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Photo: Emory University
In 2007 the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education issued its annual report on access and affordability for American college students. The report provides some sobering reading about what the Counterrevolution could cost this country–an entire generation. In summary, the nation that once was the envy of the world in higher education–so much that young people from all over the world dreamed of coming here to study–is rapidly falling behind.
In the report’s press release Governor James B. Hunt Jr., chair of the National Center’s board of directors and former governor of North Carolina, gave the media soundbite, “The report card’s findings challenge the notion that the American higher education system is still the ‘best in the world, n such key areas as college access and completion, the U.S. has made little or no progress, while other countries have made substantial gains.” Hunt went on to say, “For most American families, college affordability has continued to deteriorate. The share of family income required to pay for a year of college has continued to escalate for all but the wealthiest families. And financial aid for qualified students who can’t afford college has not kept pace with tuition increases.” (my emphasis)
The statistics from the report should inspire a huge public outcry, but my guess is that they will languish in the back pages of newspaper, never make the networks, and most bloggers will continue to carp about yesterday’s news. The numbers show that United States is continuing to fall behind other nations in both enrollment and completion rates. Why? It doesn’t take a genius to figure this one out–because they can’t afford it!
According to the report the United States ranks seventh in the proportion of adults aged 35-64 who have a college degree. Seventh! In rates of college completion, the U.S. ranks in the bottom half in the most recent international comparisons. That means we lag not only behind our European competitors–who we always like to castigate because of their supposedly elitist education systems–but behind a lot of nations we typically regard as “under-developed.”
Here are some more sobering statistics–in fact I got so angry as I started to post these I hit the wrong key and screwed up the post:
* The proportion of family income needed to pay net college costs (after accounting for all student financial aid) at public four-year colleges has grown from 28% to 42% in Ohio; from 24% to 37% in New Jersey; from 18% to 30% in Iowa; from 25% to 36% in Oregon; and from 20% to 31% in Washington.
* The likelihood of a 9th grader enrolling in college four years later is less than 40%; and that likelihood has decreased from 44% to 32% in Hawaii; from 46% to 35% in Vermont; and from 45% to 37% in New York.
* Gaps between ethnic groups in college enrollment rates persist. For example, enrollment rate for white 18-to-24 year-olds in Colorado are 40% and 17% for non-whites; in New Jersey, 47% for whites and 27% for non-whites; in Pennsylvania, 39% for whites and 21% for non-whites.
The press release is available at: http://www.highereducation.org/news/mup06-pr.shtml
But those of you with a child in college or who are currently enrolled in college don’t need a report to tell you what is going down. Students and their parents are deluged with letters about loans. In 2004, the first year my son had a Stafford Loan the rate was 2.77%, it then went up to 4.77%. For Stafford Loans first disbursed between July 1, 1998 and June 30, 2006, the interest rate is variable (adjusted annually on July 1st) but will not exceed 8.25 percent. For loans after July 1 of this year the rate is now 6.8%. The fine print also says you’ll pay a fee of up to 4 percent of the loan, deducted proportionately from each loan disbursement.
But the Counterrevolution does not propose to stop there. This July Congressional Republicans cut $12 BILLION in student aid, the largest single cut in student aid EVER. This includes the aforementioned Stafford Loan change along with changing the interest rate on PLUS loans to 8.5% and freezing Pell grants. President Bush is also proposing to eliminate the entire Perkins Loan program in the 2007 budget.
The under-reported part of this unprecedented change is the huge debt carried by many of today’s students. Representative George Miller, who has mounted a full frontal assault on these changes, estimates the average student debt at $17,500. A recent study by the National Center for Education Statistics (1) shows that about 50% of recent
college graduate have student loans, with an average student loan debt of $10,000. In an online article on MSN Money, Liz Pulliam Weston reports, “The average college student is now more than $20,000 in debt at graduation. The average salary for a newly minted graduate, meanwhile, is $30,000.”
The situation gets worse the higher you go. It is not unusual for students graduating from law or medical school to have debts that range up to six figures. Two summers ago I sat and listened to a group of young law students at a backyard party tote up their debts, with the highest being $125,000. Several of them expressed an interest in going into public interest law but said that their debt meant they had to sell themselves to the highest bidder (insert analogy of your choice here).
At this point any idiot can connect the dots. For the very highest-scoring poor and minority students there are a few token free rides which amount to bones picked pretty clean by the rich and their Counterrevolutionary allies. For a poor student without stellar test scores a professional career is a wild pipe dream. As for the middle class, they may qualify for financial aid, but the Counterrevolution’s plans leave them and their parents with some difficult decisions, first about what college they can afford and second, about how to pay for it. If Weston’s figures are even close, it means that in essence a college education for many students has become this century’s equivalent of the indentured servitude that bedeviled so many colonial Americans.
Last spring I spent an enlightening evening with some of my son’s friends who had graduated in previous years. Over beers and margaritas, these students talked about how their undergraduate debt had precluded any options like law or medical school. One student who wanted to become a doctor was working as a handyman to pay off his debt. Is it any wonder that students are taking longer to get their degrees and partaking in the much-commented on custom of young adults living with their parents well into their 20s. Wonder where some of those Iraq troops are coming from? More than you think are former or would-be college students who have been sucked in by a recruiter’s pitch to help pay for their college education.
So who are our future doctors and lawyers–the sons and daughters of Ken Lay and Donald Trump. And you wonder why our health care and legal systems are such a mess. You wonder why employees who may be counting on their indentured servitude to pay their debts look the other way at management malfeasance.
For much of this country’s history, education served as the major ladder to help people climb to their ambitions, not matter how lofty the heights they set. In the Liberal American ideal of the level playing field equal access to education served as a prime means of keeping the playing field level. Now a Counterrevolution that believes inequality is the prime mover of society has moved yet another step closer to shutting out the rest of us.
Curiously, there is an ominous parallel between the National Center press release and one released at the height of the 2004 election by the American Political Science Association. Cited in the Katrina chapter of The Strange Death of Liberal America, American Democracy in an Age of Rising Inequality stated, “”Our country’s ideals of equal citizenship and responsive government may be under growing threat in an era of persistent and rising inequalities. Disparities of income, wealth, and access to opportunity are growing more sharply in the United States than many other nations, and gaps between races and ethnic groups persist. Progress toward realizing American ideals of democracy may have stalled, and in some areas reversed.”
Curious as to how many of our fellow liberal/progressive bloggers had anything to say about the report I did a Technorati search. As of 2:00 Eastern time only five blogs had posted on the National Center’s report–none of them the so-called major blogs (you know who you are). This raises a serious issue, perhaps for another post. Maybe it’s time we stopped fiddling about Donald Rumsfeld and turned our attention to a formerly level playing field that is burning to the ground.
Technorati Tags: higher education, american education, education, paying for college, college costs for middle class, Congressional budget cuts, education budget cuts, student debt, access to education, Katrina, college loans, college loans, Republicans, Republican Counterrevolution
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