Making Sense of the Rising Cost of College

[marmar]

from OurFuture.org:



Making Sense of the Rising Cost of College
By Alex Carter

May 29th, 2008 - 11:45am ET


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As college students celebrate graduation this May, their joy is combined with the harsh reality they face post-graduation--many of these students will graduate with unmanageable levels of loan debt that they can not afford basic necessities. Conservatives will tell you they are dedicated to expanding educational opportunities and in the same breath let the banking and student loan industry know, “I have all of you in my two trusted hands.”

The basics are clear:

- When Bush took office in January 2001, the cost of tuition at a public four year institution was $3,501. The cost of tuition in 2006-07 was $5,685 —an increase of 39%; even at the same time median household income has decreased 2% .
- The social safety nets are failing under Bush’s watch: over 400,000 qualified high school graduates can not attend college each year because of its burdensome cost, the Pell Grant only covers 33% of a student’s annual college costs (in 1975, the Pell Grant covered 84%) , and he stripped over $12 billion from the federal student loan program to fund his tax cuts for the wealthy.

The connections are clear as well; President Bush and conservatives did everything to fatten the pockets of the bank and loan industry while ignoring the plight of qualified high school graduates obtaining a college education. Conservatives did nothing to help promote college affordability and accessibility for years. Pell Grants remained at the same level, affordability was not addressed, and state-tuition levels continued to skyrocket. Bush’s yearly budgets contained massive cuts in higher education funding and favorable policies to the $85 billion private student loan industry.

However, Bush and conservatives made sure the bank and loan industry was taken care of. The private student loan industry’s cozy relationship with Republicans and their “Raid on Student Aid” was of no coincidence. During the tenure of former Chairman of the Committee on Education and Workforce Rep. Job Boehner (R-OH) told the Consumer Bankers Association,

“Relax. Stay calm…at the end of the day, I believe you’ll be at least satisfied, or even perhaps happy….
Know that I have all of you in my two trusted hands.”

It just so happened, the student loan industry contributed over $290,000 to Boehner’s PAC and the private student loan goliath Sallie Mae was the number one contributor to his campaign in the 2003-04 election cycle.

We must continue to connect the dots; Bush and conservatives in Congress do not care about college accessibility and affordability; however, they place the banking and loan industry in their “two trusted hands.”


http://ourfuture.org/blog-entry/making-sense-rising-cost-college

[JackintheGreen]

1. Also worth reading: higher ed over-rated

http://martynemko.com/articles/americas-most-overrated-product-higher-education_id1539

Perhaps even more surprising, even high school students who are fully qualified to attend college are increasingly unlikely to derive enough benefit to justify the often six-figure cost and four to eight years it takes to graduate--and only 40 percent of each year’s two million freshmen graduate in four years; 45 percent never graduate at all!

Colleges trumpet the statistic that, over their lifetimes, college graduates earn more than non-graduates, but that’s terribly misleading because you could lock the college-bound in a closet for four years and they’d earn more than the pool of non-college-bound--they’re brighter, more motivated, and have better family connections.

Too, the past advantage of college graduates in the job market is eroding: ever more students attend college at the same time as ever more employers are offshoring, part-timing, and automating ever more professional jobs. So, many college graduates are forced to take some very non-professional positions. For example, Jill Plesnarski holds a bachelor’s degree in biology from the private ($175,000 published total cost for four years) Moravian College. She had hoped to land a job as a medical research lab tech, but those positions paid so little that she opted for a job at a New Jersey sewage treatment plant. Today, although she’s since been promoted, she must still occasionally wash down the tower that holds raw sewage.

[TooBigaTent]

2. If you think of university as merely a trade school instead of the opportunity to learn

about the world and how to think, i.e., reduce it to merely an economic discussion, the major benefit of higher education is lost. The benefits of continuing true education beyond the teen years is obvious, but with Amerika's total emphasis on the almighty dollar, it is easy to be distracted by this attack.

[Midwest_Doc]

3. Well said, Thanks n/t

[JackintheGreen]

4. Have you been to a university recently?

I have. In fact, I've been deeply involved in education for nearly 15 years, at all levels: primary, secondary, university. I would never suggest that so-called "higher" education isn't valuable to a certain proportion of the American population. I won't hazard to guess what that proportion might be. But the opportunity to learn about the world and how to think should happen in high school first. Our secondary schools have sunk so low that many entering freshman have no idea how to frame their own argument or critique some one else's. This knowledge can be, and should be, developed before the age of majority is reached. Once unleashed on the world as adults at 18, one should already know how to think. These basic skills are no longer taught. A student needing remediation in English or math shouldn't be entering college in the first place. The university is, by definition, "higher" education.

With the expansion of the university after the G.I. Bill (and god bless the G.I. Bill. Don't misunderstand me), employers now had a new metric by which to measure potential employees. In many cases this was very very good. But in others it served only as an excuse to dismiss potentially excellent employees because they lacked "necessary" job skills. The university does not teach job skills, nor is it meant to. How many of us have worked jobs that never once utilized skills learned in the university? Are we the worse for it? Does it diminish us as individuals? Absolutely not. How many of us have worked in jobs that *required* a degree for application then proceeded to teach us everything we needed to know about the job in company specific training programs? I would wager most of us.

A university education is not necessary to do very well in a huge number of jobs in the US. Nor need education end at graduation. And before you attack me as an elitist, know that in addition to holding 2 degrees and working on my third, I continue to work as a laborer in a position that does not need any of them. Why? I like the job and the security it gives. I have always moved between white and blue collar jobs, and I continue to seek "higher" education on its own merits as well as educated myself in the sciences and mathematics (my degrees are in the social sciences). But to suggest that all benefit from college is disingenuous at best. And to suggest that every adult needs to begin life as an individual 10s of 1000s of dollars in debt is just cruel. The article doesn't argue against higher education; it argues against the monetization of college education out of the reach of those who would benefit fro it.