GLENN FORD: How to Pay for a Free, Non-Racist Higher Education

[yurbud]

Cut off the federal financial aid for for-profit colleges, which amount to welfare for Wall Street and hedge fund managers, and we could use the money we save to make real colleges (public and non-profit private) cheaper or even free.

As a college instructor myself who teaches at community colleges, I tell my students an ironic truth about higher education: since most instructors are forced to string together multiple part time jobs, some of my colleagues teach at private for-profit colleges as well as community college and others at prestigious, nationally recognized non-profits.

They deliver the same content at every school.

The only thing that changes is the price tag.

The premium price you pay at a non-profit gets you smaller classes and networking with wealthier classmates. At a for profit, it gets you life-crushing debt.

Democrats need to get off the Wall Street teat on this one, put more daylight between themselves and Republicans, and put the future of kids trying to better themselves ahead of for profit scammers.

The dominos are falling in the for-profit college racket, a cauldron of corruption that has crushed the dreams of millions of African Americans in desperate search for tools to navigate their way through a racist, cut-throat capitalist society. Corinthian College’s stock fell from a peak of $33 a share, ten years ago, to 33 cents last month, when it became clear that the federal government intended to pull the plug on the $1.6 billion a year rip-off. Corinthian – known to victims by the brand names Heald College, Everest, and WyoTech – will soon file for bankruptcy protection, shielding its bankster and hedge fund profiteers from liability for wanton theft and massive life-wrecking. More than 70,000 students at 107 campuses, half of whom were statistically certain to drop out before completely their courses, will struggle to find another route to mobility and dignity.

Corinthian is only the third or fourth-worst offender in the pantheon of for-profit colleges created for the sole purpose of diverting public money to the coffers of hedge funds and mega-banks. Although the titans of this fraudulent industry have committed crimes far larger than Bernard Madoff, none of them will join him in prison, since their victims are largely Black people whose usefulness to Wall Street is limited to availability for super-exploitation, demonization and incarceration.

Corinthian’s collapse – and the panic that reigns in the rest of the for-profit education pack – was triggered by the Obama administration’s decision to shut off the criminal enterprise’s federal funding faucet, which accounted for at least 83 percent of the company’s revenue stream. Since Corinthian, like its sister shysters, was created as a pass-through of federal dollars, it could not withstand the slightest pause in payments from various federal agencies. So, it folded. Other corporate educational fraudsters will soon follow Corinthian into bankruptcy, causing a shakeup in the industry that will probably result in a leaner and more vertically integrated structure of dream-sploitation. Billions of educational dollars will continue flowing straight from federal programs to Wall Street, but with little improvement to the life-chances of the supposed beneficiaries: the educationally deprived.
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“For-profit colleges educate only 12 percent of all college students in America. Yet, a disproportionate 25 percent of all federal aid to education goes to for-profit colleges. And a staggering 47 percent of all student loan defaults are among for-profit school students.

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Sen. Durbin points out that $32 billion dollars a year is the spending equivalent of “the ninth-largest agency in our government.” If that is the case, then why not create such an agency? With Wall Street no longer skimming profits, $32 billion would go a lot farther in providing free public education and training to the huge population that has already been defined and reached by the predatory for-profit outfits.

http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/how-pay-free-non-racist-higher-education