student loan scandal
The student loan scandal is so instructive as a parable for our the ethos of Bush II America. The sheer balls of the student loan structure in this country is amazing.
Reagan and Republicans after him (and to a lesser degree Clinton) rip apart Federal support for higher education by gradually reducing the Pell Grant and federal student aid system even as college tuition grows at astronomical rates, but the federal government in order to promote "personal responsibility" encourages students to take out loans to pay for ballooning education bills by paying the interest on these loans while said student is in college. Strangely enough the interest the government is paying to student loan granting agencies such as Citibank is not questioned at all...
And new agencies spring up like this very shady enterprise Student Loan Xpress specializing in student loans, from which Financial Aid officers at Columbia, USC, and Johns Hopkins profited in stock holdings and consultation fees even as they are advising the students at their home institutions to take out loans with -- you guessed it, Student Loan Express. New credit instruments I believe is what it is called and these instruments allow undergraduates to fall into near six figure debt in order to finance a college education that will guarantee them a toehold in the upper middle classes where in order to survive they can ride the razor edge of ethical behavior in order to pay for the lifestyles advertised in the New York Times Magazine.
Higher education has become a profitable racket. Burdening twenty two year olds with crushing debt has turned out to be a very lucrative prospect for University Administrators.
This whole story should shake us to the core, but I am afraid that the ones who should be shaking with rage, our students are not tuning in...
Reagan and Republicans after him (and to a lesser degree Clinton) rip apart Federal support for higher education by gradually reducing the Pell Grant and federal student aid system even as college tuition grows at astronomical rates, but the federal government in order to promote "personal responsibility" encourages students to take out loans to pay for ballooning education bills by paying the interest on these loans while said student is in college. Strangely enough the interest the government is paying to student loan granting agencies such as Citibank is not questioned at all...
And new agencies spring up like this very shady enterprise Student Loan Xpress specializing in student loans, from which Financial Aid officers at Columbia, USC, and Johns Hopkins profited in stock holdings and consultation fees even as they are advising the students at their home institutions to take out loans with -- you guessed it, Student Loan Express. New credit instruments I believe is what it is called and these instruments allow undergraduates to fall into near six figure debt in order to finance a college education that will guarantee them a toehold in the upper middle classes where in order to survive they can ride the razor edge of ethical behavior in order to pay for the lifestyles advertised in the New York Times Magazine.
Higher education has become a profitable racket. Burdening twenty two year olds with crushing debt has turned out to be a very lucrative prospect for University Administrators.
This whole story should shake us to the core, but I am afraid that the ones who should be shaking with rage, our students are not tuning in...
Labels: higher education
6 Comments:
Amen. I want to say something smarter or interesting or . . . something but, you know, as I struggle with my own debt, amen.
I have thought that the really daring thing to do would be to organize a national default on your student loan as a protest against the exploitation of working, lower and middle class students who can't manage to pay 30K out of pocket per annum for the privilege of post-secondary education.
But the financial consequences of this would hit the hardest on those with the most to lose and in the most precarious of situations, so I think that in the end student loan holders need to come up with a collective action, rather than struggling, Bolibuckness, like you alone, and as I did for years before age just caught with me and I managed to pay it off.
This is exactly where the dam has been constructed which has stilled the restless waters of the American Dream.
those waters have been quite stagnant for a long time, but no one seems to notice that class mobility in the US has been more myth than reality since the 1970s.
"This whole story should shake us to the core, but I am afraid that the ones who should be shaking with rage, our students are not tuning in..."
Much like abused children do at first, many students think that the world they live in is normal. Only some of them are already more awake. Most simply maneuver around in what is given.
Consumerism, i.e. the constant reinforcement of the demand for immediate gratification, is the culture which tries to keep us in a child like state: grabbing for this, grabbing for that. Learning only the simplest mechanics of getting what I want in accordance with the given environment.
Add the fear involved with debt, and you have a pretty solid control environment:a carrot and a very heavy stick.
How many actually develop a fundamental curiosity for that which is not satisfying? How many will grab hold of the arm that wields the stick?
Teach your children: if you don't like something, investigate it.
my students simply can't imagine another world...even when they know there is something wrong with this one...their solutions are often like, "Let market forces decide what a unified humanities curriculum should look like" during discussions of the disciplinary crises that we are witness to.
Market forces have decided in the case of Sallie Mae that nothing works like government sponsored forms of corporate robber baronism! Long Live crypto public support of private enterprise!
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