Addressing this is the project for the left, and if the Democratic Party doesn’t take the lead, then tremendous damage will be done to the party, and probably the left as a whole. The next generation isn’t in power, yet, but they will be entering into power positions at the end of this decade, and it should be a decidedly progressive generation.
But if the left doesn’t proactively address their concerns, there could be a reactionary response.
So what do you do about this? I help out a friend in this situation… I’m co-signer on one of the loans.
Lots of schools are utterly corrupt enterprises milking loan money from students for profit. Others went on building binges and are catering to foreign students who pay full price and drive up prices for US students.
Personal debt is the enemy of this modern economy. You can’t live with it and you can’t live without it. It’s almost like certain groups planned it this way. If not, they are certainly taking full advantage.
The real reason that college tuition is rising is because we don’t invest in it anymore. Less and less subsidization to local and state colleges means higher tuition and more of it passed on students which means more student loans.
I so agree with this. The GOP that governs my state and so many others is guilty of criminally underfunding public education, including the colleges and universities and appoint folks who believe as they do to the Board of Regents, which has been busy merging colleges, changing their names, and moving on to closing some of them. It’s all about saving monies. Plus upping the ante on grade requirements to get a Hope, as in lottery funded, scholarship. All under the watch of the GOP.
Also, too, I just simply distrust all the big-ass billboards in my state and the Ads for Devry, University of Phoenix, Virginia College, ad nauseum. As one who attended a 4 year college on a scholarship and whose entire degree cost around $2200.00 it’s just unconscionable how much debt so many of the young must take on.
To me the idea of a for-profit college is unconscionable in itself. Some things should not be done for a profit, and education and healthcare are at the top of the list.
But yes, it’s depressingly obvious how Republican ideology gets you there. First you repeal all regulations and slash taxes so the government can’t interfere in the workings of the Market (blessed be Its name). Then you wait for magic to happen.
And meanwhile the Market decrees, in Its wisdom, that everybody should have a college degree. But the public universities are getting both harder to get into and more and more expensive. But that’s OK because the Market generously provides both online degree mills and gigantic student loans.
It’s education as a Ponzi scheme.
Absolutely. A few years back when the UC system was exposed by a student revolution of sorts that pointed towards the outrageous tuition hikes whilst the administrators were working the hedge fund profits for the University coffers.
This article does a good job explaining.
I was going to disagree when I realized that not-for-profit can still be private. I went to a small private college and also, for grad school, to a huge state university, opposite the normal track. I think small private schools (not Bob Jones and other segregation academies) fill a real need, especially for students that would get lost at a large state school. But my school, although originally funded by a businessman’s grant, was not for profit. When Armour endowed the original school (1890), philanthropy really existed, if only to clean the blood-stained image of the philanthropist.
right and for profit schools wouldn’t even exist if the local and state schools were properly funded and expanded
This comes back to the high price of health care (and our War on Drugs). Who can afford to fund the colleges when there’s Medicaid to pay for, and prisons to build? Mix that with an anti-tax mentality, and no new revenue can be brought in. Sad.
Federalizing Medicaid would free up a lot of money to fund the colleges.
half true; fees at private colleges have risen faster than inflation for a long time. But you’re right about public colleges, where fees have risen partly because of costs and mostly because of reduced state support. Horribly shortsighted.
I’m a university professor. This is the correct answer.
In California, taxpayers have been told for years that they can have their cake (the state university system) without needing to pay for it. Instead, their taxes go to fund prisons.
Result: higher tuition and fees.
Democrats have been talking about student loans for years now. As with so many things, you can’t move forward as long as there are Republicans in power in Congress.
But let’s be honest: would the Democrats actually do “what needs to be done” if they had full power? No, they would not. They’re proposing a minimum wage hike to $10.10 over a two? year period. What needs to be done — aside from a complete restructuring of the economy — as far as the minimum wage goes is at minimum $15 an hour.
Ok, let’s be honest. You want to have a chance of solving the nation’s problems, Dems need to be in power and the GOP out of power, and for more than two years every decade. Anything else is indulging in escapist fantasizing.
“Supporting the Democratic Party is still the only viable option because the other side is depraved. But frankly, at this point neither political party actually deserves our votes.”
~David Atkins
They deserve my vote. If David Atkins needs to tell himself that to feel self-important, that’s his problem.
Well, the point here is that they’re infinitely more likely than the Republicans to do what needs to be done. Because the debate right now, unfortunately, isn’t between $10.10 minimum wage and a $15 minimum wage, it’s between a $10.10 minimum wage and eliminating the minimum wage and drowning the government in a bathtub.
We need to admit that our “put everyone on the college path” isn’t just wrong and not working, it’s actively harmful to those who should be going to college, and those who can’t because they’re priced out of it. We have too many colleges propping up that continue to eat student loans and anyone can get in but they’re not getting their moneys worth; or worse, going to a for-profit and not graduating at all. These colleges actively prey on our “everyone needs to go” mentality, give entrance to those who frankly shouldn’t be there — KNOWING they shouldn’t be there — and then bilk them in fees, ridiculous costs knowing there’s a high chance that they’ll drop out (in fact, hoping they drop out, or at least take 6 years).
Obama’s education policy is disastrous, but if he had free reign his college policies wouldn’t be that bad of a start. If I had my way, most private colleges (and all for-profits) would be out of business, and I wouldn’t allow any student loans to be used at many (if any) private schools. Harvard doesn’t need them, they can pay for any student that can’t afford it. Why should they be getting loans? And now assholes at places like Cooper Union, destroying Peter Cooper’s legacy by now actually charging tuition because of their incompetence, greed, and milking the school dry.
There is absolutely no reason why every public community college cannot be tuition-free, and no reason why public university can’t be low cost where you don’t need many loans to attend.
In a capitalist economy, obviously not everyone can attend college for free. But until any sort of restructuring happens, we can either choose fewer colleges and more winnowing of people, or allow our system of creating a permanent indentured servant class but where anyone can attend.
I’ve paid off my loans; it took me two years and I had $61,000 total ($49,500 in principle). But this system cannot sustain itself. It needs a hammer taken to it, starting with the college administrators, down to the states who refuse to fund colleges and enact price controls to prevent the massive build-ups of luxury dormitories, facilities, and sports programs.
Amen. But we also need to rethink secondary education. It’s currently way too geared towards going on the college. Coursework that the non-academic, not college bound students experience as torture and therefore, they don’t learn much of anything from it.
But Marie, that’s elitist talk. Everyone who puts their mind to it can be an engineer, physician, or PhD candidate. They’re just lazy and not hardworking. Besides, if they don’t like the secondary education that gears them towards college, there’s always the military…
Hey, that brings me to another point. Obama said he wanted to increase the size of our military? Why? Why should that money be going to the military, putting more people on the “if they’re too stupid for college there’s always the army” track? Why not put that money into apprenticeship programs instead? The military provides plenty of educational opportunities, this is true. Military doctors get a great education at low cost (hear that, Medical Schools that charge $150-200k?). But you shouldn’t have to sign your life over to be trained as a killer to get it.
Before my present job I substituted at my local area schools. I did every grade from kindergarten to 12th, including the remedial school where kids get sent if they’re expelled from their home school, and a school for kids with autism or disabilities (they just can’t function in a regular school environment). I was constantly invited back to the remedial school and the “special school” because I had no qualms with being there; most subs never wanted to come back. What I saw in the remedial school was worse than at the regular schools. Busy work doesn’t even begin to describe it. They’re given laptops to do course work on their own. Are you fucking kidding me? I’m not saying they’re too stupid, lazy, or what have you. Imo most of the kids don’t even belong there (usually had pot on them, maybe got into fights at their home schools, or probably had abusive administration that has no patience or know-how to deal with them); when you treat them like people and talk to them as human-beings, you see this. Anyway, that’s a tangent. Laptops: they can’t even deal with a course instructor who tries to make learning exciting. And you think they’re going to have the motivation to give two fucks about memorizing dates and events on their own? It’s lunacy. But that’s what we do. They’re obviously “too stupid” to teach, so ship them off out of sight and mind and hand them a laptop. Most of them just have a fucked up home-life (one girl was obviously repeatedly raped by a relative, but didn’t even recognize it as such); but they’re certainly not stupid, or even impossible to educate. They just aren’t geared for college, and should be put on a different track.
“Obama said he wanted to increase the size of our military?”
When did he say this? Recently?
I’m fairly sure the DOD is in the middle of executing a significant “force-shaping” plan that should reduce the ranks quite a bit over the next few years. Secondly, standards are going back up now that this is the case and the military will no longer accept people who need moral waivers or score dreadfully low on the aptitude test. They’re kicking people out who get in trouble (sexual assault, dui’s) or can’t pass pt tests or maintain weight. There’s just no reason to keep force levels where they are now without the same commitments in the world.
We shouldn’t use the military as make-work but I suspect it’s low hanging fruit for the President.
It was a 2008 campaign promise.
Increase the size of the Army and Marine Corps
I’ve also found this idea intriguing, but I haven’t totally explored it to know if it’s something that can be more widespread:
Would You Send Your Kids to a School Where Students Make the Rules?
sounds like the plot for a bad movie
Age appropriate empowerment and decision making is good education policy and not employed anywhere close to enough. But it’s crap that a six year old brain = a sixteen year old brain. Or for that matter that a sixteen year old brain is mature and fully developed (that requires about another decade).
“…we can either choose fewer colleges and more winnowing of people, or allow our system of creating a permanent indentured servant class but where anyone can attend.”
And what do the ‘winnowed’ people do? Simply cease to exist?
A college degree is the de facto entrance requirement for any sort of middle-class career. People with a bachelors degree now earn 85% more over their lifetime than those with a HS degree.
Finally while we keep hearing tales of students graduating with high 5 and 6-figure debt loads, the actual data is different, averaging $28K (p 1 of that referenced report).
That’s a lot of money, but is by no means a ‘lifetime of debt peonage’.
Somehow the winnowed people aren’t doing so bad in Sweden, Finland and Norway where college is free.
We’re not saying they end their education at HS, but not a college track. Are you seriously saying that everyone should be going to college? That’s ridiculous. Not everyone is cut out for it.
And that data is outdated. As a sign of how quickly this is transforming into an extreme crisis:
Class of 2013 grads average $35,200 in total debt
Why?
I’m serious — why do we permit such a lifetime disparity in earnings? Why do those privileged to spend four to ten years of their working lives in college instead busting their butts at some job get a huge income bonus for working fewer years and not likely ever having to break a sweat in their jobs?
Oh, you just hit a nerve. Our older son, the one I call Navy Son, had a Grand Plan when he got out of high school. He enlisted in the Navy and did an eight-year hitch, learning some very useful skills as an ET. He got out about a year and a half ago and came home planning to go to college on the GI Bill.
He didn’t have any trouble getting accepted to the School of Engineering at the University of Oklahoma. The GI Bill pays for tuition and books, plus a stipend for living expenses. He thought, and we thought, that he was pretty well set. It wasn’t long before the surprises started coming in.
Turns out tuition and books account for about half what it costs to go to OU. There are fees for everything. Parking fees, administrative fees, gym fees, and on and on. He had to pay all of that stuff out of pocket. And it turns out, the stipend the GI Bill pays for living expenses might pay for a fair-sized closet in Norman Oklahoma. He had a little money saved up, but it quickly became obvious that his Grand Plan wasn’t going to work quite like he planned.
We helped him get settled in my Dad’s old place, thinking he would try commuting — about an hour’s drive each way. When he started adding the cost of gas to the mix, plus all the scheduling issues of a long commute on top of a full-time class schedule, it didn’t take long to see that wasn’t going to work very well either. We were trying to help him, but it soon became obvious he wouldn’t be able to complete the 4-year program without jumping into the student loan sinkhole, something he refused to do.
He has spent the better part of the past year trying to come up with a viable Plan B. To say the least, he is more than a little bitter.
If the left doesn’t address their concerns they might, what? Turn to the right? For even more neglect of their concerns?
I think this was more his point: when the parties of Britain started to become interchangeable (Labour is basically saying “We’ll do austerity, too!”), people lost interest and voter participation plummets.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/files/2014/02/TMC1.jpeg
Exactly. When I go off on one of my rants about the Repugs or the Tea Party, my son’s eyes glaze over. He doesn’t see any difference between the two parties. He thinks they’re both talking smack. I don’t think he’ll be interesting in voting, and I don’t think anything I can say will change his mind.
…interested in voting…
yup. Happened in 2010.
A debt jubilee would solve a whole lot of problems in this country, but unfortunately isn’t a serious plan, because the people with all the money own and operate the country and that would decrease the amount of power they have over every one else who isn’t rich and powerful. For most of the rich sociopaths, quality of life is tied directly to how much better they have it over everyone else. Which is why they don’t care about anyone else.
This is why I see a France 1793 scenario as all but inevitable. It’s also why I see the country militarizing the police and passing Conceal Carry and Stand Your Ground laws. We’ve been a fascist country since the late 40’s, and now we’re just heading towards neo-feudalism and oligarchy/aristocracy.
Empires always end, and literally everything we’re dealing with has been dealt with before. The major difference is that it’s the 21st century.
I am young and going through what is being discussed in the abstract here. I, as you might guess, know many people in the same situation, and far worse.
A lot of people just don’t vote, because they see Democrats as being less insane than Republicans, but also as a party that doesn’t really stand for anything but being against the insane Republicans. After awhile, you just don’t care about electing a Democrat who is slightly less terrible than a Republican.
Democratic party mistake #1 is being cowardly and not standing up for actual Liberalism. Not standing up and saying loudly that they stand for issues that young people care about.
A lot of people like me, who pay attention to politics and vote Democratic because not voting is just as bad as voting Republican, are doing it while holding their nose and closing their eyes. I mean, hey, I’m hoping for the best, but Democratic politicians just don’t inspire people who don’t otherwise pay attention to politics…or they do, like Barry O, and then he has delusions of being buddies with Republicans.
So, this is my advice for the non-oligarchs who are worried about money, debt, the country, and what is going to happen.
Step 1: Get a healthcare degree and license.
Step 2: Get a passport. $120 bucks, 3-6 week process.
Step 3: Find a more-socialist country that has a fast track for working visas if you have a healthcare degree and license.
Step 4: Be the best expatriate you can, and earn yourself a dual citizenship. Stop paying your student loans.
Step 5: Live a decent life.
Unless things actually change, and I don’t mean a raise in the minimum wage to almost enough to live on, but actual change that puts people over profit, there isn’t any real reason to stick around.
Rome is burning, and the goths are starting to build decent towns with modern conveniences…and they actually care about improving the quality of life for everyone, rather than for the oligarchs.
When Empires are burning, lots of arsonists show up to play, so heads up for the rest of you that decide to stick around.