Thread: Was it worth it?

I was just looking through some numbers and I noticed something sort of odd.

Since the Iraq War started in the spring of 2003 we have spent roughly $306,075,000,000.

http://nationalpriorities.org/index....per&Itemid=182

Since the Iraq War started in the spring of 2003 we have had roughly 13,816,000 students graduate from high school.

http://www.nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=65

(I derived this number by adding together the total number of students enrolled in both private and public schools for the years 2003-2006 and divided by the total number of grades, which is 14 counting kindergarten and pre-school, so it's not completely accurate, but it should be fairly close)

Now, of these 13,816,000 roughly 68.8% graduated (2004 number) and 55.3% of recent graduates went on to college (again, 2004 number). This number takes into students who did not immediately proceded to college, but did go to college within a few years of graduation.

http://www.postsecondary.org/home/default.asp

For the sake of trying to error on the conservative side (because the 68.8% non-graduation rate would need to be disbursed over all years of schooling which I don't want to do the research necessary to do that accurately at this point in time) we're going to assume that of the 13,816,000(approx) who reached their senior year, 95% graduated (the real number is probably much lower) this takes the number of high school graduates during the Iraq war down to 13,125,200.

Of these we'll assume 65% went on to college to compensate for the number being a couple of years old. This is again being conservative because most trends point to the fact that the real number is probably climbing at a much slower rate than I'm assuming. This means that of our 13,125,200 graduates roughly 8,531,380 went on to a post secondary education.

Now the average of tuition in a public college in 2004 depended on your region, but the highest was $6,839. We'll assumed $8,000 to take into account rising prices, but this is a little high. This equals $32,000 total, if they graduate on time.

http://money.cnn.com/2004/10/18/pf/c...osts/index.htm

This means that for all of the college bound graduates since the begining of the Iraq to get four years of a public univeristy would cost collectively $273,004,160,000. Again, the total cost of the Iraq War has been $306,075,000,000. For the cost of this war, we could have paid for four years public college education for every college bound graduate since this war began. Assuming the money was distibuted based on need, we could have probably drastically riased the education continuation rate, and gaurantee that nearly everyone could go onto college if they wanted to and their grades/test scores were high enough.

Instead we invaded Iraq.

Was it worth it?

Originally Posted by Tree Hugger

I was just looking through some numbers and I noticed something sort of odd.

Since the Iraq War started in the spring of 2003 we have spent roughly $306,075,000,000.

http://nationalpriorities.org/index....per&Itemid=182

Since the Iraq War started in the spring of 2003 we have had roughly 13,816,000 students graduate from high school.

http://www.nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=65

(I derived this number by adding together the total number of students enrolled in both private and public schools for the years 2003-2006 and divided by the total number of grades, which is 14 counting kindergarten and pre-school, so it's not completely accurate, but it should be fairly close)

Now, of these 13,816,000 roughly 68.8% graduated (2004 number) and 55.3% of recent graduates went on to college (again, 2004 number). This number takes into students who did not immediately proceded to college, but did go to college within a few years of graduation.

http://www.postsecondary.org/home/default.asp

For the sake of trying to error on the conservative side (because the 68.8% non-graduation rate would need to be disbursed over all years of schooling which I don't want to do the research necessary to do that accurately at this point in time) we're going to assume that of the 13,816,000(approx) who reached their senior year, 95% graduated (the real number is probably much lower) this takes the number of high school graduates during the Iraq war down to 13,125,200.

Of these we'll assume 65% went on to college to compensate for the number being a couple of years old. This is again being conservative because most trends point to the fact that the real number is probably climbing at a much slower rate than I'm assuming. This means that of our 13,125,200 graduates roughly 8,531,380 went on to a post secondary education.

Now the average of tuition in a public college in 2004 depended on your region, but the highest was $6,839. We'll assumed $8,000 to take into account rising prices, but this is a little high. This equals $32,000 total, if they graduate on time.

http://money.cnn.com/2004/10/18/pf/c...osts/index.htm

This means that for all of the college bound graduates since the begining of the Iraq to get four years of a public univeristy would cost collectively $273,004,160,000. Again, the total cost of the Iraq War has been $306,075,000,000. For the cost of this war, we could have paid for four years public college education for every college bound graduate since this war began. Assuming the money was distibuted based on need, we could have probably drastically riased the education continuation rate, and gaurantee that nearly everyone could go onto college if they wanted to and their grades/test scores were high enough.

Instead we invaded Iraq.

Was it worth it?

Got your receipt? Sorry, no refund without your receipt.

Got a better solution for how we should have handled Saddam?

yes i say it was worth it, now with a republican president you cant see it
but as in all policies 10 years from now it will be worth it and it will prove to be a good decision

of course a dem will be in power and you also will think all is hunky dory...............

Absolutely not.

Tree Hugger,

And while you are educating all these people for free, Islamic fundamentalist terrorist would escalate their holy war against the Western world.

How much over the same period was spent on auto insurance?
Why not divert that to education as well?
Are there not enough graduates flipping burgers for a living already?

United Nations - Keeping the world save for terrorists.

It would be one thing if the Iraqi people showed us that they want democracy, but frankly they don't seem to give a crap. Sure their voter turn out was high, but they are still putting up with the insurgents. At some point they need to say enough, but untill then we are wasting our time

dosent the world need people to work at mcdonalds and taco bell, and be the greasy micanic who fixes your car????

Originally Posted by mpd8488

It would be one thing if the Iraqi people showed us that they want democracy, but frankly they don't seem to give a crap. Sure their voter turn out was high, but they are still putting up with the insurgents. At some point they need to say enough, but untill then we are wasting our time

i agree 100%

Originally Posted by BigElephant08

dosent the world need people to work at mcdonalds and taco bell, and be the greasy micanic who fixes your car????

What the fuck are you talking about?