Montana Articles

High-Priced Idiots

9/11/2021

Kirk Miller

He’s currently the director of the School Administrators of Montana. I had no idea we had such a position, or that we needed one.

I have no idea what Kirk is paid. When was in Havre and then in Bozeman, he was paid $131,000 a year.

With a salary like that, it’s easy to dodge the ‘tough’ questions.

Today Kirk put a long diatribe in the Missoulian, something about supporting local schools. I suppose that means giving them more money.

Something bothered me about that, so I did some research. I decided to leave a comment.

It went something like this:

How come 63% of Montana 8th-graders can’t do math?

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School’s Out (For Good?)

6/9/2021

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Today is the last day of public school here in Missoula. My son gets done at 11 AM today and won’t go back until August 31.

He’s spent most of this year at school, and has been going five days a week for the past few months.

In other parts of the country, this is not the case.

In mostly blue cities, many schools are only partially reopened and are still doing remote learning.

This has had a devastating effect on our already terrible ability to learn.

Just today, the Department of Education released a 53-page report telling us that:

In Chicago, 14% of white students skipped remote learning altogether, while 30% of black students did.

In Ohio, black students saw a 50% greater decline in their test scores than white students did.

Disabled students saw significant declines in education achievement.

English-as-a-second-language students also suffered greatly.

Asian-American students saw an increase in harassment and discrimination.

Female students experienced a greater level of sexual abuse, harassment and violence.

Violence and abuse against children went up.

Students of all demographics experienced mental health challenges.

The Department of Education’s only answer to these glaring and generational issues are to throw more money at the problem.

“Attention to these disparities is vital for building equal opportunities in K-12 education during pandemic recovery, the report said. States and districts should close opportunity gaps through money from three relief packages equaling nearly $200 billion of which districts have broad flexibility to spend on academic and SEL supports, equitable digital resources and more, the Education Department advises.”

I feel their advice will only make the problem worse.

It seems they really want to focus on race a lot more than just educating everyone equally.

At the same time, all the minorities are being left behind with the terrible school situation we had before the pandemic, and the even worse remote-learning model that came after.

Amazingly, anywhere from 56% to 68% of different minority groups were learning entirely remotely, while just 27% of whites were.

Why is this? Personally, I think a lot of that data is skewed. In red states, which are mostly white, many schools never shut down, or did so for a short time. In blue states’ large cities, which are largely minority, 48% of middle schools were still fully remote in February 2021.

Conclusion

We’re going to experience the fallout from these pandemic school closure for decades.

So many more young people will never be fully educated, will never read that well, and won’t be able to do everyday math.

Many will wind up dead or in prison. Many more will have children, that in turn won’t be educated and will repeat the vicious cycle.

The more liberal blue states that closed down the longest will continue to spiral out of control, while the more conservative red states that stayed open will do better...but not great.

Education across the country was already quite poor before the pandemic, and when compared to other countries, it was abysmal.

You really do have to educate your own kids, which so many of us don’t want to do because it’s easier to stare at our screens, easier to let them stare at theirs.

Here’s a high school math book from 1921. I doubt many of our high schoolers could do those lessons today.

Here’s a girl’s reading book from the mid-1800s. How many of our students could comprehend it and answer critical questions about it today?

We often think we’re smarter than the people that came before us, but I feel it’s the exact opposite these days.

And it doesn’t really show any signs of changing, does it?

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A Tale of Two

5/3/2021

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You never really know what’s going to be popular. Back in ‘17, I wrote an article about the highest paid workers at UM, and people read it to this day.

I’d love to do an update to that post, but after I wrote it, UM stopped publishing their financial information, specifically what people are paid.

When I try to contact them, they won’t reply.

This is your public institution, operating with your public dollars, but they won’t tell you where your money is going.

Rich, entitled, elite.

At UM, they’re better than you, they know it, and they’re not afraid to let you know it. They know you’ll put up with this; that you’ll just go home and let that Netflix wash over you, forgetting all the ‘problems’ in the world.

And they’re right.

Let’s dig into the numbers we do have.

Back in 2016, MSU had nearly 14,000 students. That same year, UM had around 11,000.

Let’s fast forward to 2020. MSU had 15,000 students and UM had 8,600.

2020 was a tough year, we all know it. But while UM lost 7% of its students, MSU lost just 0.4%.

The big story in the media here in Missoula over the past few years is attrition, and the university asking professors to retire early (administrators are never asked such).

What has that done to the ranks?

Well, here in Missoula we know that UM had 1,350 people on staff in 2016, but by 2020 that’d fallen to 1,205. Yep, in the span of just four years, UM lost 145 people.

In Bozeman, MSU had just over 1,500 people on staff in 2016 and in 2020 they had close to 1,800. So over the course of four years, that school hired an extra 300 people.

And let’s be completely honest - if you’re a professor or administrator or even a janitor, you want to work in Bozeman, not Missoula.

In Missoula last year, $128 million was spent to pay the staff. In Bozeman, they spent $222 million.

How does that affect learning? Well, quite a bit, actually. You see, when you’re not taking in as much money as you used to, you have less to spend.

Who takes the hit? Well, it’s certainly not Admin. If you follow the money, you find that the students are hurt the most.

Back in 2016, UM spent $76 million a year on instructing its students. By 2020, that’d fallen to $67 million.

Over at MSU, they spent $98 million instructing students in ‘16, and by ‘20 that’d grown to $118 million.

When you factor in things like academic support, student services, institutional support, operations & maintenance, research, public service and scholarships...you see that UM is spending $128 million a year, while MSU is spending $222 million.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that MSU is moving in the right direction, UM is not.

It’s been this way for years, and shows no signs of changing.

But by golly...the top brass at UM still pays themselves like it’s the early-2010s, when enrollment was hitting records and the school could do no wrong.

My, that was a long time ago, and so much has changed. Just not in the eyes of the administrator.

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The University of Montana Foundation’s Money

12/8/2020

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How much money does the University of Montana have?

They try to hide this from you. For instance, they don’t publish their budget on their website anymore.

Instead you get a 404 error, telling you that page has been permanently removed.

I’ll have to dig into this a bit more to find those numbers.

But what I’m really interested in are the endowments, specifically all the rich out-of-staters that are giving to UM so they can get fancy new buildings built that have their name on them.

For this we look to the University of Montana Foundation, a 501(c)(3) that was created in 1950 to “inspire philanthropic support to enhance excellence and opportunity at the University of Montana.”

The UM Foundation gives us two reports: a 9-page annual report for 2019 that has a bunch of feel-good, ‘press-release-style’ numbers, and then the 26-page financial report that came out in June 2020.

The Foundation took in $56 million in 2019 from over 13,000 donors. 51% of those donors were alumni members, while 35% were just friends, 6% were corporations, 6% were parents, and 2% were other foundations or just “other.”

Most of the people gave money to support academic and institutional programs. In fact, the lion’s share went to this - $41 million. Another $14 million went to scholarships and $700,000 went to facilities.

With all those donations last year, the Foundation now has $215 million on hand, spread over 1,084 different investment funds. In fact, 84% of all the Foundation’s money is tied up in the investment market.

That’s all we get from the smaller report. The larger report gives us more information, mainly because it was an audit conducted by a firm from Minneapolis.

For instance, this report tells us that the Foundation actually has $300 million, or $85 million more than the smaller report had us believe.

Why the discrepancy?

We’re also told that the Foundation only took in $27.4 million during the 2019-20 fiscal year, not $56 million like the smaller report claims. This is because of accounting practices that don’t let you claim that money until certain conditions are met.

The Foundation transferred nearly $19 million to the university this year, and almost $23 million in 2019. These transfers are governed by an operating agreement. One stipulation of that agreement is that UM pays the Foundation $550,000 each year for “services provided.” The university also charges the Foundation $236,000 a year in rent for office space on campus, an agreement that runs to 2036.

So in effect, UM pays the Foundation $210,000 a year so the Foundation will keep finding those rich, out-of-state donors to keep it living the lifestyle it’s become accustomed to.

This is a great deal for the university, as they don’t have to beg the legislature for money every two years...though they still do.

Just a few weeks ago, Governor Bullock put out his draft budget for the next two years. He included $37 million in new funding for the Montana University System, which comes out to $18.5 million spread across the 16 different campuses.

If that was divided equally, UM would get $1.1 million.

That’s not enough to keep the university living the lifestyle it’s become accustomed to, and they know it.

That’s why they have the Foundation.

And UM isn’t really doing that well. In Bozeman, MSU took in $167 million in grants compared to the $56 million that UM took in over the same period.

Whether it’s $167 million in Bozeman or $56 million in Missoula, it begs the question…’How much money do taxpayers actually have to give to our colleges?’

Because it sure seems like they’re doing pretty well on their own.

How much do the universities get, anyways?

Well, back in 2015 Montana had total state spending of $6.3 billion and 10.4% of that was earmarked for higher education, meaning we spend around $655 million a year on our university system.

And then on top of that, the two flagship schools are capable of raising over $200 million more on their own, most of which they just sit on.

Well, that’s not true, as we’ve seen - they keep it in the market, and each year pull about $500,000 via their nonprofit Foundations.

I think Montana taxpayers and students are getting a raw deal here.

Each year we increase the money we give to the university system...and for what? So some old professors can keep making huge salaries and benefits packages?

They’re not even in the classroom!

Most classes are remote learning, and the university still charges the exact same tuition as if they were in-person!

The sad part is that students and parents actually put up with this.

The legislature needs to introduce a bill to cut university pay until they can get back into the classroom. On the same note, public school teacher pay needs to be reduced by 60%.

If kids are only allowed to go to school 40% of the time (2 days a week) then why are we paying full-time salaries?

At the same time, the legislature needs to cut funding to the two flagship schools in the Montana University System.

They don’t need the money.

Oh, they think they do, but we know for a fact that if things ever get problematic for UM or MSU, the rich, out-of-state donors will step in.

We saw it happen in 2016, when the Alice Lee Lund Charitable Trust gave UM $5 million to build their new auditorium.

That same year, UM pulled in $24 million for a new forestry building from private donors that’d made their fortune in the forestry industry.

For over a year now, UM has had plans in place to demolish an old house at the ‘entrance’ to the university, paving the way for the $6 million Montana Museum of Art and Culture. All the money will come from private donations.

Those are just a few examples from the past few years.

It’s also clear from recent reporting that the 7-year-long Campaign Montana, which raised $450 million from 34,000 different donors, is separate from the Foundation.

Where do we find the donors on that one, and where they’re from, and why they seem so interested in revamping the look of the UM campus?

And what exactly is the long-term plan for Aber Hall, the 11-floor student dorm room that’s now so empty of students that it’s being converted into office space for $1.3 million?

What is the previous office space in the Lomasson Center going to be used for? So far it sounds like a revamped dining area. Does that really need to cost $24 million?

Here in Missoula, UM has over $500 million it can play around with. With that kind of cash on hand, their token lip-service about supporting local businesses through their "Heart of the Grizzly" campaign is quite insulting.

No, I don’t think UM or MSU needs any more funding from the legislature this session, none at all.

We’re heading into the darkest winter we’ve seen in generations, and the worst economic depression in nearly 100 years.

Does the state really have the money to keep spending for the university system’s pet projects...especially when so many rich, out-of-state donors are lined up to give and give and give...when UM won't even release the names of who these donors are?

Why does our university system act so entitled to so much money when so many in our state are suffering under job losses, school closures, no childcare, and increasingly, no money to pay the bills or the rent?

How much will they keep asking for?

How much more can Montana taxpayers give?

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Missoula Schools Get Worse

9/9/2020

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Schooling in Missoula has turned into a massive joke.

Yesterday afternoon the school superintendent sent out an email confirming what many of us parents were dreading - Monday would become a permanent ‘no-school’ day.

Here’s how it was framed:

“We have committed to stay in the Hybrid schedule through Sept 25 and perhaps longer. We have also committed to keeping Mondays as our full remote learning days.”

Parents were informed that the school district is working on some kind of new schedule that will run through November 6.

What this is...no one knows.

It’s a good bet, therefore, that kids won’t be going to school on Mondays all the way to mid-November...if they even go back then.

It’s also a good bet that each kid will only go their two days a week - either Tuesday/Wednesday or Thursday/Friday.

My son does the latter, and come October, parents like I will be thrown another pickle.

You see, this is the time each year when teachers get their two-day professional development.

Hunter days.

So each year parents can expect to have their kids home 4 days that week - Thursday through Sunday.

This year, however, we’ll have 10 days.

It’s the Thursday/Friday of the previous week, then the weekend before the development week, then no school on Monday, then some kids will go on Tuesday/Wednesday - but not mine.

Mine will be home for the first three days, the two days the other kids go, the two days that are now cancelled, plus the two days of the following weekend.

10 days - parents are gonna love that!

If this wasn’t enough, each day school starts 10 minutes later and gets out an hour early.

It used to be that Thursday was the only reduced day, with kids getting out at 2:10. Now they get out at that time everyday.

Used to be an ironclad rule that schools had to go 180 days a year, and if they didn’t, they’d have to make that up.

Now I suspect we’re not even going 100 days.

My son goes two days a week, or about 8 days a month...or probably what will amount to fewer than 30 days before Christmas break...which I’m sure will be a lot longer than usual.

What are parents supposed to do? What about employers?

For teachers it’s great - work less, get paid the same, and when you do work, you have half the kids you usually do...if even that.

And there is absolutely no remote learning at all.

This year my son’s 2 days at home are a joke.

Each of those days he has a packet. This consists of two pages of second-grade level math (he’s in 4th grade this year), as well as 25 to 30 minutes of reading a day, 5 minutes of which has to be out loud.

My son used to go to school for about 7 hours a day, but now he has around 45-60 minutes of work a day at home.

It’s not right what we’re doing to our kids, and I don’t think our teachers became teachers to provide such a substandard, half-assed level of ‘education’ to our kids.

And yet not a single teacher will complain. Would you if your workload was reduced by 50-75% and you have half the kids you used to?

But that’s exactly what’s happening now, and it shows no sign of changing.

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No Easy Answers for Missoula’s Childcare Crisis

4/2/2019

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The Missoula Chamber of Commerce wants more people to open early childcare businesses.

They know that the current system doesn’t work.

Why?

It costs so much that it’s actually cheaper to just have one parent stay home and not work and watch the kids.

Missoula businesses don’t like this, as they feel it makes it harder to find qualified workers.

Despite that, Missoula businesses have no plans to increase their near-poverty-level wages so parents could make childcare a bit more affordable.

And boy, is it unaffordable!

Right now it costs $820 a month to send an infant to a preschool, and $700 a month if the child is 1- to 3-years-old.

That comes out to $9,840 and $8,400 a year, respectively.

Let’s add rent to that.

We know that the average cost to rent a 1-bedroom apartment in Missoula is now $581 a month, while a 3-bedroom will cost you $1,136 a month.

That comes out to $6,972 and $13,632, respectively.

So to live and work in Missoula if you have a young child will cost you anywhere between $16,812 and $22,000 a year.

That’s if you’re just living and working here, not eating.

Yeah, we better not get into the cost of food, transportation, healthcare, and the rare chance that you might be able to go out to a restaurant or see a movie...if you have any money left over.

As you can imagine, it’s awfully hard for most working families to live in Missoula.

In fact, the local Chamber of Commerce figures that Missoula families are coming up $16,000 short each year when it comes to the cost of covering childcare, rent, and other needs.

Sure is a problem, huh?

That’s why today I’d like to talk about our early childhood education problem in Missoula, and across the state and the country.

I don’t have a lot of answers.

I do have a lot of research on what others cities and states are doing, however, and that might give us some insight into our own problem.

Let’s begin.

The Costs of Preschool

In 2018 the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine released a report on how to finance early childhood education.

They pegged the cost of sending a child to a preschool “that has ample, safe facilities, a developmentally appropriate curriculum and well-paid teachers, at about $13,655 per child per year for full-time, full-year preschool.”

Few families could afford that amount, and few can afford the amounts they’re charged now.

Around the country, the price of daycare is out of control.

As we saw, Missoula costs at least $8,400 a year

In Detroit it’ll cost you $9,759 a year

New York daycares cost $10,519 a year

Denver will set you back $11,578 a year

Boston charges $14,960 a year

San Jose is $15,177 a year

We know that families pay, on average, 20% of their income for early childhood care.

In 2016 the average cost to send a kid to preschool in America was $7,053 a year.

For comparison’s sake, the average cost for a 4-year public college runs $9,410.

How Preschool Staff are Paid

Despite the high costs to send a child to preschool, we know that child care workers don’t make any money.

Nationally in 2016 a child care worker’s median hourly wage was $10.16 an hour. We feel parking lot attendants are more important - their median hourly wage that year was $10.45.

And yet we know that having well-paid, qualified teachers at your child’s preschool has amazing benefits for that child’s development.

Here’s how a recent report put it:

“Most of the benefits formal preschool programs provide can be attributed to well-trained, well-educated preschool teachers. Research shows that schools with high-quality teachers produce the best academic and social outcomes for children. The best teachers encourage play, exploration and friendship, while simultaneously introducing pre-academic skills through picture books, science experiments, math games and other activities. Yet, for all that work, most private preschool teachers are making near-poverty wages. The average wage for preschool teachers who are not employed by a public school system is $13.98 an hour or $29,080 a year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.”

That’s for private preschool teachers. If you’re a preschool teacher working in a public school, your average wage is $24.06 an hour, or $50,040 a year.

If private preschools tried to match that payscale, then the cost of early childhood care would jump so much that a family with just one child would need to earn $195,000 a year to pay for it.

Without serious investment in preschools from either government or businesses, it’s doubtful preschool teachers will have a living wage anytime soon.

Benefits of Preschool

Besides preparing kids for school, preschool does a lot to save taxpayers money later.

We know that kids that attend preschool centers “had lower rates of emotional, conduct, relationship and attention problems later in life than kids who were watched by a family member or babysitter. These benefits last longer than any temporary boost the kids get in academics.”

Attending preschool makes it more likely that a young adult won’t end up in jail, which costs a lot more than preschools each year. Prisons cost more. Juvenile detention centers cost the most.

We know that American children aren’t as smart as children in other countries. The reason for this is preschool.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development tells us that of the 35 developed economies in the world, 87% of them have all of their 4-year-olds in preschool.

In America just 66% of 4-year-olds are in preschool.

Currently American kids rank 38th in math and 24th in science. Some of the countries that are beating us are Russia and Vietnam.

Here in Montana, attending preschool has a visible effect on those test scores.

In Alberton, kids began attending the pilot preschool programs that were set up there in 2015 with federal and state money.

Math proficiency in those kids went from 50% to 75%. Reading went from 29% to 67%.

How Other Cities & States Fund Preschool

Government subsidies to families to fund preschool only targets those near the poverty line.

The American middle class has income ranging from $44,000 to $132,000 a year, and those amounts are too high to qualify for any kind of government assistance when it comes to early childhood education.

Most parents choose to use private preschools, not publicly-funded ones.

We know that 1.37 million kids attended public preschools during the 2017-18 school year, compared with the nearly 4 million that attended private preschools.

18 states got developmental grants in 2017, while 7 states didn’t invest a dime in their preschool programs.

Kansas and Nebraska follow this model to fund their whole system.

The Department of Public Health and Human Services issues the child care block grant. In 2018, Congress appropriated $5.2 billion for this.

Montana was able to win a $40 million federal grant to open up 1,000 new preschool slots in 2015, but that grant is now finished. Taking its place is a 1-year, $4.2 million grant, which won’t go as far.

A big problem with preschool funding here in Montana is that it’s tied to general fund appropriations.

This monetary source is wildly inconsistent. Whenever the state has a deficit (or thinks they will) then pre-K funding gets sent to the chopping block first.

On top of this, funding that comes through the budget process is typically divorced from enrollment numbers. This means if enrollment jumps, we’ll see a decrease in per-pupil funding across the system.

New Jersey was able to overcome this very problem with their Abbott Preschool Program, however. In that state, funding is based on the cost of educating the pre-K enrollee, not budget whims.

Maine is another state that overcame this issue, mainly by funding pre-K at 1.1 times more than the per-pupil foundational base rate.

Sometimes states refuse to fund preschool and cities step in. We see this in Denver and San Antonio, which use sales tax revenues as a funding source. Seattle does it through their property tax, while in Philadelphia they fund pre-K with a tax on soda-pop.

Montana can’t go this route, as the legislature has the tax authority, not cities.

In Virginia and Iowa, local governments are required to provide matching funds for every dollar the state/school district spends.

In Oklahoma they only decided to start funding full-day kindergarten when they learned that their half-day programs were already receiving enough funding to be full-day.

Where was that extra money going? To the state’s football teams.

That caused a stir, and legislators of both parties decided to do something. They not only made full-day kindergarten mandatory, they also funded preschool. Now 75% of the 4-year-olds in that state are in full-day pre-K programs.

Back in 1992, Georgia tied a portion of their state lottery revenue to universal preschool, and now over 50% of the state’s 4-year-olds attend preschool. The reason Georgia took this route was so that the program “wouldn’t fall prey to any future state budget cuts.”

In Washington, D.C., a staggering 90% of 4-year-olds and 70% of 3-year-olds attend full-day public preschool (full day here is 6.5 hours).

This is easy, as the programs are free to parents.

D.C. has what’s called "voluntary prekindergarten" funding in their education funding formula, “a model that research suggests is the best, most stable was to fund these programs”

In 2017 the city spent $16,996 in state funding per child, while the rest of the country spends on average just $5,008.

After D.C. instituted this program, the number of mothers in the workforce jumped by 10%.

Congressional Funding

Congress can fund preschool, as they did it before.

America provided universal preschool for all of the country’s children back in 1940 when Congress passed the Defense Housing and Community Facilities and Services Act.

This bill was passed at the behest of the defense contractors that desperately needed workers. Most of those workers were at war, so they had to settle for women. Sadly for them, many of these women had kids.

So what did the companies do? They had taxpayers bail them out so they wouldn’t have to spend their own profits.

That’s why America had universal preschool from 1940 to 1946. Over 100,000 kids were in the program, and parents only paid the equivalent of $9 to $10 in today’s money.

Back in WWII the country realized we needed women in the workforce. Providing childcare allowed that to happen.

Today we don’t really want women in the workforce as much. If we did, we’d provide them the tools to enter that workforce, like affordable childcare. But we don’t.

Conclusion

The State of Montana could care less about early childhood education, or its costs.

While it’s true the state has spent $46 million to fund pilot preschool programs since 2015, that money is now gone.

Parents will have to pay extra, as it’s unlikely local governments will pay. Well, they can't pay - it's why Helena is about to kick 34 kids out of preschool because of the legislature’s recent actions.

And let’s be honest - if 14 hospitals hadn’t offered up $6 million to help fund that pilot program, it probably never would have come about in the first place.

The $4.2 million federal grant the state has this year and into the next won’t last long, or have much of an impact.

Bullock’s proposed $30 million statewide preschool idea died in the legislature, and I’m sure the $8 million idea to expand the program by 400 students will suffer the same fate.

A big problem is that Bullock wants to raise taxes to fund the program, and Republican legislators don’t want to do this.

But we know it’s not really a tax issue - the GOP did just vote to raise the bed tax to help fund the new Historical Society Building, after all.

Perhaps it’s just that Republicans don’t like the tax ideas Bullock has, or maybe that they’re coming from a Democrat.

Perhaps there are other tax options to get that $30 million to fund the program, not just our usual sin taxes.

And I personally don’t think the Chamber of Commerce’s idea of having people open more centers is realistic.

The state doesn’t make it easy to operate a child care center. Currently they have a 40-page document of licensing requirements that you must meet if you want to open.

Just scrolling through that will likely make most prospective business owners question whether they really want to enter this industry.

The student ratio is 1 teacher for 8 students, but depends on age. Babies take 1 teacher for 4 students, toddlers are 1 teacher for 6 students.

So you need a lot of staff, and you have to pay them wages and then pay payroll taxes on them. It really eats into a childcare business’ profits, making this industry not a real profitable one.

That adds up, especially when so many parents are complaining about the cost of childcare now.

How on earth are we going to pay teachers more if parents won’t pay more? And how are daycare centers going to retain qualified staff if we don’t pay more?

These are serious dilemmas, and there are no easy answers.

Maybe that’s why the Chamber is hoping more in-home daycares open. But are they best for the students?

The problem with the in-home model that the local Chamber of Commerce highlights is that they’re unrealistic.

Small in-home care centers usually have a small number of kids, around 6 or so. This means they only need one main worker, perhaps an assistant.

This can also become problematic when you need a substitute teacher, which can be hard to find.

Still, a big benefit is that in-home care centers have a lot fewer regulations when it comes to their playground size.

Many parents aren’t seeking out in-home care centers, but professional child care centers. There are not as many of these in Missoula, and they have a lot of regulations that make running them cost-prohibitive and not that profitable.

For instance, you need to have a certain teacher-student ratio. This means you need to hire more staff, and pay taxes on them.

Parents don’t want to pay anymore for childcare now, but childcare centers have a huge problem retaining staff because they can’t afford to pay high wages.

They can’t afford to pay high wages because parents don’t want to pay high monthly costs to the center.

It really does become a Catch-22.

I wish I had more answers for you, but I don’t.

I just hope that the information presented will give you some ideas. Eventually we’ll have to solve this problem. And we will.

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3 Reasons the 6-Mill Levy Might Fail

10/10/2018

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The most recent poll shows that 71% of Montanans support the 6-mill levy.

This is a bit misleading, as just 466 people were polled for that in August.

Back in February, the same poll put support at 72%.

So the 6-mill is safe, right?

I’m not so sure. Let me tell you 3 reasons why.

#1: People Don’t Know What It Is

While the most recent poll shows 71% support for the 6-mill, the same poll tells us that a ton of people have never heard of it.

Just 7% are extremely familiar with the levy.

A whopping 46% have no idea what it is.

This is very bad news for this issue.

For instance, we know that 30% of voters don’t complete their ballots.

What’s more, the lower an issue or candidate is on the ballot, the fewer votes they get – those listed first on the ballot often get 5% more votes than candidates listed further down.

When voters don’t know about a candidate or issue, they have a good chance of skipping that one entirely.

Right now it sounds like 46% of voters will probably skip the 6-mill.

#2: Support for Higher Ed is Dwindling

Back in 2015, 57% of Americans had a lot of confidence in higher education.

Today 48% do.

Voters in both political parties feel this way, but confidence levels are different: 62% of Democrats view higher ed as doing fine, compared with the 39% of Republicans that do, and the 44% of independents that do.

Republicans have seen a 17% decrease in how favorably they view higher education from the time before the 2016 Election.

“Many Republicans believe colleges and universities are institutions that promote a liberal political agenda,” Gallup writes.

At the same time that we see a decreased level of support for higher education, we also see a slippage in support for the 6-mill levy.

We already mentioned that 71% support the levy, but when pushed if they’re firm on that support, 19% said they might change their vote.

Couple that with the already dim view of Higher Ed by Republicans and the 6-mill could be a lot closer than we think…if it passes at all.

#3: The State is Getting Redder

It’s true that 90% of Democrats plan on voting for the 6-mill, but just 56% of Republicans do.

The trouble here is that Republican voters outnumber Democratic voters by a wide margin.

Back in June we had…

39,000 more Republicans vote in the U.S. Senate primary than Democrats

29,000 more Republicans vote in the Supreme Court Clerk primary

25,000 more Republicans vote in the U.S. House primary

So as the state becomes redder, support for these types of levies will wane.

Bob Brown isn’t so sure about this one.

“Even in this era of increasing partisanship,” he writes,” the 6-mill continues to stand out, perhaps uniquely, as a matter on which Montanans across party lines can still agree.”

Still, I heard him mention a couple weeks ago that he was a bit worried for the 6-mill.

With so much bad press and negative ads around I-185 and I-186, many voters will decide to vote against all initiatives and levies and bonds.

This doesn’t bode well for the 6-mill.

Long Conclusion

I’ve given you 3 reasons why the 6-mill might fail. You can take them as you like.

Montana’s 6-Mill levy has been passed by voters every 10 years since 1948.

The levy makes up $21 million of the MUS’s funding, or 10%.

It’s figures if the levy doesn’t pass, students will have to pay up to 18% more in tuition.

We all know this as supporters of the 6-mill have pounded it into us.

Despite that, we’re wildly ignorant about the controversial history of Montana’s University System.

It’s doubtful that legislators will make up this the 6-mill funding if the 6-mill fails, as the legislature has been opposed to the university system throughout most of the state’s history.

While it’s true that the first college in Montana came about in 1878, it wasn’t until 1994 that the Montana University System was created. It was created due to funding problems and how best to manage them.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

After the capital city fight ended in the 1890s, the fight between the cities over who’d get the universities started up.

Legislators back then “decided to create a multi-unit system that would gratify several ambitious cities and keep hard feelings to a minimum.”

This allowed four campuses to take shape, overseen by the legislature. By 1913, though, calls started up for consolidating the four campuses into one or two. The main issue? Funding.

Instead of consolidating the campuses, however, the legislature consolidated funding by creating the State Board of Education, as well as a chancellor to oversee the four schools.

The very next year, in 1914, voters were given the chance to do what the legislature couldn’t – consolidate the universities.

Instead of doing so, however, they authorized two additional schools: Eastern Montana Normal College (opened in 1927) and Northern Montana College (opened in 1929). Most of the homesteaders that’d voted for them were long gone by then.

“The failure of consolidation meant mounting demands for state revenue,” historian Michael Malone writes, “which came mainly from the general fund raised by the statewide property tax.”

By 1920 this just wasn’t enough, especially with all that tax money wiped away by the homesteading bust.

Voters approved two initiatives that year that changed how tax money was raised for schools, and they did this by creating special mill levies.

In 1930 the voters again approved this strategy, renewing the one-and-a-half mill levy of 1920 for another ten years.

But by God…those schools were still expensive!

That’s why 1933 was probably the closest the Montana University System came to seeing consolidations. That year there were two bills before the legislature, to close the Havre and Billings campuses.

Instead of closing them the legislature cut funding drastically, for not just those two campuses but all six. The chancellor at the time was forced to resign because the legislature didn’t appropriate any money to pay him.

These cuts caused twenty-five faculty members to go to other states for work by 1935. According to the president of Montana State College in Bozeman, their salaries were 47% higher.

Montana’s University System remained without a chancellor until 1943 when the governor convinced the legislature to finally fund the position once again.

By 1940 voters had gotten used to having mill levies around and this time 3.5 mill levies were passed, up from the 1.5 of ten years earlier.

Because of the growing strains on Montana’s university system, in 1947 the legislature threw two referendums out to the people to vote on the next November.

One of these would give the university system six mill levies to supply its needed funds. The other would create an infrastructure building bond of $5 million. Both passed by a vote of the people and in 1958 the six-mill levy of the university was passed again. It’s passed every ten years since then, and Montanan’s have seen the effects clearly in their pocketbooks.

But oh how the legislature continued to fight higher education!

Despite college enrollment shooting up substantially in the late-1940s and early-1950s as veterans came home and took advantage of the G.I. bill, by 1950 the Montana university chancellorship was seen as useless and abandoned entirely.

For nearly a decade nothing filled its role, until 1959 when the legislature decided to make the Board of Education the Board of Regents when acting on university matters.

Then in 1961, Governor Nutter and the legislature cut $4 million from the universities. It took the state years to overcome these cuts.

By the 1970s, however, Governor Judge increased education spending by 236%, including a doubling of the university system’s budget.

In the 1980s, Governor Schwinden also increased spending for the universities, while also chastising the Board of Regents on their oversight, and the faculty on their laziness.

By the 1990s, things turned around. Governor Racicot cut education spending in the state so much that by the time he left office in 2001, the state ranked dead last in the country for schools and colleges.

The 2003 tax cuts driven through by Governor Martz did further damage, and in the 15 years since then, few spending increases have been seen when it comes to the university system.

In 1972 just 49% of high school graduates headed off to college, and at a time when grants covered 80% of the average tuition, room and board price of $1,458.

By 2014 a total of 68% of high school graduates headed off to college. Grants covered about 20% of the average tuition, room and board price of $15,022.

Notes

Axelrod, David and Murphy, Mike. “More than 30 percent of voters fail to complete their ballots. Don’t be one of them.” Vox. 7 November 2017. https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2016/11/7/13553496/down-ballot-vote-local-elections-informed-voter

Jones, Jeffrey M. “Confidence in Higher Education Down Since 2015.” Gallup. 9 October 2018. https://news.gallup.com/opinion/gallup/242441/confidence-higher-education-down-2015.aspx?g_source=link_NEWSV9&g_medium=LEAD&g_campaign=item_&g_content=Confidence%2520in%2520Higher%2520Education%2520Down%2520Since%25202015

King, Jon. “Poll Indicates Montana Will Likely Pass 6-Mill Levy, Though Nearly Half Don’t What It Is.” KGVO. 8 October 2018. http://newstalkkgvo.com/poll-indicates-montana-will-likely-pass-6-mill-levy-though-nearly-half-dont-know-what-it-is/

“Poll Finds Majority Favor Continuing 6-Mill Levy.” Daily InterLake. 4 October 2018. https://www.dailyinterlake.com/local_news/20181004/poll_finds_majority_fav

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Does Teen Antidepressant Use Cause More School Shootings?

5/31/2018

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There are 4 steps:

Think about it
Make the decision
Get the gun
Do the shooting

Two of those steps involve guns. Two of them do not.

Today I’d like to talk about the two steps that lead to so many of our young people reaching for a gun so they can kill their peers.

School shootings happen so often in America that we don’t really pay much attention to them anymore.

The recent shooting in Texas confirmed this, with TV news moving off the subject rather quickly, in just a couple days.

A big reason for this is people have become inured to school shootings…just when the number of school shootings is skyrocketing.

It seems from that graph that 2015 was the real jump-off point for our current, society-wide problem.

And we’ve seen this trend coming for some time now.

Back in 2013, a U.S. Justice report analyzed three decades of data and told us that by 2011, the country had entered a new era of mass shootings. The number had tripled between 2000 and 2009, going from an average of five a year to fifteen a year.

So what’s the reason behind this?

Is it guns…bullying…stress…or something else?

I often wonder if that ‘something else’ is teen antidepressant use. Here’s a graph of what that looks like:

Not a huge increase for the overall teen population over the past 15 years.

Still, some say that 90% of school shooters were on, or had been on, antidepressants when they committed their crimes.

That seems high to me, but when you look at the individual cases, perhaps there’s something to it.

In February, the aunt of the 19-year-old school shooter in Florida told the Miami Herald that she thought he was on “medication to deal with his emotional fragility.”

Back in 2013, family friends of the Newtown school shooter told CBS News that they knew “he was on medication and everything.”

Aside from those two high-profile shootings, we know the following school shooters were also on some kind of psychiatric medications:

The 1988 Illinois school shooter was on the mania drugs, Anafranil and Lithium.

The 1989 California school shooter was on the antidepressant called Amitriptyline, as well as the antipsychotic drug, Thorazine.

The 1997 Kentucky school shooter was on Ritalin.

The 1998 Oregon school shooter was on both Ritalin and Prozac.

One of the 1999 Columbine school shooters was on the antidepressant Luvox.

And it’s not just school shootings.

In 1981, would-be Reagan assassin John Hinckley took four Valium just hours before trying to shoot the president.

In 1989, a man in Kentucky killed nine coworkers after he’d been taking Prozac for a month.

In 1996, 18-year-old Kurt Danysh killed his father just two weeks after starting Prozac.

In 2001, Andrea Yates of Texas killed her five children. She’d been on the antidepressant Effexor.

Also in 2001, a 12-year-old in South Carolina killed his grandparents while they slept. He’d been on the antidepressants Paxil and Zoloft.

In 2005, a man in Minnesota killed nine people and himself while taking Prozac.

In 2012, the Colorado movie theater shooter was on the antidepressant Sertraline.

We often say our modern era of mass school shootings began in 1999 with Columbine.

As I mentioned, one of those shooters was on the antidepressant Luvox.

The maker of Luvox, Solvay Pharmaceuticals, has admitted that 1-in-25 youth on the drug will develop mania, or 4% of users.

Two years after that tragedy, we had Andrea Yates kill her kids and blame it on Satan. She was taking Effexor.

Effexor made Wyeth $3 billion in sales just a couple years ago, with 19.2 million prescriptions going out. That means thousands could have “homicidal ideation.”

In fact, the antidepressant drug industry is a $300 billion a year industry. Last year, the Guardian told us that pharmaceutical companies poured nearly $2.5 billion “into lobbying and funding members of Congress over the past decade.”

For comparisons sake, the NRA has spent $203 million on lobbying over the past two decades.

It doesn’t even come close. But that’s not really important. As a society, we’ve convinced ourselves that guns are the problem, not drugs.

And that’s no surprise. Last year USA Today told us that drugmakers had spent $6.4 billion on direct-to-consumer advertising in 2016, which was up 5% from 2015. In fact, drug ads were the 12th-largest TV ad category in 2012, but by 2016 they’d moved up to 6th.

My how this creates demand! As 2017 began, we knew that 17% of Americans were taking a psychiatric drug, or 1-in-6.

This has made the psychiatric drug industry a $300 billion a year juggernaut. For comparisons sake, the gun and ammunition manufacturing industry saw $13.5 billion in revenue in 2014. We know that 31% of American households own guns.

And if you’re a TV network that makes a lot of money from drug companies for TV ads – but little if any from the gun industry – wouldn’t you rather blame guns than drugs for the school shooting problem? After all, why ruin the bottom line?

I think it’s clear that Big Pharma lobbies Congress a lot more than the NRA, and that Big Pharma makes a lot more in profits.

Now let’s consider if Big Pharma’s products are dangerous or not. Surely if they were, the company would lose a lot of money should that become public.

So the goal is to not let it go public. They’ve been very successful with this before.

These companies know they have a dangerous product, and sometimes that gets out in the court records.

After the 1989 Kentucky shooting, survivors sued Prozac-maker Eli Lilly, with the company settling out of court.

After the 2001 Andrea Yates murders, Effexor-maker Wyeth Pharmaceuticals admitted that homicidal ideation was one of the “rare adverse events” that could occur while on the drug, meaning it could happen to 1 person in 1,000.

When it comes to Paxil, the FDA label even lists things like “mania” and “psychosis” and “hostility” and “delirium” and “abnormal thinking” as possible “adverse drug reactions.”

In fact, the FDA has what they call “black box” warning labels, which are their most serious drug warning. All these drugs warn of “increased risks of suicidal thinking and behavior, known as suicidality, in young adults ages 18 to 24.”

The main type of antidepressants being prescribed in America today are called SSRIs, or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors.

In England, regulators have discovered that 60 murders over the past three decades are linked to SSRI use.

Here in America, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) has determined that child and teen antidepressant use increased from 1.3% to 1.6% between 2005 and 2012.

The same group tells us that pediatric prescriptions for antipsychotic drugs increased 65%, from 2.9 million to 4.8 million, between 2002 and 2009.

They also discovered that 150,000 kids were taking stimulants for ADHD in the 1970s, but by 2014 a whopping 4.3 million kids were on them, accounting for a 2,766% increase.

A study of 31 drugs that have been linked to violence told us that five of the top ten most popular of those dugs are antidepressants: Prozac, Paxil, Luvox, Effexor and Pristiq.

Conclusion

I think it’s clear that antidepressant drugs are dangerous at any age, but particularly for the young, still-developing brain.

And yet those drugs are being increasingly prescribed to teenagers.

Most of the teenagers that have done school shootings were on some kind of antidepressant.

Yet in the media, and in our national discussions, we rarely if ever mention this.

Instead we blame guns.

But what were the reasons and causes leading up to that teen getting a gun and going to school and shooting people?

What got them to thinking that using a gun would be a good idea, perhaps the answer to all their problems?

School shootings in this country aren’t going to stop.

Even if we got rid of guns, these teens would just find another way…perhaps with a bomb or even a knife.

Why are they doing this?

I think we should look at the prescription drug angle a lot more, though I’m confident that as a society we will not.

Let’s look at any angle, but please…let’s stop blaming guns.

Remember, two steps involve guns, but the two steps leading up to that do not.

Teens think about it and premeditate it, and guns have nothing to do with those thoughts.

Guns are the tool that the sick mind is using.

Let’s talk more about those sick minds.

I’m afraid if we don’t, we’ll just keep seeing the same problem over and over again.

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Dirty Money in Montana Politics, Education

5/29/2018

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For Democrats, corporate PAC money is bad.

But nonprofit PAC money is perfectly fine.

We see that in the latest FEC finance reports, which Lee Enterprises has reported on today. Here’s the IR version.

Both Heenan and Kier congratulate themselves on not taking corporate PAC money, but we know that:

$5,000 went to Heenan from the American Association for Justice PAC

$5,000 went to Kier from the 314 Action Fund

$1,000 went to Kier from the Science, Energy and Environment Change PAC

Since these are nonprofit PACs, Democrats view them as good and they’ll take their money.

You might remember my opinion of nonprofits, which I told you about 4 years ago on MT Cowgirl.

So ‘disturbing’ were my thoughts for the Dem establishment that comments were closed down on that post.

I decided to dig into the pre-primary spending for Heenan and Kier. It’s not easy – Kier’s report is 191 pages while Heenan’s is 156.

Let’s start with Heenan…

Here are some expenses that I find questionable, both for their need and where they were purchased:

$210,000 to Maryland’s Joe Trippi & Associates for a media buy and production

$24,000 to San Francisco’s Terris Barnes Walters Goigon Heath for media production

$5,200 to D.C.’s Berger Hirshberg Strategies for fundraising consulting

We also know from the report that Black Thompson, Jacob Bachmeir, John Fauerbach, Sam Ozer-Staton, and Tully Olson are all paid staffers for the campaign.

In addition, Heenan has spent about $1,800 on Facebook advertising over the past month.

Moving on to Grant Kier…

Here are some things that stood out to me in his spending report:

$225,000 to D.C.’s Buying Time for media buys

$95,000 to D.C.’s Beacon Media for media production

$36,000 to San Francisco’s Tulchin Research for polling on April 9

$14,000 to D.C.’s Break Something for fundraising consulting

$4,300 to Indiana’s Shield Political Research for polling on May 7

$2,000 to Chicago’s Blue State Digital for digital media consulting

$100 to Chicago’s Apollo Artistry for website maintenance

In addition to this, Keir has Abigail Raush, Derek Mcdonald, and Jacob Brown on staff.

When we add it all up we find that Heenan spent $239,000 out-of-state over the past month, while Kier spent $376,000 with out-of-state firms.

How many jobs could that have created if it was spent in the state these two men claim they want to represent…help even!

You know how I feel – why are candidates spending so much money out of state when they could find Montana companies to do the same thing?

Don’t they want to create jobs here in Montana…or just in places like Chicago and D.C. and San Francisco?

And they know they can use Montana companies – Kier spent $650 with Bozeman’s Grizzly Creek Films for a media buy at the end of April.

I guess, as voters, we’re just supposed to assume that Montana companies can’t create the same, high-level products that other states can.

It’s a shame our Montana candidates think this way, but when you follow the money you see this is, sadly, the case.

My Opinion of UM Drops Even Lower

Besides this nonprofit PAC money and out-of-state spending, something else that I find incredibly disturbing is the recent news about UM.

The Missoulian had the article up last night, one called University of Montana Foundation invested more than $30 million in offshore funds.

The Foundation currently has over $186 million.

The newspaper has since taken the full story down and now directs people to the Montana Kaimin site.

What’s interesting is that the story actually came out May 14, but it took 15 days for us to hear about it.

This is a disturbing story of greed and excess, and one that won’t get much media attention in this state after today.

I know Republicans will ignore it, and I expect Dems to do the same. And that means UM can continue to funnel money offshore to avoid paying taxes and/or have the public know what they’re doing. ‘

“It’s just a way to avoid taxes,” a senior specialist in economics at the Congressional Research Service said of these Cayman Islands accounts.

It seems UM used “offshore hedge funds and private equity firms in Caribbean and Central American tax havens.”

Some of the investments that UM made will surely rankle a great many of the students attending that school:

$5 million in a fund that supports the fossil fuel company, Royal Dutch Shell

An unspecified amount invested in the Russian oil company, Gazprom, which has “close ties to the Kremlin”

An unspecified amount invested in the Brazilian petrochemical company, Petrobras…a company which has so much corruption it “brought down…the two previous presidents of that country.”

An unspecified amount invested in Philip Morris International as well as Imperial Tobacco Group.

UM went smoke-free on its campus in 2011, but it still invests in cigarette companies.

For years, UM students have protested the college’s role in fossil fuel investments, yet the college still invests in those industries.

None of the top brass at UM will touch this story with a 10-foot pole. They all decline to comment.

And why not? We pay them an arm and a leg in salary and they know this story will blow over and their cushy existence will be safe.

Meanwhile, the poor schmucks that actually go to that school graduate with tens of thousands of dollars in debt and poor prospects for the future.

UM’s administrators profit off this misery.

It’s figured that the offshore hedge-fund investment industry is worth $1.3 trillion, with most coming from the countries that UM hid its investments in.

What’s especially sad about all this is that UM didn’t even make any money most years.

Besides hedge-fund money being “totally locked up” so you can’t use it when you want, the rate of return is actually lower than common stocks and bonds.

These hedge funds that UM invested in have “actually performed worse than simple index funds like the S&P 500 by 6 or 7 percent since the 2008 crash.”

On top of that, UM paid $4 million in fees.

A University of Washington professor says that “hedge fund managers have convinced foundations to not disclose the amount they pay in fees because if the information was spread to the public…there would be outcries against the wasteful spending.”

And yet here in the Treasure State, we’ll see no such response.

Remember, this story came out 15 days ago and the corporate press didn’t bother to cover until two weeks later.

Oh, and trust me – there’ll be no legislative investigations or anything of the sort. This will all be swept under the rug and forgotten. Most disgraceful behavior at UM is.

This is a very long article, but I encourage you to read it. The section on the March decision by UM to keep “much of its financial records out of the public eye” is especially troubling.

In conclusion, I don’t see sunny days ahead for UM.

For years now they’ve tried and failed to deal with their image as one of America’s top rape campuses.

They have a top-heavy administration, with too many bigwigs eating from the trough, which forces up costs for students.

The nepotism on campus is dreadful, with unqualified people getting jobs because of who they know, while more qualified individuals are never interviewed.

But most of all, it’s just a rip-off to go to UM…or most colleges like it. You’re not guaranteed a job, though to find a decent one you’ll likely have to move out of state. And the amount of loans that students rack-up ensure they’ll have to wait years to start a family, decades to buy a home.

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True Colors

4/18/2017

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I saw an April 9 interview with Rob Quist on Montana Mint where he talks about the colors of his yard signs.

“If you see my yard signs, they are blue and gold. My Grizzly friends ask, “Well why would you do that?” I tell them that I already have the votes from Griz Nation and I wanted to make some inroads with the Bobcats.”

It got me thinking of university rivalries in the state, and how a lot of people went to different places.

I went to UM, my mom went to MSU and my dad graduated from Carroll.

I had one aunt go to Montana Tech, two more go to UM, and an uncle that went to MSU Northern. My grandpa taught at MSU Northern for a time.

So I don’t put much stock into that whole university rivalry thing, myself.

As to the ‘making inroads,’ well…that’s a good idea. It goes for Missoula in general.

Last year we had a 71% turnout, but in 2014 it was around 49% and in 2013 it was 41%

This is an off-year like 2013 and 2014.

Getting turnout in places like Missoula might seem like a good place to put resources, but maybe it’s not.

Maybe the Quist campaign should just say to hell with Missoula.

The city’s going to vote for him anyways.

Places that went narrowly for Bullock in the 2016 election probably won’t go for him, however.

Ask James Douglas – he knows the exact districts.

Those’d be good places to put resources.

I wonder where the MT Dems are putting resources. Their April finance report still isn’t up on the FEC website, but I suspect it will be by Thursday.

I’ll have more then.

I see Gianforte was in Missoula this morning talking on KGVO News Talk radio.

I know he was here yesterday at some event, the same as Governor Bullock, so I suppose he stayed overnight, probably doing some private fundraiser in the evening.

I bet most of the calls he received were positive. I did ask on Facebook why he’s spending $389,000 with 7 different out-of-state companies and just $12,000 with a Montana company, but I don’t think that question was posed to him.

To my way of thinking, the more campaign money you spend here in the state, the more jobs you create here in the state.

That’s why it’s so disheartening to see both our special election candidates spending so much outside Montana.

Looking at shake-your-head Missoula news, last night the Missoula City Council approved $1 million in funding for Mary Avenue improvements.

These costs are in addition to the $7 million the city gave to the mall developers to expand.

Coming up in two weeks, the City Council will discuss whether or not they should pay someone $48,000 to look at the parking gates at 3 downtown parking facilities to see if they need any work.

This at a time when the Parking Commission already has a budget of $1.7 million.

What I find surprising is that the Commission is spending $122,000 a year in upkeep for the new parking meters they just bought a year ago...which cost the city $1.6 million, by the way.

Over at Logicosity they mention UM’s mind-boggling plan to go after all the students that dropped-out.

Like the 340 the site mentions that dropped out between fall and spring of this academic year.

The Montana Kaimin – UM’s newspaper – has some ideas on that in an article they did on March 29.

I wonder if any administrators read that paper. I believe it was a 4-day-a-week paper when I was a student, but now I think it’s weekly.

Damn budget cuts.

Anyways, one of those 340 students was a history major named Greighsen Serrano. She left UM after three years because “most of her time in college was spent in a full-on panic.”

We’re talking about stress and anxiety, and the Kaimin tells us that 47% of UM students found their schoolwork “traumatic or very difficult to handle,” with 13% feeling “tremendous stress.”

In addition, 21% of UM students were treated for anxiety and 18% for depression.

The article profiles two UM students and one MSU student and it’s worth a read.

They left college, now have jobs, and are happier.

Mainly, college isn’t the answer for everyone…whether it’s a 2-year or a 4-year school.

When we’re charging up the wazoo for that education, however, it makes it easier to say no to college.

I think more young people should say no to college. You’ll save a lot of money and probably find a job you like.

There’s always time to go to school – or back to school – later. I guess that’s what UM is trying to foster with this marketing effort, but to me it stinks.

Students left for lots of reasons. The only reason the U wants them back is for their money.

That’s cheap.

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High-Priced Idiots

School’s Out (For Good?)

A Tale of Two

The University of Montana Foundation’s Money

Missoula Schools Get Worse

No Easy Answers for Missoula’s Childcare Crisis

3 Reasons the 6-Mill Levy Might Fail

Does Teen Antidepressant Use Cause More School Shootings?

Dirty Money in Montana Politics, Education

True Colors

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