It’s no secret that tuition has increased vastly more rapidly than the cost of living, just as financial aid has plunged. While private institutions have been slammed, particularly those with less-than-substantial endowments, state universities – the great equalizers – have really stuck it to their local students. The persistent excuse: budget deficits. “One proposed cause of increased tuition is the reduction of state and federal appropriations to colleges thus making them shift the cost over to students in the form of higher tuition. This is said to be an effective privatization of higher education. State support for public colleges and universities has fallen by about 26 percent per full-time student since the early 1990s. This has mostly applied to public universities which in 2011 for the first time have taken in more in tuition than in state funding and had the greatest increases in tuition. About 80 percent of American college students attend public institutions.” Wikipedia. Scholarships have dwindled as the reliance on student loans has soared.
We have made a collective decision to deprioritize education to save government monies just as the Asian Tigers have ramped up their dedication to educational upgrades. We are leaving a massive deficit for future generations to repay, but we are denying them the skills that they will need to make those payments. Every year, the United States is becoming less competitive, generating fewer “hard patents” that lead to job creation, even as China accelerates into the same space. If you can afford the higher tuition or qualify for student crippling student loans, you are most likely middle class or higher, leaving those at the bottom of the socio-economic spectrum with less social mobility than at any time since The Great Depression. And with the contraction of the middle class that I have repeated blogged about, the upward-moving line of demarcation between the “haves” and the “haves not” has created the greatest level of polarization in U.S. history.
Nothing screams inequality like the recent revision of government-backed student loans. We have decided to make the sins of the parents apply to their children. Certainly, prudent lending requires prudent credit checks if you are looking at loans from an objective banking perspective. That we don’t even question why students need such significant loans in the first place is, after all, merely a social issue. “The loans are known as PLUS loans and are available to parents of dependent undergraduate students, as well as graduate students. But a change in 2011 disqualified borrowers with unpaid debts over the past five years that had been referred to collection agencies or ruled as uncollectable.” Washington Post, May 5th.
Seems prudent until you realize that those most likely to have bad credit are those at the bottom of the earnings ladder, which means the poor cannot access the financial aid they need to stay in college. “A more rigorous system of credit checks has denied certain loans to parents to help with their children’s undergraduate expenses. The loans are available to all students at all schools. But the changes have had a particularly severe impact on thousands of students at historically black colleges, advocates for those schools say… ‘It’s been devastating,’ said Rep. Corrine Brown (D-Fla.) a member of the Congressional Black Caucus. ‘The loan helped bridge the gap. For students and colleges that didn’t have additional resources, those students had to go home. And to me, that’s just unacceptable.’…
“Parents of nearly 15,000 students were denied PLUS loans as of last fall, with only 1,900 cases reversed on appeal, according to the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education, an umbrella organization for black colleges known as NAFEO. The loan issue was a major topic at a recent association conference in Washington… Brown said figures provided to her by the Department of Education show that as of February, parents of about 28,000 students at historically black colleges had been denied PLUS loans. Among all schools and students, 400,000 PLUS loan applications were denied as a result of the stiffer credit criteria, according to Brown.
“Among the historically black colleges, North Carolina Central University in Durham had 609 denials of PLUS loans, the largest amount, according to data from NAFEO… The group reported loan denials at other schools, including 607 at Howard University in Washington; 569 at Florida A&M University in Tallahassee; 528 at Prairie View A&M University in Texas; 448 at South Carolina State University in Columbia; 407 at North Carolina A&T University in Greensboro; 260 at Shaw University in Raleigh, N.C.; 130 at Kentucky State University in Frankfort; and 66 at Fayetteville State University in Fayetteville, N.C.” The Post. Escaping the lower classes is hard enough without making the burden that much more difficult.
We have no problem maintaining a military that is responsible for 41% of the world’s military expenditures or the massive waste inherent in our airport and harbor security through Homeland Security’s TSA force (hey, they may have a minor impact on in-air terrorism, but what stops a monster with explosives in his/her suitcase in the check-in line?!). If the quality of life for so many Americans is falling like a stone – average real earnings have fallen consistently since 2002 significantly contracting the middle class – what exactly are we protecting? It’s really a question of priorities, and ours are completely self-defeating.
I’m Peter Dekom, and what will future generations think of those of us who let this horrific nation-killing lack of needed priorities happen?
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