Three Crises in Higher Ed Affordability

from Dissent magazine:



Three Crises in Higher Ed Affordability
Mike Konczal - March 15, 2012 3:35 pm


So much of our higher education system is in crisis. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York just found that 25 percent of student debt holders are delinquent in payments. Thomas Edsall finds that college education is reproducing privilege, with access and success tightly linked to parental income. Student loans were the number one concern of those on the “We Are the 99 Percent” Tumblr. Occupy students at the University California at Berkeley and Davis have been beaten and pepper-sprayed by police for protesting the privatization of their schools.

With so many problems, it’s helpful to reformulate our current crisis as three separate crises. There’s a short-term crisis with young people graduating into the worst labor market since the Great Depression. There’s a medium-term crisis about what we want student debt to look like and how we want it to function in society. And there’s a longer-term crisis about how to deal with college affordability, and what kind of public universities and education we want to have.

Right now youth unemployment is over 13 percent, the highest of any age group. Recent college graduates have an unemployment rate of over 9 percent, compared to the very low rates for college graduates overall. The economy shut down in 2008, and it hasn’t picked up enough steam to absorb new, younger workers alongside the millions of workers thrown out of the labor force during the initial stages of the recession.

Any level of debt is going to be unmanageable for a person who can’t find a job. The census department found a sudden 25 percent increase in the number of twenty-five to thirty-four year olds living with their parents. Half of them would be living in poverty if their income was counted on its own, rather than lumped in with total household income. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://dissentmagazine.org/atw.php?id=710