'We must hate our children'

Conservatives have succeeded in pushing America towards, perhaps, the world's most regressively-financed system of higher education. Or, as Salon's Joan Walsh puts it: We must hate our children.

Over the last half-century we have moved towards a higher education system that is uniquely brutal in its consequences for middle-class and poor Americans -- one whose debt-based foundation has generated tremendously negative consequences for social mobility (yes, poor college graduates in America have less social mobility than rich non-college graduates) in what is already the rich world's most unequal country.

Yes, conservatives have -- with disastrous consequences for the social wellbeing of most Americans under 40 -- won a higher education system that has made what is now a pretty much obligatory credential to enter the middle class -- an undergraduate education -- a boon for bankers (and, yes, the government which profits in the billions on federal loans) and a lifelong albatross on our youth.

Joan Walsh's Salon piece deserves to be read in its entirety, but I'll share some compelling excerpts in this diary as a starting point for discussion.

Next time you’re watching a college graduation, as you look out over the sea of caps and gowns, make sure you notice the ball and chain most graduates are wearing as they march onstage to receive their diplomas. That’s student loan debt, which at over $1 trillion tops credit card debt in the U.S. today. The average burden is $28,000, but add in their credit cards and they’re graduating with an average of $35,000 in debt. It’s no wonder that people who’ve paid off their student loan debt are 36 percent more likely to own homes than those who haven’t, according to new research by the One Wisconsin Now Institute and Progress Now.

What kind of society sends its young people from higher education into adulthood this way? I’m aware I’m only talking about those lucky enough to go to college, when roughly one-third of high school graduates don’t – but if this is the way we treat our relatively lucky kids, the rest of them don’t have a prayer. For many, the school to prison pipeline functions much more efficiently than the school to college one; California is one of at least 10 states that now spends more on prison than education (all education, not just higher education). According to the Federal Reserve Bank, two-thirds of college graduates leave with some debt, and 37 million Americans are repaying a student loan right now.

This is a big problem, and it's one that, with its increasing impact on even the upper-middle-class, won't be something that even the most tone-deaf politicians can ignore for much longer. (Remember Mitt Romney -- who paid for Harvard by selling daddy's stock -- said that young people should just 'shop around' more?)

Of course, the truly lucky kids – those blessed wealthy members of the Lucky Sperm Club – sail through higher education without debt. But today, even upper-middle-class kids are having to take out loans, as the average annual cost of a four-year public university soars above $22,000, while private schools are over $50,000.  Who the hell thinks this is a good idea?

And then we get to what is perhaps my favorite part of the article:

I used to find it endearing when President Obama talked about how he and Michelle finally paid off their student loans after he was elected to the Senate. But in a way, the president’s folksy anecdote helped normalize what should be outrageous: that we expect young people to go deep in debt, well into middle age, to get a good education. Of course, the Obamas’ story should come with an asterisk, since much of their debt was built up paying for Harvard Law School, and clearly, that paid off for them. The assumption that students should borrow money to pay for an undergraduate degree, and that the only debate is over how high their interest rate should be, is seriously crazy.

Yes, this is the huge conservative education victory of the past 50 years -- normalizing the idea that, in America, unlike, really, the rest of the developed world, an undergraduate education will necessarily be a tremendous financial burden, unless, of course, you have your daddy's money.

America could have gone the way of Europe (where higher education is free or low cost), but instead it went, well, the way of America. It wasn't always this way, however.

The stellar University of California system was tuition free (though there were fees) until Ronald Reagan became governor in 1967; so was the City University of New York system for a long time. CUNY was from the start an “experiment,” in the words of co-founder Horace Webster, in “whether the children of the people, the children of the whole people, can be educated.” It was a contentious experiment, with its admission and tuition policies shifting back and forth over many years, but the egalitarianism at its heart, and through much of its history, can’t be denied. And that was true of most public university systems. Late in the game, when I graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1980, I was still paying less than $400 a semester. Now it’s amost 15 times that, at $5,500 a semester; the annual cost to an in-state student (including room, board, books and other fees) is $24,000.

We often hear education reformers boast of charter schools in poor urban areas that strive to send all graduates to college, but what is to come of these students -- many of which who now get lessfinancial aid than the rich -- after four years in the Ivory Tower? Why should their path to a 'better life than their parents' be so much damn harder than the path of the Mitt Romney (i.e. any student graduating college with zero debt)?

This isn't about Mitt, however, it's about higher education policy that systematically discriminates against the poor and middle class, while providing the debt-free children of the rich and elites just another opportunity to leap ahead of their peers -- in the job market, in accumulating wealth, and even in laying the foundations of a secure future for their own children.

Walsh certainly hits the nail on the head at the end of her article:

We should stop mouthing platitudes about how “children are our future.” From preschool to post-graduate education, we are proving the opposite is true.