Hey Alex. Only just saw this. Canvas isn't too hot about telling us when people communicate with us. There is loads you write about with which I agree. I'm at Clemson at the opposite end of my career (I'm 63, going strong). And one of the most important things (at least, I think so) that I like to bring to any debate is a realistic desire to do something. Not just talk. But do. I've been at Clemson for no more than a year, and the one thing that truly strikes me as being a necessary 'to do' thing is to allow students more say in designing the college experience. Whether through parental input or government financial aid or working seventeen part-time jobs, students contribute some $400 million of the annual $800 million income of the business we call 'the Clemson family.' This should 'buy' students about 50% of the voting representation in Board of Trustee meetings. Actual representation? Zero. Lobbying efforts by CUSG to get a voice 'In The Room'? Er. Perhaps, not as much as could be? Look, regardless of where students stand on any Clemson issue, surely it is in the interests of all students that they have a meaningful voice in the decision-making processes that design Clemson's performance and finances? Maybe? In this latter regard, there is much that is only going to change through legislative effort at state and federal level. But this requires intense, focused and co-ordinated advocacy by CUSG. You raise the issue of the programs leading up to university entry. My primary interest is in reforms to reduce the pressures on students once they are at college, to enable them to experience a more relevant preparation for career and life-after-college. Maybe you should run for CUSG? If you get elected, look out for me lobbying you!!

Hello, fellow student in MUSC-3130 here. Very interesting plan. I totally agree with you on the notions of privileges, rights, and low taxes. I would like to give some of my input if you don't mind. My high school began to follow Common Core guidelines strictly the year before I enrolled. As you may know, Common Core has an extremely nebulous curriculum, an emphasis on regular standardized testing, and was created by three men with no background in actual education and heavy ties to major textbook manufacturers. That's why everyone, regardless of interest or aptitude, is pressured to go to college by the education system. They renamed the regular versions of courses to "College Prep.", and added a third level of difficulty called "Advanced Placement", where you take courses made by the College Board for college credit. This essentially means that "Honors" courses are the new normal level, and "College Prep." is practically a remedial level. I was an A.P. student, and as such actually received two high school diplomas due to the weird relationship between Wando High School and their own Advanced Placement "academy". Of my 27(?) total credit hours earned, only 22 were accepted by the university. I actually had to pick a major in high school, as a 15 year old in order to take courses. So, I started out in computer science before deciding to change majors into the Audio Technology program despite being the captain of Wando's cyber security team (sponsored by the US Navy). The entire education system as it currently is is a scam. There, I said it. No 15 year old can make life-determining decisions. If they can't drive, vote, smoke, drink, get a loan, or go to war, they're children. I have no idea how that is such a difficult concept for Gen X and the Baby Boomers. I remember 9/11, and while I was a young boy at the time, I got to see the immediate cultural shifts that happened every 8 years afterwards. A culturally homogeneous USA sounds good on paper, but growing up in every corner of SC tells me that when you have five distinct cultures within one single state, things like Common Core simply can't work without extremely broad input, conservative implementation, and rigorous consideration and deliberation. I might not be able to graduate in four years as planned. We'll see, but either way I'll have 148 credit hours recognized by Clemson if I can get away taking the bare minimum requirements left. That comes out to almost an extra semester's worth of "education". To tell the honest truth, I've learned more about the world through my amphetamine-driven auto-didactic tendencies and real world experience than I have ever learned in a classroom. You can't call "cram all of this sh*t into your brain only to forget it right after this final and never see or use the covered information for the rest of your life" an education. The entire focus of public schooling needs to be rebuilt to focus on individual aptitude, continual honing of valuable real-world skills, and making sure that students have a basic understanding of the world and history thereof. I'm still paying about ten grand a semester after my scholarship (the highest state-awarded tier). That's more than my parents paid without scholarships when adjusted for inflation. I'm more stressed out by the guilt of participating in a glorified job-training session where I learn 日本語, billiards, post-modernist "objective reality isn't real" literature that's politically soaked and dripping with radical leftist ideology (I'm a centrist libertarian, not a conservative, so both ends of the spectrum annoy the fire out of me), and then do some free labor that I'm paying to have the opportunity to do (for a grade) that all-in all puts my adoptive parents somewhere around $50k back BEFORE the extra costs of the university forcing students to live in overpriced, rundown broom closets and buy overpriced meal plans for food that is obviously lacking in nutritional value. The only thing I've gotten out of college so far is an achy body from walking a mile between my classes some days carrying around 40 pounds of miscellaneous gear/supplies in addition the guilt of being a burden on my parents. I'm waiting for the entire educational system to collapse under its own weight created by greedy bureaucrats and an economy with useless degrees they got railroaded into earning only to be met with an economy requiring experience for entry-level positions, decreasing the tax pool as time goes on and this continues. I like your plan, but I would suggest including a reduction in the amount of useless and sometimes unconstitutional programs and agencies within public universities as well. This would cut down tuition costs as well. Right now you can face legal ramifications over hearsay in a kangaroo court run by sheltered ideologues in direct opposition to the constitutional right of a fair trial. We don't need a university police force; that's the county's job. We don't need constant construction on campus. We need affordable alternatives off-campus. I'd go so far as to say that several departments should be removed entirely. University should be reserved for the intellectually challenging topics such as hard sciences, pure math, biology, etc. And bear in mind, I say that as an arts student (one of the groups of people I perceived to be the most self-righteous whiners with massive victim complexes in the place where character and competence should be). Universities today serve as surrogate parents where they need to be institutions dedicated to actual learning and research. I'm working full-time as well, usually 2 AM to 7 AM, though I might stop that entirely come autumn. My tax dollars go to a bloated giant that will loom over my family and I for years to come, and that's the part that ultimately has to go. I refuse to be a functional indentured servant to the federal government due to loans that cannot be defaulted on. We already fought a war over a harsher form of slavery, and people around ten years older than myself are the ones you see in the streets of major cities LARPing as revolutionaries because they too see the problems that debt and the government's current implementation of it causes.