art-student debt

At L.U.S.K. it's rare that we honor another writer's birthday, or even our own, but Chelsea Martin's this past Sunday drew me to her Facebook wall and then this piece she wrote about student debt and her longing to buy a house. She's a small businessperson with five published books, but it appears as if she could also use even more debt relief than this Congresswoman would like to offer. In honor of Martin's birthday, I'm strongly considering ceasing to encourage my daughter to embrace the arts as anything more than an avocation although I'll certainly look forward to her return to art day camp in a few weeks. Pottery and painting worked fine for me through age ten, and I can't remember why I stopped attending University City Arts League classes. Possibly I'd become even more obsessed with street sports and half-court basketball, or maybe it was the move to J. R. Masterman, and the homework that greeted me at my new school.

Interview for Auggie's Revenge and the Classroom Edition of Fight for Your Long Day

Interview for Auggie's Revenge and the Classroom Edition of Fight for Your Long Day: https://t.co/mGd3xjmSf2 #academic #novel #adjunct #awp

— Alex Kudera (@kudera) May 26, 2016

Part II of interview for Auggie's Revenge and the Classroom Edition of Fight for Your Long Day: https://t.co/sC1ImXySJt #adjunct #fiction

— Alex Kudera (@kudera) June 1, 2016

Harvey Mudd College

According to this Slate article, Harvey Mudd College ranks number in Return On Investment (ROI) of over one million dollars after twenty years. I'd just recently been describing Harvey Mudd, part of the Claremont consortium in Southern California, as similar to Cal Tech, and, yes, like many people the person I was speaking to had never heard of it.

Anyway, back in the late 1980s, I almost applied there because a) late into high school, I still strongly identified as a "math person" and b) my father had moved to the Los Angeles area in the early part of the decade.  As it turned out, he was out of L.A. by 1991, and freshman fall of undergrad was the last time I took a "real" math class although I did enjoy some history of calculus before graduating.

If you read this blog, then you're probably aware that I don't think that financial return is the primary way we should rank colleges or the main reason we should attend one, but I do believe that burgeoning student-debt should be a concern of anyone interested in maintaining our economy, or even our democracy.

November Readings

 

I'll be presenting Fight for Your Long Day in Washington D.C. on Sunday November 17 at 10:30 a.m. as part of the SEIU Local 500 Conference on the crisis in higher education.

 

And then, back in Clemson the following Thursday at 7 p.m., I'll be reading as part of Loaves and Fishes Writers' Harvest.

Will the newest addition to the Clemson family bring canned goods to support hungry children in the Upstate?

(Please ignore our comma splices, missing apostrophes, and other tie-poe's if you happen to peruse our welcoming comments. Go Tigers!)

 

student loan debt and net-worth gap by race

There's another study that shows how the gap in net worth grew by race in America; whereas a previous study demonstrated that African Americans own about a nickel for every dollar whites have secured in Roth IRAs, houses, cars, or collectible baseball cards, this one focuses on families and has the net-worth gap rising to $236,500 in 2009. Here's a paragraph from The Washington Post's article on the study:

Despite that progress, the wealth gap between whites and blacks nearly tripled among study participants, going from $85,000 per family in 1985 to $236,500 in 2009. Overall, the median net worth of whites in the study was $265,000 in 2009, compared with $28,500 for blacks. A broader survey done by federal officials has found even larger disparities, with blacks having a nickel of wealth for every dollar of wealth owned by the median white family.

Although the article focuses on how real estate and employment opportunities, or lack thereof, have exacerbated this discrepancy, we should also consider that student loans have played a role as well. On the one hand, the one with the positive digits attached to it, so to speak, many more African Americans have been able to attend and graduate from undergrad and graduate schools over the same time period, and it should be recognized that this is largely a positive outcome of making college more "accessible" to everyone.

On the other hand, and yes, I'm not ambidextrous but you've come to expect to hear from this sad soggy fish, because African Americans arrive on campus from disproportionately poorer backgrounds, they are much less likely to be getting help from family and much more likely to require financial assistance to go to college. Despite any "advantage" they may have at the financial aid office, it's almost undoubtedly the case that African Americans are taking on more debt, particularly if we look at debt-to-degree ratio (compare debt by race at equal levels of attainment and not compare, for example, the debt of a white law-school student to a black undergrad).

If you look at the total picture, not just the loan debt of graduates, but all who attend as well as all who fail to graduate, and then include the community colleges and for-profits, you will see a clear picture of how "higher education" as currently practiced in America unfortunately fails to ameliorate the black-white wealth gap and in fact contributes to the widening difference.

(And, yes, I understand how this could seem anomalous, or unlikely, from a reader's perspective if the reader is a white student from financial hardship or supposed American middle-class "affluence," who has been burdened by student-loan debt, while the reader has noticed a black student from similar circumstance, or even wealthier circumstances, come to receive better grant aid from a specific college and even the much cherished fellowship or "free ride.")

Overall, these are my strong suspicions, of course, and not something I've had to time to "study" or write a peer-reviewed article on. As it happens, I was mostly too busy teaching school.

*In 2017, I've seen student debt for an undergraduate degree cited as above $37,000 for an "average"--what I assume to be a mean--and around $31,000 for median debt. Various articles suggest 70% of college graduates hold debt; it's harder to find exact information on debt held by students who do not complete the degree.

those were the days

Here's a good follow-up blog to a recent New York Times piece on paying one's way through college. The author of the original article is also the author of this blog, and he notes that many readers accused him of glamorizing paying for college on one's own without realizing how unrealistic this is in 2013.

One of the first commenters from the blog notes with enthusiasm just how out of touch our political leaders may be, even if they serve on our national committees on education:

The national conversation is completely uninformed and unrealistic. Colleges sit on the sidelines tut-tutting while legislators (esp. GOP) shake their heads at the spendthrifts who borrow way too much for college and then go home to live with their parents. Rep. Foxx, a key member of the education committee in the House, boasts about having "paid her way" through UNC in the 1960s when it cost $1,000 for room, board, and tuition.

college class

This article has some interesting tidbits on transparency and economic class in higher education. I understand and relate to these issues, particularly the way in which lower income white students face enormous obstacles when seeking to gain admittance to elite universities although this is a contested issue, too, and we need to recognize the "enormous obstacles" experienced by everyone these days, or most everyone save for the economic elites.

And smack in the middle of the article, the author acknowledges clearly why, most likely, little or nothing, will be done about it:

"Addressing class inequality is more expensive than addressing racial and gender inequities because low-income students need financial aid, which may mean smaller budgets for libraries or faculty salaries."

And this anecdote pretty much sums up why recent American Presidents have avoided the topic entirely:

"Class issues popped up periodically in public discussion but never gained traction. In the mid-1990s, when President Bill Clinton briefly suggested shifting the basis of affirmative-action policies from race and gender to class 'because they work better and have a bigger impact and generate broader support,' civil-rights and women's groups killed the idea. While Clinton was right that public opinion supported a class-based approach, no organized constituency championed preferences for the poor and working classes."

Somehow, to move forward, we have to bring all concerned parties, which in the case of accessible, affordable college education is all of us, to the table and clarify why this sort of "either him or me" is not good for anyone.

Meanwhile, college grads are getting better and better at becoming eligible for food stamps, and their economic prospects remain "grim."

burden the many, and for the few?

I've often connected the themes of Fight for Your Long Day to the egregious debt loads a majority of college students face, but at least, as of now, we have no debtor's prison for when the money can not be repaid.

There are also the cases where in the process of enforcing our "laws" we end up killing young people; these two stories caught my attention yesterday and today:

http://news.yahoo.com/florida-teenager-dies-jail-being-arrested-possession-marijuana-185653175.html

and

http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/126554518.html

Meanwhile, yahoo.com is also reporting that Mitt Romney has received $1,000,000 donations from companies created for the sole purpose of eliding campaign-finance laws:

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/mysterious-company-dissolves-giving-1-million-pro-romney-142445497.html