One problem with a flood of outrageous news (have you noticed how fast it’s coming, now that the grill is put away?) is that it obscures a thousand tiny points of darkness. One such dark spot is relevant to you only if you are in college, or will go to college, or have been to college recently, or know someone who might be going to college, or have kids who would like to go to college.
It’s awfully easy to build up massive amounts of school debt fast. That’s not news. What is news (or should be) is the systemic way that the current administration and congress are treating college students: shaking them down, then squeezing. That’s what it feels like, anyway. Over at DKos, Yoss posts some basic facts:
… In 2004, 50 percent of graduating seniors borrowed some money for college, with their debt load averaging $19,000, Dr. Rouse said. That was a sharp increase from 1993, when 35 percent of seniors borrowed for college and their debt averaged $12,500, in today’s dollars.
Why are students borrowing more? Two reasons. The first is that the cost of higher education is increasing at an almost ridiculous rate. The other is that the various forms of federally offered student financial assistance are not. And in the case of the Bush administration, they actually are reducing the number of people eligible to receive these awards.
You see, in February of this year, the Republican House voted through a bill that had been approved by the Senate the previous December. This deficit-reduction bill reduced government aid to many programs, but none more dramatically than that of student aid.
February 8, 2006
The Senate passed a deficit-reduction package that calls for $12.7 billion to be cut from federal student-loan programs over five years, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.
It is the largest single cut the federal government has made to student aid programs and is expected to increase the debt burden of students and their families as many borrowers of student loans will face higher interest payments, the newspaper said. …
As state budgets get tighter, education is always an easy place to make a cut, even when tax cuts for top social tiers are buying campaign contributions. This is designed to function like a partisan issue, but the damage being done doesn’t affect just Democrats or Republicans (or non-voters or the apolitical). The prospect of well-funded schools should, in theory, appeal to a majority of people, whether they have school-age kids or not. It’s a social function with global consequences. Colorado just went through this with Referendums C & D last year (the voters bascially split the decision and funded education but not infrastructure; the conservative and libertarian groups screamed bloody murder, and it was close, but the education initiative passed). I’m partial to the humanitarian arguments for education, but even the basic economic principles seem fairly airtight (not that I managed to take economics, drain on society that I am).
No, education isn’t cheap, and no, it’s not perfect. But even with the oceans of commentary about it on the Web and elsewhere, it remains a bit of mystery to me why so many voters are so quick to pull the plug on schools, at every level. I understand that school funding seems distant to a lot of people, particularly in comparison to the relative size of their tax rebate. (Or gay people they don’t know getting married.) The problem is that people are making decisions that benefit other people’s tax rebates instead of their own (rather dramatically, to hear Bill Clinton and Ben Affleck talk about it). And they end up pushing serious social problems like education funding down the road… where they’ll be waiting in decades to come. When the actual price of the Bush era comes into view, that’s going to be a real education.
,
Foreshadowing,
Phantom News
This entry was posted
on September 6, 2006 at 9:21 am and is filed under Color Commentary, Foreshadowing, Phantom News.
You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.
You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.
Turning Students Upside Down and Shaking Them
One problem with a flood of outrageous news (have you noticed how fast it’s coming, now that the grill is put away?) is that it obscures a thousand tiny points of darkness. One such dark spot is relevant to you only if you are in college, or will go to college, or have been to college recently, or know someone who might be going to college, or have kids who would like to go to college.
It’s awfully easy to build up massive amounts of school debt fast. That’s not news. What is news (or should be) is the systemic way that the current administration and congress are treating college students: shaking them down, then squeezing. That’s what it feels like, anyway. Over at DKos, Yoss posts some basic facts:
As state budgets get tighter, education is always an easy place to make a cut, even when tax cuts for top social tiers are buying campaign contributions. This is designed to function like a partisan issue, but the damage being done doesn’t affect just Democrats or Republicans (or non-voters or the apolitical). The prospect of well-funded schools should, in theory, appeal to a majority of people, whether they have school-age kids or not. It’s a social function with global consequences. Colorado just went through this with Referendums C & D last year (the voters bascially split the decision and funded education but not infrastructure; the conservative and libertarian groups screamed bloody murder, and it was close, but the education initiative passed). I’m partial to the humanitarian arguments for education, but even the basic economic principles seem fairly airtight (not that I managed to take economics, drain on society that I am).
No, education isn’t cheap, and no, it’s not perfect. But even with the oceans of commentary about it on the Web and elsewhere, it remains a bit of mystery to me why so many voters are so quick to pull the plug on schools, at every level. I understand that school funding seems distant to a lot of people, particularly in comparison to the relative size of their tax rebate. (Or gay people they don’t know getting married.) The problem is that people are making decisions that benefit other people’s tax rebates instead of their own (rather dramatically, to hear Bill Clinton and Ben Affleck talk about it). And they end up pushing serious social problems like education funding down the road… where they’ll be waiting in decades to come. When the actual price of the Bush era comes into view, that’s going to be a real education.
This entry was posted on September 6, 2006 at 9:21 am and is filed under Color Commentary, Foreshadowing, Phantom News. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.