As a father of five, the cost of college is on my mind. I try to ignore it but I know it’s coming and I dread it- kinda’ like my wife’s London broil.
College is expensive. But don’t worry, a college professor has bridged the gap between higher learning and the common man by positing in a scientific journal that students should sell their kidneys in order to pay off their student debts. Ahhh, isn’t that a load off your back. If your kids just sell their body parts they can keep college professors earning hundreds of thousands not to keep their office hours.
The Scotsman reports:
Sue Rabbitt Roff believes making it legal to sell the body part would boost the number of organs available to save lives and help students struggling with money.
She argues that donors should be paid the average UK annual income of around £28,000.
It is currently illegal to sell organs and tissues in the UK under the Human Tissue Act (2004) and across the world apart from in Iran…
The Dundee University academic makes the controversial comments in an article in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) today. Mrs Roff, senior research fellow at the university’s Department of Medical Sociology, told The Scotsman: “We are allowing young people to undertake £20,000 to £30,000 of university fee payments.
“We allow them to burden themselves with these debts. Why can’t we allow them to do a very kind and generous thing but also meet their own needs?”
Ethics organisations argue changing the law would exploit poor people desperate for money.
However, Mrs Roff wrote in the BMJ article: “One reservation that many people express about such a proposal is that it might exploit poor people in the same way the illegal market does now.
“But if the standard payment were equivalent to the average annual income in the UK, currently about £28,000, it would be an incentive across most income levels for those who wanted to do a kind deed and make enough money to, for instance, pay off university loans.”
That’s awesome!
Maybe we could do it by scale. Maybe you’d just have to give a finger or two to get a business degree, and maybe a spleen or a kidney to become a doctor. And maybe you could donate your brain if you want to become a college professor. It doesn’t seem that at least one of them is using theirs.
August 9, 2011 at 5:40 am
Ahh, life imitating art once again: check out Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life" (Part V: Live Organ Transplants.)
August 9, 2011 at 11:28 am
We are allowing young people to undertake £20,000 to £30,000 of university fee payments.
We allow them to burden themselves with these debts. Why can't we allow them to do a very kind and generous thing but also meet their own needs?
Why don't you try allowing young people to go to college for less money?
August 9, 2011 at 11:46 am
First of all, these aren't "college professors" in the sense of an American college, these are university lecturers.
And secondly, I have never heard of a lecturer on anything like "hundreds of thousands". Most academic posts, even at Oxbridge, seem to be going with paycheques of about £30-35,000, which is hardly stunning pay.
As for why they can't charge less: the government just slashed govt contributions to higher education in a very, very stupid way. First, if they charge less than top whack, they're going to be seen as a second-rate institution (and who wants to go to a second-rate institution?), and secondly, there's still going to be a ten-year funding-gap thanks to this.
But don't worry, if you think the taxpayer is going to get out of the costs. The loan repayments only start if the (ex)-student is earning over £21,000 and stop once they're over 60, so the probability is that the taxpayer will end up footing most of the bill, anyway. In short: the only benefit is that for the life of this government, the cost of higher education looks smaller, until it comes back to bite the next government. In the meantime, British people get worse higher education for more money.
Oh, and the students will have to pay in set instalments, so they can't pay off any faster than the Student Loan Company wants them to.
And if you're wondering where all the money is going: middle-managers and vast centralised bureacracies created by the creeping businessification of higher education over here. The academics, like the students, are largely disenfranchised from the running of the universities.
August 9, 2011 at 12:55 pm
As an 'umble adjunct faculty, making hundreds of dollars per class and with no office, I can assure you that some students draw more in grants and gifts of money than I make.
Such does not obtain with my daughter who, because both her parents work (gasp), is graduating from college deeply in debt.
August 9, 2011 at 12:58 pm
LOL THat is a VERY funny ending paragraph
August 9, 2011 at 2:12 pm
An otherwise thoughtful post was ruined for me by a slam at entire profession. As the spouse of a college professor, I can attest that they don't make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for doing nothing. Are there slackers in academia–sure, as there are slackers in any profession. Most lecturers and professors are hardworking and care for their students. In spite of the popular misconception of "those who can't teach," most professors could make considerably more in the private sector but have chosen to invest of themselves, at considerable sacrifice on the part of their families, in the future leaders of society. They do not deserve to be so thoughtlessly slammed.
August 9, 2011 at 2:51 pm
On the lighter side of this post…..About your wife's London Broil. Cooks Illustrated has a simple solution. Generously salt both sides of the meat. Wrap tightly in plastic wrap. Stick it in the fridge for 3-6 hours. Grill or broil it and cut it thinly. It's actually really good. (you can also put a couple of scewers through it to stop it from curling up).
As for the post itself, people are so bizarre.
August 9, 2011 at 9:51 pm
Why not just encourage our young people to educate themselves in better ways? Why do we continue to finance our young adults all-night drinking binges and sexual escapades and frat parties? Why don't we just end it all together? I used to work with several people who financed their entire college education by working nights at McDonald's. Yes that is a true story. What are colleges teaching anyway? How to think like a liberal??? Yea, now just let's sell our body parts to graduate with a degree in business so we can work in Verizon customer service. Yea.
August 10, 2011 at 2:09 am
If God thought one could make it on one kidney. He would not have given people two.
August 10, 2011 at 2:13 am
@Maria: I laughed so hard at the skrews in the meat that I almost fell off my chair. I grind my own into hamburger, and it is usually London Broil.
August 10, 2011 at 2:16 am
@Maria: I apologize. It is late and I am tired. You wrote skewers and I read skrews, but it was worth a laugh.
August 10, 2011 at 8:08 pm
Please let me join the chorus of annoyed (spouses of) academics. We homeschool, and are supporting a reasonably sized family on one professor's income. I shop at thrift stores, cut couponss, and my oldest works for her money.
Incidentally, all of his colleagues in the department with school-aged children have them in private schools (or public magnets), and some homeschool. They see what the incoming freshmen can and can't do, and while they teach as well as they can, they're not inclined to have their own children grow up brainwashed and ignorant.
August 18, 2011 at 12:59 am
Nothing new. Four years of college already costs an arm and a leg.