student loans

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Rating the Worst

Rating universities based on non-academic measures seems wrong.  Rating schools on academic measures appears invalid, given the differing missions of universities. So what kind of ratings would be legitimate to determine the efficacy of federal aid? After all, $180 billion ought to be spent wisely, no matter what bureaucrats say.

A host of public universities have made it their mission to educate first-generation college students from working class families. I can not think of a more worthy mission, and I am proud to teach at one such public university in Michigan.  In spite of entrance requirements, this is an at-risk population, both for financial and academic reasons. Even while receiving Pell grants, students must hold jobs and the jobs compete with their studies. The four-year graduation is an anomaly in such universities.

In today’s New York Times (June 25, 2014) a study by the Education Trust is cited which study which lays a ground level minimum for success in these unversities:

  • 17 per cent enrollment of poor and working class students
  • a six-year graduation rate of 15%
  • a three-year default rate on student loans of no more than 28%

These are not high standards for success, but they attempt to target universities which are simply processing students to cull their tuition and send them on their way, the so-called “drop-out” factories.  I would not be proud to teach at such an exploitive university.

University ratings are generally a farce, but targeting abusive academic institutions can only reflect well on those that are faithfully serving the working poor. It can also disarm the critics of higher education who use deceptive statistics to destroy their credibility.  Ultimately it can prevent students from beginning their careers in deep debt, but no diploma.  This can’t be bad.

So while we know that statistics can lie, the egregiously poor performers usually have earned their distinction. So let’s not be protecting them on the principle that ratings are often flawed or arbitrary.  There’s evidence enough to expose the marginal universities that are not ethically serving their students.

 

 

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Who’s Afraid of the Voting Student?

If you are a college student who works and borrows for your education, July 1 is a portentous date. Unless Congress acts, your loan rates will double.

If Congress doesn’t act by July 1, more than 7 million undergraduates taking out federally subsidized loans to cover next year’s tuition will have to dig deeper in their pockets to pay them off. The average cost to students would be $1,000 in increased student loan debt, according to the White House. (CNN News)

Now if we were talking about reducing Social Security benefits or rolling back the middle class tax cuts, there would be frantic scrambling in both branches of the legislature to prevent an election-year disaster. Instead each party is squabbling about how to pay to keep the loan rates stable by cutting their opponent’s favorite program, and the deadline looms closer each day. It’s very likely the axe will fall and student loan rates will skyrocket.

Why? Because most legislators expect college students to remain on the sidelines come election day. They don’t see the college vote as consequential to their election. And yet seven million students affected by this? Isn’t that a likely margin for a Presidential victory in November?

Students, your legislators assume you are:

1) Cynical: You are willing to rationalize your lack of voting by saying your voice doesn’t matter.

2) Lazy: You aren’t going to the trouble to get an absentee ballot this summer, so you can vote from your campus in the fall.

3) Aloof: You don’t feel responsible, because your job is to get an education and let older adults run the country in the meantime.

4)  Ignorant and Complacent: You don’t know how to register to vote and neither do your friends.

Really? Is this what fifteen years of schooling has taught you? That your voice doesn’t matter and voting is not your business? That you are protected from the mismanagement of your elders? Well, these cop-outs are what your representatives are counting on.

We know there is a potent voting block of SEVEN MILLION of you who will be seriously affected by what doesn’t happen by July 1. Mark the date on your calendar.  Then on the next day, make another note: REGISTER FOR AN ABSENTEE BALLOT. Then when the ballot comes in the mail, VOTE. Or, if you can vote locally on campus or at home, GET OUT TO THE POLLS.

Sorry for the shouting. Sometimes it’s hard to get your attention. You’re not cynical or lazy or aloof or complacent or ignorant, but you’re distracted. So, LISTEN UP!

Imagine this headline on November 7.

Seven Million College Students Shake Up Incumbents!

Sweet revenge! They’ll never take you for granted again. When the bills for college loans and scholarships and internships and job training come up, Congress will rush to the floor and say: We have to get this done! College students vote!

Pay attention, now! This will not be on the test, but it could cost you a lot of money. Voting pays! Make your elected representatives pay as well.

 

 

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Dear Student Voters of Wisconsin:

The recall election in Wisconsin Tuesday is a test of an under-funded majority to resist the super-funded minority, trying to maintain its base of power in the seat of the governor, Scott Walker. Your vote is the swing vote in a closely contested election that could determine the funding of public education, the funding of student loans, the rights of workers, and  the access to voter registration.  These issues reflect a national movement, some call it the Tea Party, that wields most of its clout through the financing of billionaires, who pretend to represent the middle class.

By any poll of national opinion the Tea Party is a splinter group, controlling the national dialogue about government reform, claiming to liberate citizens from laws that protect them. More to the point, the legislators who speak for the Tea Party are hacking at the student loan and public education system that has been the path to mobility for most first-generation college students.

How many of you would not be in college at all without the availability of student loans and the modest cost of publicly-funded universities? Yes, the tuition costs at state universities have been rising alarmingly in the last decade, but you should recognize that both the state and federal sources of these funds have been depleted by the so-called budget reformers, who claim we cannot afford your education.

Instead Tea Party reformers urge you to attend for-profit universities with higher tuition and without benefit of student loans.  This is one of many ways they refuse to support the mobility of the middle class. While their rhetoric trumpets reducing the deficit, their votes are blowing up the bridges to employment and financial stability for middle class students.

Governor Scott Walker proudly identifies with the Tea Party and has implemented their agenda consistently during his tenure. He is not a friend to students dependent on public education or to the struggling middle class.  How is it possible that he has undermined so many people, while maintaining his popularity and place in the polls?

It only depends on who votes on Tuesday. If the voter-eligible students in Wisconsin turned out in strength at the polls, the reign of Governor Walker would end, and Wisconsin could rightly claim to be governed by the majority of its citizens. The power of the Koch brothers and their Tea Party allies could be defused by the most conventional means: the ballot box.

Wisconsin has become a national symbol of the backlash against the Tea Party and the monied interests that have no stake in your future.  It has risen heroically against a politician and his regressive agenda. It is an inspiration to students across the nation.

If the eligible student voters of Wisconsin vote in strength on Tuesday, the state will be a national symbol of student power at the polls.  No one should stay home, claiming that they have no influence on the political tide in their state. You have decisive influence, not only for Wisconsin, but for the entire nation. Our hearts are in your hands. Seize the ballot and vote for the recall of Governor Scott Walker.

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War on Middle Class Mobility

If Rick Santorum or Mitt Romney become President, there would not be much hope for mobility in the middle class. Santorum disregards colleges as “indoctrination mills,” suggesting that college is not the key to success that the Obama administration considers it to be. Romney encouraged one student to find a low budget college, “And don’t expect government to forgive the debt you take on.”

This is very hard to hear from one candidate who has a Master’s degree and a J.D. and another candidate who attended an Ivy League school without the burden of student loans. There’s a hard subtext that says, “I’ve got mine, but you can’t assume you’ll get yours.” Or, as Paul Krugman concluded in his commentary on the two Republican candidates, “they believe that what you don’t know can’t hurt them” (New York Times, March 9).

The half-truths involved in these campaigns for the Republican nomination obscure  the brutal message of stunted class mobility from decreased access to higher education.  It is true that a university education is not the solution to an inadequate high school education.  Many students will climax their education in high school, if they have the staying power and the family income to sustain them.  High school graduation should prepare them for something, not merely college.

And it’s true that there are excellent moderate-priced universities for students to choose, although with persistent declines in state funding, “the tuition at public four-year colleges has risen 70% over the past decade,” according to Krugman. Graduates of such public institutions may not move directly into a six-figure income like Governor Romney, and many of them will have paid for their entire education with student loans that Romney will not forgive.

Even with such considerations, a college education remains the surest path to mobility within the middle and lower middle classes. Census data show that a college education will likely double the earned income compared to what a high school graduate will earn (2006).  The funds that allow so many college undergraduates to continue their education come from Pell Grants and other forms of federal student aid.  It is not the philanthropic funding from the private sector that keeps students from dropping out of college, it is the aid that pays their tuition while they work half-time or even full-time to pay their room and board.

How much of this do the sons of privilege understand?  How concerned are they for the first-generation college students whose every semester is a pitched battle between earning and learning?  How much do they care for the students who study their way out of poverty?

Perhaps this campaign does amount to class warfare, but the battle is not over who gets taxed. The battle front is the opportunity to learn and the possibility of social and economic advancement.  If they don’t understand the plight of students on the margins of higher education, then the Republican candidates are sadly misinformed. If they do understand the full implications of their policies toward higher education, then they are engaging in class warfare by despising or denying  these opportunities.