Can’t ignore debt
We keep ignoring skyrocketing education costs and the resulting student loan debt crisis to our peril. This isn’t an issue that only impacts the individuals with the debt. It’s not limited to a single generation anymore, either. This is more than $1.4 in total debt that hangs like a millstone around the necks of 40-plus million Americans. That impacts all of us.
Why? Because when you’re saddled with massive amounts of debt right out of school, what hope do you have of contributing to the economy? Studies show student debtors put off buying homes, are less likely to be able to start small businesses, avoid needed medical care and put off starting families as a result.
Debt is the inevitable outcome, though, of the ever-increasing costs of tuition. Last week, University of Wisconsin officials unveiled a plan that will see out-of-state tuition increase by $4,000 over the next two years, bringing it to $36,738 a year (before factoring in the cost of room and board, etc., which brings it to $47,544). In-state tuition has been frozen since 2013, though that number is nothing to sneeze at, either, totaling $10,488 before room and board and other expenses are added (the total is closer to $25,000, then).
For one year of undergraduate studies, it costs half the salary of the average American family. For anyone wondering why college has become even less accessible to people not blessed to exist in the top income bracket, or why so many students now leave with crippling debt, you’ve only to look at those numbers.
Student debt significantly outpaces wage growth in the United States. According to Education Department data analyzed by two experts in the field, “In 1990, the typical college student graduated with debt equivalent to 28.6 percent of her annual earnings. By 2015, that number had shot up to 74.3 percent.”
It’s simply not possible to do much more than tread water (if you’re lucky) when burdened with that kind of debt.
I would argue that the more pressing concern should be to see the actual costs of a good education cut — and contrary to what some would have us believe, this doesn’t have to do with how much we pay teachers (whose salaries have, on average, decreased over the last several decades). More than anything, it seems to be the result of inflated demand, and increased administrative costs.
When I say administrative costs, I’m talking largely about new construction projects and administrative faculty salaries — colleges are now employing more provosts, deans and assistant deans than ever before. And thanks to pressure and meddling from partisans in state and national government who think everything should be run like a cut-throat corporate entity, universities are pushed to compete for status and prestige in much the same way. It’s become incredibly difficult to actually focus on expanding and supporting their teachers, research programs and the students themselves.
Offering free community college, more comprehensive vocational training and guidance starting in high school, and putting more resources behind faculty as opposed to administrators are all positive steps toward cutting costs.
We have to take significant steps, and sooner would be better than later, if we want to avoid or even lessen the long-term economic and social repercussions of trillion-dollar student debt. It’s going to take an overhaul of how we look at and value our educational system in general. And it’s going to take some radical thinking that goes outside the way things always have been done. Something a good education should be helping to teach.
Add them to the annals of No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: works of art calling attention to racism in America’s past — and its persistence in America’s present — targeted by educational censorship campaigns for being too racist.
Four such works were challenged in the past month, in fact.
This fall, Salem State University put out an open call for an exhibition titled “State of the Union.” Artists were asked to submit work that “addresses concerns and hopes for our future,” such as “environmental issues, social inequities, income inequality and education.”
Garry Harley, an artist in nearby Lowell, Mass., saw the notice and knew immediately what to submit: two digital paintings, both inspired by campaign rhetoric he found frightening. One was based on a photo of Ku Klux Klan members in full, menacing regalia; the other, Warsaw Jews being rounded up during World War II. Both were accepted. The exhibition opened the day after election day. And when it did, Harley’s work — in particular the KKK picture — caused an uproar. Students complained that the art was insensitive, racist, upsetting, offensive.
The school held a tense public forum. The next day, administrators sent an apology to the campus community and announced they were temporarily shuttering the exhibit. Then last week, after a second meeting, which Harley did not attend, the exhibit was reopened — with some modifications.
Among them: The KKK painting, and only that work, was curtained off, peepshow-style. This way “the viewing will be