Rant: Overpriced, overrated private schools

[EyeMWing]

My girlfriend goes to a private HS - gets raped for over a grand in textbooks every year (The school artificially inflates the prices tenfold).

I go to a public school. My texts are the exact same editions, provided free of charge. Only stuff I have to pay for are the consumables ($10 for the Physics lab manual is all I need this year) and whatever I destroy.

Take for example, my HS biology text. Replacement cost on that beast was $80. Her school charges $500 new.

Sad thing is that my public school also has a much better course selection, much higher tech budget, much better athletics program, much better arts program, and much better math program. We're getting our third generation of Dell Optiplexes - this time we actually have CD burners, plus a real, live gigabit LAN! No more retarded floppies. (Of course, the A/V department has had 3 massive DVD authoring stations in operation for 6 months now, and one of them for almost 2 years) Her expensive private school is still using pentium-class machines on a 10mbit LAN, and actually touts their so-called technical prowess in their recruitment brochures.

Where does all the money go? Well, there's no simple answer, but I think I figured it out when I showed up there on Open House night. I glanced through the windows to the main office - it looked like Bill Gates' study in there (Except with much older computers). And in the staff parking lot, there was a nice collection of Bimmers.

Unfortunately, due to travel issues, she can't transfer out of there and go to school with me, it's almost a 1 hour drive. Plus, my school is in a very, very rural, upper-middle class predominantly white area (In fact, 90% of our non-white population lives in an area that we all call "the projects" down on the very southern edge of the school's service area, which is just a middle class surburban neighborhood with an apartment building or two. She lives in what can only be described as a ghetto.

And as a side note, just so nobody uninformedly calls BS on this whole deal, the vast majority of my school's funding doesn't come from public funding, it comes from donations from parents and family, which are very easy to solicit after another state championship in sports, or stage performance or the like. The A/V department finally figured out how to get in on the act. One of the teachers spent $5000 of his own money up front on a DV camera, editing hardware and the refitting of a Dell Optiplex to a DVD authoring station. The two advanced TV production classes were then each tasked with producing a feature-length film (1 hour+) in one semester. Both finished, and they were exhibited to the public free of charge. Over $10,000 worth of monetary donations poured in, plus the donation of a few key software titles like AfterEffects. I volunteer my time before and after school, during lunch and my free periods in that department helping them sort out their technical issues, upgrading and maintaining their shiznit, and eBaying/listing on ATFSFT all the throw-away parts for them. So if you bought some stuff on AT FS/FT forums (I think it was somthing like 10 slockets and P3/800's that actually sold), your money went towards this school

plzkthxbye <rant off>

 

[FoBoT]

isn't choice a wonderful thing?

 

[MacBaine]

Holy $hit... $500 for one book?

 

[bigdog1218]

500 for one book? Universities don't charge that much, not even close to that much for a bio book.

 

[Buttzilla]

my college prof once told us that private schools such as harvard and yale is crap. hahaha found out he went to harvard, got his phd from harvard, taught at harvard for a few years.

 

[Soybomb]

over a grand in textbooks every year......
[snip] Her school charges $500 new

So she only takes 2 classes a year at those book prices then? Text books are quite expensive as you'll learn in college

 

[digitalsm]

Sad thing is that my public school also has a much better course selection, much higher tech budget, much better athletics program, much better arts program, and much better math program. We're getting our third generation of Dell Optiplexes - this time we actually have CD burners, plus a real, live gigabit LAN! No more retarded floppies. (Of course, the A/V department has had 3 massive DVD authoring stations in operation for 6 months now, and one of them for almost 2 years) Her expensive private school is still using pentium-class machines on a 10mbit LAN, and actually touts their so-called technical prowess in their recruitment brochures.

WTF? No wonder schools cant pay teachers for sh!t, and public education is getting worse as the years pass. No High School needs 3 DVD authoring stations, nor do they need top of the line or near top of the line PC/Mac systems, nor do they need CD Burners. Where the fvck do you go to school?

 

[Spoooon]

Originally posted by: Buttzilla
my college prof once told us that private schools such as harvard and yale is crap. hahaha found out he went to harvard, got his phd from harvard, taught at harvard for a few years.

So, maybe he knows first hand?

 

[fatbaby]

usually the teachers in private schools are paid less than those in public.

 

[silverpig]

My Astro text book in university cost over $250... but it was HUGE and covers me for 4 classes

 

[Buttzilla]

back in 97, our district got a 10mill bond from the city. dayam, they hired me and a couple of friends to be assistant techs to help set up all the schools in the district. at the time, 1 hs, 3 middle schools, and 5 elementary, all w/ 7 comps and a laser printer in each classroom. we also had well over 25 comp labs w/ 30 computers in each. man, that was crazy fun. we took this course on static discharge and our boss waved his hand a few times, touched a mother board, turned on the comp and a skull popped up on screen. he warned us about not grounding ourselves while working but if we came across comps like this, all we had to do was slap a doa sticker on the screen and apple will send us a new one....hehehe good times.

[edit] in some districts parents just care alot about education.

 

[TheeeChosenOne]

Originally posted by: Buttzilla
my college prof once told us that private schools such as harvard and yale is crap. hahaha found out he went to harvard, got his phd from harvard, taught at harvard for a few years.

I'll confirm that from my own experience.

 

[Legendary]

The extra money goes to bribing Ivy League schools and the like to accept people from their college so more people will join their private school and pay insane prices with the hope of getting into an Ivy when they would have no chance from a private school.
Also, people who go to private school and pay that amount are proof to private colleges that those people have money and will donate to them heavily in the future, which also leads to higher acceptances from private high schools.
Private school teachers are also paid more I think.
/Conspiracy theory

 

[EyeMWing]

Originally posted by: digitalsm

Sad thing is that my public school also has a much better course selection, much higher tech budget, much better athletics program, much better arts program, and much better math program. We're getting our third generation of Dell Optiplexes - this time we actually have CD burners, plus a real, live gigabit LAN! No more retarded floppies. (Of course, the A/V department has had 3 massive DVD authoring stations in operation for 6 months now, and one of them for almost 2 years) Her expensive private school is still using pentium-class machines on a 10mbit LAN, and actually touts their so-called technical prowess in their recruitment brochures.

WTF? No wonder schools cant pay teachers for sh!t, and public education is getting worse as the years pass. No High School needs 3 DVD authoring stations, nor do they need top of the line or near top of the line PC/Mac systems, nor do they need CD Burners. Where the fvck do you go to school?

Read further down. The DVD auth stations weren't paid for with public money anyway, they were bought from donations. County policy doesn't allow donations to be mixed with the school's general budget, and therefore can't be used to pay teachers to keep things "fair" across the system. They have to stay within the departmental budgets, which has little use except for equipment. The CD burners are standard equipment on all Dell machines now - it costs MORE if you want a read-only drive. The standard-issue Optiplex machines are NOT top of the line, they're actually Dell's entry level business system. Onboard everything and a P4/2.0, onboard gig LAN and a 20 gig HDD.

While even machines of such limited nature aren't neccessary for 99.99999999999999% of the computer related learning that goes on in high schools (A/V labs being the exception), schools cannot be expected to spend extra money just to buy crappier things. Think of it as an office - you don't NEED that gig LAN, you don't NEED a CD burner, hell, you don't need a Pentium 4, you don't even need 20 gigs of disk space. But are you going to go out and waste time and money just to buy a P2 class machine?

Read the whole post next time, and try to exercise some common sense.

 

[wetcat007]

Technoligy wise, private schools in general as I know it, are behind the time, by far, and have bad security that people i know that goto those schools love to exploit and change grades with the all to easy to get MS Access file they use for stuff lol.

I think one of the reasons for this is attendence though. I mean for example that private school has 200 students that i mentioned, vs my public school has 3000 big difference. Out of 3000, you need to provide obviously top notch security lol not to say i havnt found my ways... But, with my school the reason they get fairly new computers every 2 years, is they get some kind of lease program deal with Dell and HP, that allows them to actually do it at reasonable costs. They use LCD's now, even though they cost more up front, think about the power saving on that many monitors running 24/7 for the school.(as well as the fact that they for whatever reason have computers locked on 60hz which hurt on the CRT's)

The course selection is bigger, so is the ammount of people going to the school. No flames on this please, but one thing that my school in particular puts for to much money on, is 2nd language classes, get more money than anything else. and they make it almost manditory u take one, and to be honest, I just cant friggin learn a 2nd language very well along with a lot of people it just dun work with them well and they flunk out of those courses, besides the fact they dun care if they learn some obscure language like german that is offered, that they'll need if they just happen to be in Germany, which will proly be 5 people from the school at the most.

Are their a few courses that people really dun need? Yes, but some people will argue otherwise.

I myself know of problems with public schools, (very overcrowded classrooms) and private schools (money not going where it should, lack of people attending). In some private schools they are also very strict, although some are loose too, it depends on the school i suppose.

But anyways people to some extent can choose where they goto school, although it may depend on their financial status sadly.

Now for me to rant bout Universities, that's a whole different problem. Professors get paid WAY too much, heck half of em have student teachers do the teaching and stuff for them anyhow, i myself do not think college professors who generally do some work, but not a lot, deserver $300,000 or more like they get here, at the University of Minnesota, people are not getting into the school because they cant afford the outragous costs, because these professors are still trying to get more, and generally don't even spend their time on the class, as much as their research and other such things.

anyways end of my rant... no flamin plez! heh just stating my opinion

 

[freebee]

Yes...i agree...when the sis has been attending a 20k+ a year junior high/high school since the 8th grade.....and I went to public school I i turned out semi-ok. Obviously most of the students in these schools are ivy-bound...and are NYC's cultural elite...but still I don't think its worth the extra expense.

Consider this...grades 1-3 cost a freckin 23 grand. And it goes up to more than 24 grand by the time high school comes around. So, a student that spends 13 years in school will have spent about 1/3 of a million dollars...whereas I went to public school for free!!!! Then the Ivys are another 30k a year.

I would rather drive a ferrari enzo and go to public school.