MS one of eight states to see double digit losses in K-12 enrollment
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Same with proposal to consolidate The W, MS Valley and other Senior Colleges. Need adults in the room to make hard decisions and take emotions out of it.
Those "streamlined expenses" savings wouldn't be enough to buy toilet paper.
You're just an angry shill who can't see the big picture.
Missed this thread the first go round, but I would think this all comes back to the economy right? Young people (Under 30) are waiting to have kids because they can't afford to buy a house. That delay in the first child leads to smaller family sizes and a significant decline in the birth rate. All-in-all not a negative thing perse just a change in philosophy from previous generations to the current one
Goat's right. Consolidating JUCOs wouldn't save that much.
The JUCO system in Mississippi is one of our biggest assets. They are designed to be fast and less cumbersome than senior colleges. When an industry comes to an area, a JUCO can design a curriculum to fit that specific industry without a ton of flack from accrediting agencies. I've seen SACS take 2 years to approve a new concentration on a 4 year degree.
The fact of the matter on higher education in Mississippi is that our senior college system is jacked up. Having one board to control all eight universities is an antiquated model that has hurt all eight. Mississippi State should have its own board that controls its own interests, and so should the other schools. Forget the years where Ole Miss alumns controlled the board and pushed Ole Miss' interests, you know how many times State has been held back from advancing because it might not be fair to the HBCUs in the state? Its insane.
A prime example is that we have an extreme nursing shortage in this state, and IHL will not allow State to have a nursing program in Starkville because it might hurt MUW's enrollment. So with Georgia finally adding a nursing program, Mississippi State is the only SEC school without a BSN program, one of the most popular majors and one that attracts the type of student MSU needs to attract. We have an MSN to practice nursing degree, one of the least desirable nursing degrees, and its offered on the Meridian campus.
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It was arguably a feature at the time. But even then, they were still making JUCO's generally less accessible in the attempt to give a nod to our rural background. Jones CC should have been in or adjacent to Laurel or Hattiesburg. MGCC should have been in or adjacent to Gulfport. Hinds should have been in or adjacent to Jackson or Vicksburg. Some of the decisiosn probably weren't as obvious at the time. I don't know that it would have mattered where Holmes ended up. I' assume Lexington would have been a better choice at the time, but who knows.
That doesn't help, but it's not the origin of the problem. It's mainly a cultural shift. The 20's started to be seen as a time for a mix of extended adolescence and career chasing rather than family building. I have heard plenty of otherwise smart women that claim to want to have kids talk about their 20's being too young to get serious. Like ok, wait until your fertility starts to decline, and then hope that you find somebody, date, and get married and you're pretty much guaranteeing you can only have two, at most, non-geriatric pregnancies.
It's also tied to the proliferation of the welfare state. Not sure how top of mind it was for people, but when you were reliant on family to take care of you when you were older, that was a pretty big and obvious incentive towards having kids and if you don't, treating nephews and nieces well. Once the government will force other people's kids to give you money when you're older, it's a little less of a threat to not have children or to have fewer children.
It's a massive negative when you a huge part of your politics is tied up in transferring money from the young to the old. It'd still be a negative regardless. It just causes a lot of problems when a population is shrinking, even if it weren't for jacking up the "promise" to take money from younger people that are no longer being produced. But it's going to be a much bigger problem in the US and the west in general, as we have spent decades essentially promising that we would tax the **** out of younger generations to pay for the formal debt we are issuing as well as the implicit debt associated with welfare programs for the old.
ETA: One of the reasons so many people are all in on "AI" is that it's the only foreseeable thing that could bail us out of our idiocy. Widescale adoption of AI that approaches general AI could make us rich enough that we could afford to pay for all our debt while still having a rising standard of living, even if not rising as much if we had not had so many corrupt politicians and complicit voters.
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Pretty sure it is a significant net negative.
A shrinking birth rate leads to a smaller workforce and significant economic issues.
A shrinking birth rate can be, in part, offset by increased immigration. Not gonna touch that subject in this post though.
As Trump is wont to say, we need to reduce that by 600% , which, of course, is mathematically impossible ....
Unfortunately the adults in the room are all trying to get re-elected!
MS spends more on public school administration than any state, while paying teachers one of the lowest salaries. Teacher assistants are the lowest paid in the country. Consolidation should happen.
You can do all of this by consolidating admin in juco.
You should be able to do all of this in 4 year schools too but politics gets in the way.
I think you are the one who can't see the big picture.
There are 15 juco presidents making and average of $140,000 each (low estimate). You could easily go to 8 Juco presidents and save $980,000 per year in just presidential salaries. Lets call it $700,000 in savings b/c you might have some additional travel and assistant roles created.
That savings would be super easy. Thats just in the presidential roles.
To put it in terms you might understand, thats enough toiler paper for about 4,700 people per year.
That's crazy and shouldn't happen. Just consolidate the ones like Delta and Coahoma, Southwest and Co-Lin, the ones right on top of each other. You can't do it with all them.
Mississippi is an extremely undesirable place to live to almost everyone except older folks like me. Combine that with the fact that young people just aren't having as many kids, and here we are.
Yes you are. You just did. You can't help it.
A shrinking birthrate isn't great but its definitely not the sky is falling scenario that some of you are making RIGHT NOW. Our population growth has been out of control for years. Having a slower growth isn't bad.
If you believe in climate change caused by humans, slowing population growth is a good thing. YOU CANNOT HAVE INCREASED POPULATION GROWTH AND BETTER ECONOMICS/QUALITY OF LIFE AND LIVE BY THE "GREEN NEW DEAL". WILL NOT WORK. FACT.
I dont think many people oppose Legal Immigration.
I don't know that it even counts as a speaking error anymore. I've heard plenty of educated people say that something or other is three times less or whatever compared to a previous point in time. I'm not entirely positive, but I think they mean it's been reduced by two thirds (and you'd have to multiply what's left by 3 to get to where you were before).
Thats why i said 15 presidents down to 8.
You could do all of them but i'm not saying we should or shouldn't. WE ABSOLUTELY SHOULD GET RID OF WASTED DOLLARS THOUGH.
Again you could consolidate co-lin and southwest but still call the campuses co-lin and southwest. You could keep mascots and sports teams if you wanted. There are plenty of savings without cutting them completely.
Yes thats what they mean. It technically is a speaking error but the point is pretty simple.
But lets forget about some of the real brain busters. If elon musk split up his wealth he could give everyone in the USA a million dollars!!!
Take a breath. You went full caps and it wasnt even 10am.
- I was saying I wasnt going to touch the subject of immigration because I didnt want to offer an opinion on it. And I stuck to that- I didnt offer an opinion on it.
If you feel that I touched it by simply stating a fact about population, then so be it. I accept you feel that way.
- You dont need to include me in the group of people who are making a shrinking birthrate out to be the sky is falling. I havent done that. It seems to me that concern is valid, but I havent figured out how much concern and effort/initiative would be appropriate.
- I would enjoy seeing you list who is in the group of sky fallers. It would be quite the funny group to gather as it would encompass the full political spectrum, religious spectrum, and economic spectrum.
This is obviously incorrect. Not sure what you're referencing here. Per Shad white, we spend a higher share of our education budget on administrative expenses than other southern states. Not sure how we compare nationally. I would assume that means we are pretty high nationally just because the other states with absurd administrative spending also have absurd pensions, which would keep the ratio from being out of whack.
Well, we are one of the poorest states in the nation. It makes sense that teachers wages would lag behind other richer and more expensive states. I still want teachers to be paid more. I thought they were in the right ballpark before the covid idiocy and unleashing 25% inflation. Probably too high to start with and too little growth over their career. Having talked to some legislators, I think there is an understanding of that but they don't want to admit they can't afford existing PERS obligations and rightsizing teacher pay between new and experienced teachers would make PERS even worse, but if they tried to give experienced teachers income that is not included in PERS it would be a tacit admission that PERS is 17ed.
And to be clear, it's not that teachers with 20 years of experience are that much better than teachers with 5 years of experience (although data says they are that much better than teachers with one or two years of experience), but the quality of students going into education is too low because people keep getting told they will be underpaid. That not's true to the extent people claim. As of 2024, two married teachers in Mississippi with the lowest certification in their very first year with zero local supplement would together have made not quite ~150% of the median household income in the MS while working less. Even if you treat PERS as worth nothing more than the employee contribution, that's a great starting position. The problem would be that after 20 years, those same two teachers would only make 188% of the median household income. That's about a 1.2% per year increase in real wages (assuming the legislature keeps adjusting the payscale to keep up with inflation). That's not terrible by any means. Tons of job security and a relatively high floor with less required hours, even if there are its own stresses. But that's not going to attract a lot of ambitious people. It's going to attract some people that are mission driven, some people that just don't know what else is out there, and some people that put a very high value on the job security and high floor, which will attract a mix of hyper conservative people and people that deep down know they are going to be closer to the floor in whatever they do. We should work on increasing the growth of teacher pay more so than the starting pay, and just exempt all of the growth from PERS.
You’re 100 percent wrong here
Check Page 5 of Mississippi’s 1950 Census population numbers:
https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1950/population-volume-2/37779777v2p24ch2.pdf
The TLDR— Mississippi was over 72 percent Rural. The Jucos served Mississippi’s population base for years
Mississippi currently does not have a population base defined as more urban than rural. With that said, I expect it to occur in with the release of the next Census numbers or in 2040.
https://www.icip.iastate.edu/tables/population/urban-pct-states
(yeah, these are 2010 numbers here but there’s nothing released that says Mississippi is more urban than rural in 2020… and most Six Packers would laugh at that notion today)
Being mostly rural doesn't change the fact that they serve fewer people, and serve them more poorly, by being away from population centers. We have some areas of the state where there basically isn't a population center, and putting them in a central location of the sparsely populated area probably still makes sense. But in areas where we do have population centers, we serve fewer people by having the community colleges away from the population centers. That's why you see so much investment in satellite campuses. They are trying to better serve people by locating more options more easily accessible to people.
But we still didn't do a great job of locating them by any criteria. Ellisville is less central to the district served by Jones CC than Laurel is. If we had wanted to put MGCC somewhere based on geographic distance from rural populations than putting it best positioned to serve the most people, it'd be probably be somewhere north of Hwy 15 in Harrison County. I mean, all this is looking at existing populations and highways, and ignores the reality of who had powerful representatives and/or some local infrastructure to donate, like existing agricultural high schools. I'm just saying it's another thing that sucks for us now. Community colleges could have provided a solid anchor for some of our decent sized towns. Laurel could use Jones right in town. Gulfport could use MGCC. Jackson or Vicsburg could use Hinds CC. Greenwood could use MDCC. Tupelo could use Itawamba CC. etc.
Did you even read that Mississippi’s population was 72 percent rural in the 1950 census?
You also didn’t notice my point that Mississippi doesn’t yet have a majority urban population.
Ergo, the concept of Mississippi having “population centers” is a laughable concept among many people and especially Six Packers…
Reading is Fundamental ($1)
#morersfcschtick
You aren't, nor are many others, in a position to dictate what positions are needed and which ones are not. You are also not in a position to say who should make such and such salary. How can you know that? You can't, you're just an angry shill.
Just using your phony numbers - the fact of the matter is that those 15 presidents are MS residents and are contributing to their local economies in many ways. That's 15 jobs in this state that might be elsewhere. That is likely a better overall benefit to the MS economy than what someone like you would spend any perceived savings on. Not to mention, education is an investment, you can't look at it in sheer numbers. I'd much rather have that than toilet paper for 4,700 people.
So yeah, you just proved you missed the big picture completely. Talk about low IQs.
Just guessing here, but I bet you're a small business owner. And constantly angry because you think the big bad gubmint is screwin' over the working man. All the while not understanding the benefits you actually have by being a small business owner.
You're not going to convince the 'muh save the taxpayer money' crowd of any type of actual forward or critical thinking. Especially ones living in the MS bubble.Did you even read that Mississippi’s population was 72 percent rural in the 1950 census?
You also didn’t notice my point that Mississippi doesn’t yet have a majority urban population.
Ergo, the concept of Mississippi having “population centers” is a laughable concept among many people and especially Six Packers…
Reading is Fundamental ($1)
#morersfcschtick
What point are you trying to make? I've never heard anybody claim that Mississippi is urban or has a majority urban population. Hell, if you 'control f' this thread, it doesn't appear anybody has even used the word city or cities other than you and then one other poster basically commenting that we don't have have a cool city. But while a 20,000 is nothing more than a small town, 20,000 people is still more than 3,000 people. Just because we are a rural state doesn't mean that there aren't places with more and less people. We don't generally spend state money putting massive highways connecting areas where people aren't, and say "we're rural, so there aren't population centers to serve".Did you even read that Mississippi’s population was 72 percent rural in the 1950 census?
You also didn’t notice my point that Mississippi doesn’t yet have a majority urban population.
Ergo, the concept of Mississippi having “population centers” is a laughable concept among many people and especially Six Packers…
Reading is Fundamental ($1)
#morersfcschtick
Do you work in some area where "population center" is a term of art that means something other than generally the center or critical mass of where an area's population is located? Because that's the only way I can make your comment make sense, is that you are using it as a term of art and don't realize that term of art is not common usage.
Just aren't enough technical jobs available in MS. MSU has all these engineering graduates but not a lot of opportunities in state to get an engineering job. OM has all of these doctors and lawyers that can practice pretty much anywhere but if you don't have many technical companies in the state then its rather difficult for scientists and engineers to get employment. That's why I'm in Huntsville rather than somewhere in MS.
You’re the one saying you wanted the colleges to be located at places that have higher population to serve students better.
Here’s the thing: Those higher populated places didn’t exist then.
You wanted Jones to be near Laurel.
Ellisville ain’t chopped liver.
Im laughing at your Population Center, Moi?!?
You 17ing used it in YOUR 17ing FIRST SENTENCE in Your Comment 107–
THAT’S YOUR ART & YOU JUST ADMITTED YOU 17ing SUCK AT IT.
Again, Reading is Fundamental, and possibly Your Writing needs to be that way too…
Yes, I've heard "ten times smaller" and similar from scientists. Presumably it means 1/10th, but again, mathematically impossible.
It’s been awhile since we’ve had a good argument thread.
Thanks for reviving it
(oops, actually it was Mayor of Little London, but PDH’s response was the latest I saw at around 7 am)
News flash. Look in the mirror and repeat this to yourself over and over.
But I can assure you i am in the position to know many government agencies have too much overhead. I've worked for them and with them.
Yeah creating jobs by taxing people is always a good idea.
You are missing the point. You don't need TOO MANY PEOPLE OR TOO MUCH MONEY to educate people. I realize you've probably never worked in the real world.
Ok lets not use your toilet paper example. Lets say We saved $700,000 on 7 presidents and then used that $700,000 to create skilled trades people? Whats a better investment for mississsippi? BIG PICTURE DUDE!!
I am not a small business owner. Well i do contract engineering work but i don't think i'm getting screwed by the gubment other than we all pay too much money in taxes. I've already proven that but you can't math dude.
Working as an engineer and maximizing efficiency and effectiveness while minimizing labor dollars certainly qualifies me to talk on wasting money.
Funny you say mississippi bubble. You are the mississippi bubble.
In the last 5.5 years, i've spent 6 months in Kansas city at a factory, 3 months in Hungary, 4 months in Mattoon, IL, 12 months in cleveland MS, 7 months in Dayton, OH and now currently outside of chicago.
I don't live in a mississippi bubble but i sure as 17 love mississippi.
I can't help it glfr drops grenades and i have to dive on them.
