“The sharp increase in costs is clear enough. Between 1978 and
2013, American college tuition rose by 1,120
percent, and became the major source of revenue for higher
education. Traditionally, most public colleges and universities had no tuition
or very low tuition. But, faced with severe cutbacks in government funding from
conservative state legislatures, these public schools adopted a tuition system
or dramatically raised tuition...
“This huge spike in the cost of a college education has had a devastating
effect upon educational opportunity. Unable to afford college,
many young people never attend it or drop out at some point. Studies have found
that the primary reason young people cite for not attending college is its
enormous cost. Many other young people can afford to attend college only by
working simultaneously at paying jobs (which pulls them away from their
studies) or by running up enormous debt. It is estimated that three out of four
recent college graduates have borrowed to cover their college costs, incurring
a debt averaging nearly
$40,000 each. As a result, American student loan debt now totals
$1.5 trillion.
“Coping
with this enormous debt, plus substantial interest, constitutes a very heavy
burden for the 44 million Americans who bear it. All too many of them either
default on it or give up on their dreams for post-college careers and, to pay
it off, settle, reluctantly, for working at jobs they dislike.
“Meanwhile, on campus, education is deteriorating. Those young
people who can still afford to attend a college or university are increasingly
being deprived of a broad liberal arts education (in which they have the
opportunity to consider what life is all about and what it might be) and
channeled, instead, into narrow vocational training programs.
“This
June, the American Association of University Professors issued an
appeal calling for the protection of the liberal arts in higher education.
Why? Politicians like Governor
Rick Scott of Florida have proposed singling out liberal arts
majors―students he apparently considers particularly unworthy of public
education―and charging them higher tuition at state universities.
“Governor Scott
Walker of Wisconsin has proposed dropping the goals of ‘search
for truth’ and ‘improve the human condition’ from the University of Wisconsin’s
mission statement and substituting: ‘meet the state’s workforce needs.’
“Also, many students are taught in vast lecture halls and have
little or no access to faculty members with whom they can discuss their
coursework, interesting books or ideas, or the possibilities of attending
graduate or professional school. Thanks to administrative efforts to dispose of
tenured and tenure-line faculty, adjunct and other contingent faculty now constitute 76
percent of the nation’s college teachers. As these underpaid,
rootless individuals are often little more than evanescent ghosts flitting by
on campus, there are few opportunities to meet with them―if there is even
a place to meet with them. And student contact with human
beings will be further reduced in the future, as MOOCS (massive
online open courses) are substituted for courses taught in
classrooms―classrooms that once gave students the opportunity for a face-to-face
discussion with their teachers and other students.
“The mistreatment of students is most advanced at America’s for-profit
colleges and universities. These private enterprise institutions,
often owned by giant banks and investment firms, underwent a surge of growth
that started in the 1970s and probably reached its peak from 2007 to 2009, when
they numbered nearly 1,000 and could boast about 2.4 million students.
Enrolling large numbers of first generation, low-income college students, they became
notorious for deceptive student recruitment practices, misleading claims
about program credentials, high student debt and default rates, and inferior
educational and employment outcomes.
“The largest for-profit school, the University of
Phoenix, which claimed an enrollment of 600,000 in 2010, incurred
numerous government fines and payments to students who sued it for shady
admissions and educational practices. By 2017, its enrollment (like that of its
for-profit counterparts) had declined substantially. Nevertheless, it continues
operations today, with 95 percent of its faculty teaching part-time, adjuncts
receiving approximately $1,000 to $2,000 per course, and student debt totaling
$35 billion―the highest in the United States.
“Corporate investors in the for-profit university system can take
heart at the election of Donald Trump, who himself founded a for-profit
educational entity, Trump
University, an operation that ultimately cost him $25 million to
settle lawsuits for fraudulent practices.
“Betsy
DeVos, his choice for U.S. Secretary of Education, scrapped two Obama-era
government regulations for the industry during her first months in office. The
first of the regulations she eliminated cut off U.S. government funding to
programs that performed poorly, and the second made it easier for students
defrauded by for-profit schools to wipe out their loan debt. DeVos also
appointed a former administrator at a for-profit university―DeVry University,
previously heavily-fined by the federal government for fraudulent operations―to
police fraud in higher education. Surely America can do a better job of
providing educational opportunity for its people” (Today’s College Students Are Paying More for Less by Lawrence Wittner).
"Late last year, congressional Republicans passed a $1.5 trillion tax cut, which delivered the lion’s share of its benefits to the wealthy and corporations. The GOP did not justify this policy on the grounds that all corporate shareholders and trust-fund hipsters deserved to have their wealth increased. Rather, the party argued that, however one felt about making the rich richer, the tax cuts would ultimately benefit all Americans by increasing economic growth and lowering unemployment.
ReplyDelete"But what if we could have achieved those objectives, at roughly the same price, by forgoing tax cuts — and wiping out every penny of student debt in the United States, instead?
"...[T]he explosion of student debt in America was orchestrated by deliberate government policies, which were justified on premises that have proven to be false. Specifically, the government encouraged young Americans to view even high student-debt loads as a safe investment in their own futures, on the grounds that the economy was suffering from a “skills gap” — there was an abundance of high wage, white-collar jobs to be created or filled, if only the supply of highly educated workers would rise to meet demand. This turned out to be a fiction — one that victimized a generation of working-class college students. As Steinbaum writes:
"The reason for [the] vast enlargement of the population of [student loan] borrowers is the worsening labor market. Scarce jobs are allocated to the most credentialed applicants, which triggers a rat race of credentialization, and that rat race is worst for minorities. That young cohorts are better educated than their predecessors should result in higher lifetime earnings, if the “skills gap” mythology that motivated the expansion of the federal student loan programs were true. Instead, more and more expensive credentials result in jobs that pay the same or worse, leading to the escalation of debt loads.
"Student debtors were, in many, many cases, persuaded to make poor financial decisions by their own government — which, as the owner of their debts, now stands to profit from those mistakes. By wiping the slate clean, Uncle Sam wouldn’t just improve the macroeconomy, but also increase its fairness, and reduce racial inequality.
"And once that’s done, the government can turn its attention toward ensuring that no future college students are burdened by such massive debt loads ever again. To make public education work as a vehicle for socioeconomic mobility — in a world of ever-rising tuition rates and stagnant wages for college graduates — we’re going to need a new model for financing higher education. A simple and remarkably affordable option would be to make public universities free.
"Doing all this would probably require a few significant tax increases. Fortunately, there are now a great many pass-through business owners and corporate shareholders who could sorely use one of those" (NYMag.com).