On Private Education

I believe it is beyond important to get off the privatization merry-go-round of higher education now. If economic stability is a national security issue, then we are flirting with something way worse than a terrorist attack or another obscure war. As the great piece by Malcolm Harris in n+1 tells the story - massive, government-guaranteed debt with little or no value being accumulated at an alarming rate by young people who are all ready saddled with the mistakes and profligacy of my generation. “The result is over $800 billion in outstanding student debt, over 30 percent of it securitized, and the federal government directly or indirectly on the hook for almost all of it” writes Harris, and quite frankly much of that debt supports inflated administration salaries, corporate stock prices, and profiteering on the ubiquitously marketed fear that anyone without a four year degree is doomed to compete with low wage workers in India and China. Everyone from Tom Friedman and Paul Krugman at the NY Times to the admission shills at University of Phoenix® (NASDAQ APOL) are at least indirectly complicit in convincing us to be afraid.
I have been thinking about this quite a bit lately though. Which job is more likely to be shipped overseas - a junior software engineer or a plumber? A paralegal or an electrician? A financial analyst or carpenter? If my child takes on $200,000 in debt to major in business at a private university and majors in economics is he more likely to get a job than if he becomes a cabinet maker or a master auto mechanic? And when he can’t find a job as an economist, that $200,000 follows him to the grave - federal law does not allow the discharge of education debt under any circumstances (another of the no-banker-left-behind bills that Congress is fond of passing). And even if that degree is from a public university - my alma mater UC Berkeley for example - that is still in excess of $40,000 now just for tuition. Twenty five years ago I paid perhaps $3000 for all four years - no debt when I left. What do you get for 10+ times more now? A multi tens of millions remodel of a football stadium that gets used perhaps ten times a year (and sits atop an earthquake fault judged most likely to rupture first), a multi tens of millions of dollars athletic training center for the exclusive use of “student-athletes” (not physics majors who play volleyball though), and probably the highest paid employee of the State of California’s payroll, football coach Jeff Tedford at close to $3 million per year. Oh, and indebted graduate students teaching most undergraduate classes who had to turn to the UAW to unionize for decent wages and working conditions.

We need the restoration of functional, practical, low-cost public education now. Debt free, tax-payer supported, lightly administered, classroom and research rich education. And we need English majors, Philosophy majors, Art History majors along with engineers, biologists and mathematicians. We don’t need more government guaranteed and supported feeding trough programs for investment bankers and corporate investors.