President Obama put forth his strongest national pitch for STEM education (Science, Technology, Eningeering, and Math) last night, citing the Germany experience teaching science and math to all high school students, and also noting that this is the surest path to building skills that enable satisfying lifetime jobs. Nice to see the endorsement, but not many congressmen in the room could relate -- what's the number, 340 with law degrees, and 12 with scientific training?
Then Rubio, whom I've respected and liked in several previous speeches, gave the Republican rebuttal, bashing government help at every turn and urging us to renounce the Presidnet and his policies. But the example he cited -- "I had $100,000 in loans from my college days, which I finally just repaid" -- seemed odd to me. Lessee, who loaned him the money? And when did he go to school? $100,000? Must have gone for a very long time, or to what then was the most expensive school in the country, or both. And his high-profile job has probably been helpful in terms of earning power to repay at least some of that debt. (I hadn't yet seen the Miami Herald's blistering response, talking about the fraud that he used on Florida voters to line his own pockets, and presumably cover some of the loans)
Today, it is not hard to rack up $100,000 in student loans. Yet increasingly hard to know how to repay the debt. In the past decade, there has been an acceleration of the trend started in Reagan's second term -- let the kids pay for their own education. Parents are less of a factor, society has been excused, thank you. Used to be that the public universities were a gift, almost a legacy, from "us" to "them" as the public taxed itself to provide virtually free college for the ambitious and dedicated student.
Recall that David Gardner, then Chancellor of the entire University of California system, wrote "A Nation at Risk" to launch Reagan's second term. Too bad the ideas and concepts in the small booklet haven't been heeded.
This view of a society's benefit from an educated youth seems so distant that most people I talk to today cannot imagine it. So, the net is that the past two generations have 'saved' on investments, put themselves in debt via consumer debt and mortgages for larger and larger homes, and then shifted the education burden onto the next generation. This is far more personal and specific than shoving the national debt onto the next generation's back, from my perspective.
Some concerns arise..... How much debt are we talking about? Well, the national consumer debt load is nearly $1 trillion, about $6,000 for every adult in America. The national college tuition loan debt is slightly larger overall -- get ahold of that number, larger than all consumer debt in America. And who is bearing the bulk of that debt? Well, there are 5.9 million college graduates between the ages of 25-34, and another 14.4 million currently enrolled college students, and who knows how many -- but let's estimate 20 million who have tried college, taken out loans, and dropped out -- giving about 40 million folk sharing the $1.1 trillion debt. All in, the average debt per student (or ex-student) is $28,000. Ahem, TWENTY-EIGHT THOUSAND? Every kid?
Who gets the money? Check Senator Harkin's report which came out last summer, finding that the major beneficiaries of the college debt expansion were the managements and 'owners' of FOR-PROFIT colleges. An astounding 90% of the top-paid college officials worked for the 6% of schools in this category, making an average of $7,000,000 per year in 2010. The average pay for the top officials (leaving football coaches aside) at equivalent public and private universities (Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Michigan, Berkeley, Cornell, and Princeton to give you an idea) was one-tenth, at $700,000. Harkin tackled the top 30 For-Profit schools as a target for investigation -- the findings were more than shocking in terms of costs to students, future debt burden, benefits to owners, miniscule pay for faculty, and -- oh, by the way -- low employment prospects because the education, by and large, was inappropriate or inferior.
Small wonder that MOOCs are suddenly popular. FREE sounds better. And then we get an article this week in Dissent, articulating some of the clear concerns here as well. What kind of a future are we designing for our society? And be clear, "no design" results in a design, just not maybe the best one.
Thoughts?
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