Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Schooling the ObamaTax

As we reported in November, higher education employment opportunities are on the chopping block thanks to the ObamaTax. In just a few short months, the ripple effect has continued to grow:

"A handful of schools, including Community College of Allegheny County in Pennsylvania and Youngstown State University in Ohio, have curbed the number of classes that adjuncts can teach in the current spring semester to limit the schools' exposure to the health-insurance requirement."

Interesting choice of words: "handful." Kinda minimizes the problem, doesn't it? Well maybe for the "ins," but not so much for folks like instructor Robert Balla, who "faces a new cap on the number of hours he can teach at Stark State College. In a Dec. 6 letter, the North Canton school told him that "in order to avoid penalties under the Affordable Care Act…employees with part-time or adjunct status will not be assigned more than an average of 29 hours per week."

Mr Balla, it should be noted, teaches (among other things) technical writing, and is well thought-of by his students. But that doesn't matter under the ObamaTax, and now his students (and prospective students) are worse off for it.

On the other hand, he's apparently bought into the popular (yet erroneous) assumption that the ObamaTax would result in lower costs and better coverage:

"In education, we're working for the public good, we are public employees at a public institution; we should be the first ones to uphold the law, to set the example."

No, you're providing a service for a fee, much like health care providers. Perhaps we need to mandate a college education, as well. What could possibly go wrong?

[Hat Tip: FoIB Holly R]
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