Stafford loans

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Employ, Baby, Employ!

Keeping a low profile, the House of Representatives passed the extension of the Stafford Loans program, allowing college students to borrow at low rates for another two years. The funds to support Stafford mysteriously appeared before the July 1 deadline.

Perhaps college students and their families still have some clout in Congress, and the dream of middle class mobility is alive, but to realize that dream with jobs remains on the legislative agenda.  At the same time President Obama’s bill for 400,000 teaching positions remains neglected, and schools will open in the fall with overcrowded classrooms and decimated support services for students.

Republicans disdain jobs bills that do not expand the economy, and teaching can not be credited with stimulating the market. However, there is a case to be made for using our natural resources. If certified teachers were oil or natural gas, Congress would have no problem funding them.  Maybe we should call the bill the Keystone Educational Resources Act.

Unemployed, certified teachers are genuine natural resources. They are mostly young, some fresh out of school, with a fiery spirit to prove their worth.  They are a select portion of the population committed to public service, meaning they will work cheaply, too cheaply. They have met the rigorous standards for teachers demanded by No Child Left Behind.  They are committed to durable service, if they have not already been diverted into other job opportunities.

I personally know a half dozen recent graduates who are can’t-miss teachers, but can not find employment.  They stay in Michigan, because of their family, their spouse, or because of dreams they can’t shake.  We need them in our schools and in our profession. The idea that they will leave the state or the profession is painful to consider.

These future teachers are a genuine natural resource.  To leave them dormant, while the economy sags is to sell out our future and their potential.  Release the funding for teachers to go to work  Engage their intellectual energy!

Employ, baby, employ!

 

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Student Loans and Class Mobility

Yesterday the Senate passed the bill renewing the Stafford Student Loan Program at 3.4%.  Now the House of Representatives has to pass the same bill before July 1. So close and yet so far.

Mitt Romney has taken a great interest in employing college graduates, but shows less interest in financing their education. He will not support extending the low interest rates on student loans, but, if students somehow make it through college without that support, he will turn the economy around and find them jobs.

This sums up the the supply-side approach to class mobility. Find a way to be qualified for a competitive job, and we’ll put you to work. If you do not finish college or if you have child care issues or if you need medical care or if you want to work in the public service sector, don’t bother us.  We have productive jobs for competitive applicants, and the rest of you should resign yourselves to poverty.

The students I teach at a public university collectively have all these qualifiers that prevent them from getting jobs. They are living on part time work and student loans. They are depending on child care within their families so they can attend classes. If that child care falls through, they can’t come to class. They are depending on their parents’ health care or they don’t go to the infirmary when they are sick. I ask for medical documentation of their absence from class, but they didn’t see a doctor because they couldn’t afford to.

And finally, they want to be teachers. In spite of the dispiriting narrative in the media about schools, they want to teach, many of them in urban schools. Some of my best students are still waiting for their first permanent teaching job.

But these are public sector jobs, and they are not on the “to-do” list of the supply-slide economists.  They do not respect these jobs, because they do not produce anything tangible. They produce motivated students, public safety, and general health and well being, but nothing to stimulate the economy. They only produce “quality of life,” and who can price and sell that?

The mobile middle class depends on the funding that the conservative policy-makers have denied them.  They are not getting through college or finding adequate day care or minimal medical care without the aid that is being systematically cut from the federal budget. These are foolish economies. Penny-wise and pound foolish.

There are 7.4 million students depending on Stafford loans, who may have fifteen million advocates that want them to graduate.  That is an enormous voting block, assuming each person votes.  If their votes were counted in November, there would be sweeping changes throughout the federal government, changes that would make the 2010 Tea Party coup look like a tea party.

The revolution begins with voter registation. Some students will need absentee ballots and picture identification to vote. July 2 is a good time to start.

Then find out who stands for the upwardly mobile college student. Who is eliminating the life support systems that allow a first-generation college student to move out of poverty or stagnation.

Then inform your friends, your family about who stands for your interests and who is just blustering about a better economy.  Promises are cheap. Action is proof of whose interests are being served.

Then vote with a vengeance and determination. There is no need to give in to the conservative undertow and be swept out to sea. Swim above the rolling jobs rhetoric. Send the word that students, especially the mobile middle class students, are a force to be reckoned with.