Hi everybody, Cheryl Ackison here. Welcome to another edition of the Cheryl Ackison

podcast. Today we get an education from the Amish who are managing to achieve great

success and even millionaire status without college or student debt.

My most recent cover story on my TV program Full Measure highlighted the Amish approach

to education and maybe this wouldn't work for everybody, but I think there are components

of what they do that are worth considering for us, especially since the Amish have had

such success in their controlled environment, especially since we are all pretty much

wrestling with the idea that college costs so much and that the escalating costs cannot

rationally be justified and that many are having trouble making that college degree pay

off or even finding meaningful work and that so many are ending up with student loan

debt that President Biden has announced a controversial and very expensive plan to pay

off some student debt at taxpayer expense, but with no plan on how to address the core

problem. Well not to get too far off today's subject, but it seems to me there's a pretty

simple way that congress and states could attack the overinflated cost of higher education

pretty quickly and reasonably. Any college that accepts any taxpayer benefit could be

limited to charging students only what it costs to really educate them with just a small

reasonable amount added on. It's possible to calculate a professor or a graduate student

salary divided by how many people that person is teaching and figure out what it really

costs per student for that professor or that graduate student. Also adding in a small

amount for facilities such as air conditioning, heat and supplies and then when you're done

with the real costs, maybe let the college or university add in another 15% on top of

that for profit. But if they want to build these Taj Mahals and attract global attention

...