Every day, I walk into work conscious that all of my students are building up colossal amounts of debt for the opportunity to be here. What stings is that I was in their position over 40 years ago, and I acquired negligible amounts of debt for a similar learning experience. Am I teaching ten times or fifty times better than my professors at the University of Washington in the 1970s? No, I am not.
I might also ask, am I getting paid ten times or fifty times more than those professors? No. So where is all that money going? Mainly into the hands of bankers and politicians who have set up the system to be a honey trap for young people, who have spent the last several decades growing fat on the money siphoned out of student’s pockets, or who have been starving universities of the revenue they need to operate, transferring costs from the states to the taxpayers. Student loans are a criminal enterprise run by corrupt parasites.
This episode of John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight was infuriating, beginning with the battery of Fox News assholes sneering at education to the Republican representative piously declaiming that everyone should be obligated to pay back their loans…when Rep. Roger Williams took out a $1.43 million PPP loan at the start of the pandemic, which he did not pay back. I am infuriated on behalf of the current generation of students who are getting thoroughly screwed over by the conservatives and capitalists who are controlling their lives.
College should be free. It is one of the primary obligations of the state to educate its citizens, and instead, they’ve turned education into a profit-making enterprise.
I’m going to repost a comment a made a few days ago on the anti-Musk thread.
and add here that my generation were young before HIV appeared. When we were in college, we didn’t have to worry about catching an STD that was fatal. Or Covid-19 virus either. Abortion was legal in the USA everywhere.
It’s a common stereotype that old people always claim times were harder back when they were growing up.
As a Boomer, I’ll claim the opposite.
.1. College paid for with huge student loans that take decades to pay off is way more expensive.
I graduated debt free in the 1970s.
The same university now calculates that a college degree will cost $100,000.
.2. Housing is way too unaffordable.
Since 2017, 7 years, in my area on the coast, they are up 75% and were already expensive to start with. It’s that way everywhere, from Seattle to LA.
Low cost cities on the coast, maybe $500,000. In the SF Bay area, over $1 million.
.3. Health care.
Costs for everything keep on rising rapidly.
So, yeah, life is getting harder for the average American.
People have a right to be unhappy with the status quo and hope for something better in the future.
But, Trump and the GOP are part of the problem.
They are not part of the solution.
Yeah, me too.
This wasn’t unusual in the 1960s and 1970s.
Tuition was heavily subsidized by the state at that time.
My tuition was something like $600 for the first year. It went up steadily though and was probably twice that at the end.
Today tuition at the same university is over $12,000 a year. The university itself estimates that a 4 year degree will cost about $100,000.
Tuition was heavily subsidized by the state at that time.
It still is:
Total public and voluntary support per student:
FY2021: $11,110
FY1981: $7,674 (2021 dollars)
Total current non-tuition support increased by 45% in real terms per public higher ed student between 1981 and 2021.
Figures from: https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2022/08/americas-higher-ed-funding-mess
Support for higher education from the state has not kept cost with inflation. To take ravens example a 600$ tuition in 1970 would be only 4.7k$ in 2023. And that also doesn’t account for the fact that median wages, and especially starting wages which young people are likely to have, are lower today; in some cases much lower. This is all in addition to the fact that for workers inflation is actually worse than the statistics would imply as life goods have risen in cost at a significantly higher rate than consumer goods; you can choose to buy less gadgets and toys but housing, food, Healthcare, child care, and education are very inelastic as budget items. And all this is tied up with the shit bow that explicit government policy for 50 years has been to break unions and keep hs diploma jobs low paying, making getting a degree more and more necessary to maintain a standard of living comparable to your parents which is generally everyone’s goal. And don’t mention the trades, yes some people can make good money in the trades but that’s a)not a sure thing as it depends where you live b) can be brutal on your body so your career may be short and lifetime earning decreased accordingly and c) not a solution for everyone because if everyone went into the trades it would just drive down wages. So yes shit us objectively worse now than it was 50 years ago the data doesn’t lie.
Boomers actively allowing this to happen (along with the risk of destroying Social Security and Medicare per your other post today) by electing Republicans for the last 40 years is the most widespread case of “I got mine” in history.
I was in the Charter Class at UC Irvine in 1965. Tuition was $100 per quarter. Later a $7 student activity fee was added. I was pissed. Never used it. Parking was annoying. I remember $25 per quarter, but don’t quote me. I thought it was outrageous. Especially because UCI was in the middle of nowhere at the time, and they didn’t build enough parking. They got caught short anticipating demand. The initial projection I remember was 750 students the first year. There were closer to 1500.
Most text books were ~$10 at first. Later $20 became more common. True, you could sell them back to the bookstore and recoup part of it. I kept all of mine.
Student loans? What? Never heard of them.
Grousing about the nagging expenses aside, it was the best investment I ever made. Not specifically for the acquired domain knowledge. The last 25 years I haven’t made much use of physics and math, though I did for some years before that building infrared spectrometers. What I learned was how to attack problems, and how to learn on my own. I can count on one hand the formal classes that apply to what I do now. Most of those were Extension classes more than 30 years ago. The point is that just my bonus for last year covered my entire undergraduate and graduate expenses (I lived at home) several times over. Far from “I’ve got mine. Screw you.”, I strongly support forgiving all student loans. Pay them off at a discounted rate accounting for the present value of money, and anticipating some future defaults (an increasing problem I suspect).
Most of all, return to the previous subsidized tuition structure. Maybe $500 +/- a quarter at UCI, adjusted for inflation. And hire more permanent professors. Pull the good ones back from the foreign upstarts that dangle boatloads of cash to build a reputation. The future of the country demands an educated population. When I read of some tech-bro offering to pay kids not to go to college I see red. What I want to do to him may get this deleted. He’s trying to build a population of flat earthers, and moon landing deniers.
This is a very important topic. John Oliver is a national treasure (even with his funny accent). PZ is absolutely correct that college should be free. It is an investment in what could be a more enlightened future. In order for democracy to work don’t we require an ‘informed electorate’? A well-rounded education accomplishes that. In the 1950’s and 1960’s california’s university system offered effectively free college education. Most 2 year colleges charged less than $30 per semester. Crapitallism is destroying our educational system; from universities becoming ‘profit centers’ to millionaire aholes pushing for crap private schools to suck up all the money that public schools should get. O.K. I’ve wrote this comment wearing my anti-troll armor. We’ll see what happens.
Whoa, ‘I’ve wrote’? I tried to reword it before hitting post. I meant to write ‘I’ve written’ Hey, I’m not as illiterate as that sounded. Also, thanks to the many commenters that provided additional perspective on this subject and reinforced my assertion.
At UCONN from 1959-63 tuition was $50 per semester, practically free.
In the news: Biden cancels $6bn in student debt for public service workers
I think public colleges should be affordable. When I was young, state colleges were mostly well-funded by the states. After 40+ years of creeping trickle-on Republicanism with occasional financial panics and tax cuts for the rich so that hectabillionaire is now a practical word rather than a fantasy, this is no longer the case.
I am willing to make an exception for private colleges. If people are willing to part with big money to send their offspring to Hahvahd, I have no objections. Objects of ridicule are always appreciated.