US Colleges and Universities Are Becoming Giant Exploitation Machines
US Colleges and Universities Are Becoming Giant Exploitation Machines
"Becoming"?
Just saw Blue Beetle today. There were 2 jokes about student debt. Illegal immigration is mentioned throughout. The grandmother apparently fought imperialist colonialism. And wealth inequality due to capitalism is featured prominently in the first half of the movie. Thereās also George Lopez, Susan Sarandon and an alien š½
I'm torn on the student debt thing, here's a story I have saved:
People get tricked into loans they can't afford. "No, no, see, it's cool, once you graduate, you'll be rolling in it!" Queue 20 years of service industry jobs paying barely subsistance wages (happened to my wife).
Here's the experience with our kid, he graduated debt free 4 years ago.
When he was in high school, we got all these emails and memos about "FAFSA, FAFSA, FAFSA" and we went to the school and did all the seminars and all the forms and everything.
Kid got his first choice school - UC Davis - "Well, we've reviewed your FAFSA information, and counting tuition, scholarships, room and board, you need to take out parental plus loans of $56,000 a year for four years."
Yeah no.
Kid got into his second choice school, Lewis and Clark, we thought "Great! In state school! This should be better..."
"Well, we've reviewed your FAFSA information, and counting tuition, scholarships, room and board, you need to take out parental plus loans of $56,000 a year for four years."
š¤ That's the same oddly specific number the out of state school dropped... if we could afford that, he'd be going to UC Davis.
Want to guess what his 3rd choice school came back with (University of Oregon Honors College)?
"Well, we've reviewed your FAFSA information, and counting tuition, scholarships, room and board, you need to take out parental plus loans of $56,000 a year for four years."
So three schools, 1 out of state, 2 in state, all working from FAFSA all came back with the same oddly specific number. What are the chances of that? OTHER parents would have been sorely tempted to go "Well, I guess that's just what school costs..."
WE bailed on the FAFSA system, enrolled him as a normal student at the University of Oregon. Tuition was about $10,000 a year, he had a scholarship that paid $5,000 a year, I ran the other $5K through my Amazon card for points, paid his rent, and gave him a $300 credit limit card for food and expenses.
4 years later he graduated with a CS degree, no debt and went to work at Intel making 6 figures.
Teenagers should not be allowed to take on that much debt. That's literally the root cause of all college problems! Of course the tuitions will rise if everyone is apparently able to pay basically limitless amounts.
One Super simple way to fix this is to allow people to default on their student debts. That adds risk for the banks, with forces them to give appropriate amounts of money, which forces unis to lower tuitions to appropriate amounts.
The government owns a large amount of that debt and could forgive it at any time. Call it an investment for the future.
It's not about forgiving it, it about not giving out that much in the first place so unis have to demand realistic tuitions.
Otherwise you're just giving tax money to unis, without any regulation.
Where is that "always has been" meme? Lol
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I believe it went bankrupt in the r/memeeconomy.
I'd like to congratulate the author if this article for waking from their coma!
Yes, ābecomingā wouldnāt even be true 15 years ago.
"Neoliberal public universities" is such a Jacobin thing to say lol
This article is a mess, and the overarching point will remain stupid as long as college graduates continue to make vastly more money than non-grads.
They could've approached this from any sort of reasonable position, aimed at higher ed reform, loan reform, expansion of digital university access, etc and the direction they went was "neoliberal publicly-supported education" lol
Do they make vastly more? Itās not a guarantee. Plenty of folks out there with a degree in something they canāt service $120,000 in debt on with the salary it offers. These people wouldāve been better off with a trade skill, or anything that pays minimum wage without the gargantuan debt.
I do generally agree with the point of the article. Universityās have become exploitative. Not just to students, but also the army of underpaid adjuncts and grad students that keep things running while the schools spend on lavish buildings and admin salaries and grow their endowments.
I think you just have an ideological ax to grind with jacobin and maybe no real experience with student loan debt or the academic job market, which is blinding you to the truths it is highlighting.
If you get a college degree and don't make above median income it is 100% due to your own choices. I don't believe that many of those jobs should pay so little, especially with regard to shit like social work, teaching, and other publicly funded institutions, but a college degree is a gateway to wealth full stop.
I am pro-loan-forgiveness and believe public university attendance should be free, but it's undeniable that a college degree is currently worth the investment the vast majority of the time.
FWIW I have a degree in English/secondary education and was a teacher before I quit to make more money, which I will be forever angry about.
The system needing to change does not change reality.
I agree, too broad. Good insight. Most people canāt even conceptualize neoliberal capitalism. Change the language, make it about personal issues. Talking dialectical materialism just glazes peopleās eyes.
Well also you immediately lose anyone who isnt an already-Jacobin-reading "socialist" so that's kind of not ideal.
As an actual neoliberal capitalist, I stop taking anyone seriously the moment they force "neoliberal" into shit that isn't remotely in an actual neoliberal's lexicon.
Like, even the most shitty, caricature-style neoliberals are into places like the Ivy League existing. They are all famously nonprofit. Normal people who align with neoliberalism, like me, are in fucking teachers unions and shit. We're the mainstream Democrat party, as Jacobin so often likes to remind everyone.
It's just such a lazy, irresponsible thing for an editor to allow through and an interviewer to not challenge. Fight against real shit.
I see myself as aligned with the general direction of the Jacobin on a lot of things - that's why I read the articles every time even if I'm constantly calling it a rag. It's a storied name and should produce better content.
I know being edgy is their whole thing but it's just so goddamn annoying.
Becoming? More like have been for at least a couple decades.
Yo, how much should I be saving in a 529 plan if I want my kids to go to school debt-free? It costs fucking $240K to go to school nowadays, how much is this shit going to inflate over 10 years?
My kid starts college this year (moved in today!) and it will cost around $16k all-in for 4 years.
Scholarships and choosing the right school can make a huge difference.
Unless they get scholarships or are going to some exclusive prestiges university.
Send them to community college for two years and then transfer to 4 year.
Also again, unless it's a niche field, or a super elite university. The school doesn't make near the difference they want you to think it does.
Permanently Deleted
College graduates earn a big wage premium over those who doesn't attend university. After deducting student debt, their lifetime earnings still remain significantly higher than nongraduates. Add to this the fact that graduates disproportionately hail from well-to-do families, and it's clear that any policies involving broad giveaways for graduates (e.g. mass forgiveness of student debt) are super regressive and should be at the bottom of the political priority list.
Another complication for US policymakers looking at tinkering with the university system is that US universities, for all their high costs, remain unparalleled talent magnets and generators of research. This is not to say the the universities in (say) Europe are bad, but the US system is much more competitive, productive, and focused on excellence. It's not even close, IMO. This is a massive advantage for the US, which they should be wary of squandering.