.

Ø This kind of indentured servitude could keep young graduates from pursuing higher-paying employment elsewhere.

Pause for a Thought Provoking Thought...How are all these proposed requirements and stipulations going to be policed?

There’s more. Now the Complicated gets Confusing, or is it, the Confusing gets Complicated?...

Ø Scholarship recipients also won’t save as much money as they might think. Annual Tuition for in-state students at SUNY community colleges is roughly $4,370. The figure for the state’s public four-year schools is about $6,470.

Ø Low-income students can get federal Pell grants of up to $5,920 a year.

Ø New York’s Tuition Assistance Program, which covers students whose families earn less than $80,000, can further reduce tuition by $500 up to $5,000 each year.

Ø In other words, many middle-class students already are paying little to nothing for tuition.

Ø Students who receive scholarships, however, would still have to pay for room and board, which SUNY estimates will run between $10,000 and $13,000 a year.

Ø The plan will cost state taxpayers a mere $163 million by 2019 (they put the “a mere” in there, not me).

Ø Hundreds of millions more in federal student aid may flow to public colleges because of increased enrollment, which may be one of the plan’s unstated goals.

Ø Promising free tuition could steer more students to public schools from private ones.

Ø According to the commission’s analysis, the plan would shift $1.4 billion away from nonprofit colleges, resulting in 45,000 job losses.

Ø Compensating jobs would be created at public schools, but dislocations would invariably occur.

Ø Once this is out there and implemented, possibly some of the more precarious institutions will go under.

Ø What that will do is cause millions of dollars of lost economic impact on the local community where the colleges are/were located.

Ø This means the plan could cause thousands of job losses in the Upstate Areas of New York.

Ø The State has already spent $25 billion trying to resuscitate Upstate New York.

Ø Yet the State’s economic stimulus has so far produced little bang for taxpayers’ bucks. According to a March report by InvestigativePost.org, upstate employment has grown by only 2.7% compared with 13.1% downstate and 11% nationally.

In order to add Inspiration to all this Consternation, the State says... The people of New York have to believe it’s going to work if it’s actually going to work...Or does it?

The Fella might ask... If they believe that it will work, does that guarantee that it will work?

I apologize for how complicated this Pi really is. If the Devil is truly in the Details, it is easy to see that this is a Devilish Pie.

If you want to show The Fella how gullible you really are, you can now text me this rebuttal... “It’s all going to be OK. My elected representative looked me straight in my eye and said to my eye, ‘Trust Me’”.

Would I kid u?

Smartfella