“Becoming”?
Just saw Blue Beetle today. There were 2 jokes about student debt. Illegal immigration is mentioned throughout. The grandmother apparently fought imperialist colonialism. And wealth inequality due to capitalism is featured prominently in the first half of the movie. There’s also George Lopez, Susan Sarandon and an alien 👽
I’m torn on the student debt thing, here’s a story I have saved:
People get tricked into loans they can’t afford. “No, no, see, it’s cool, once you graduate, you’ll be rolling in it!” Queue 20 years of service industry jobs paying barely subsistance wages (happened to my wife).
Here’s the experience with our kid, he graduated debt free 4 years ago.
When he was in high school, we got all these emails and memos about “FAFSA, FAFSA, FAFSA” and we went to the school and did all the seminars and all the forms and everything.
Kid got his first choice school - UC Davis - “Well, we’ve reviewed your FAFSA information, and counting tuition, scholarships, room and board, you need to take out parental plus loans of $56,000 a year for four years.”
Yeah no.
Kid got into his second choice school, Lewis and Clark, we thought “Great! In state school! This should be better…”
“Well, we’ve reviewed your FAFSA information, and counting tuition, scholarships, room and board, you need to take out parental plus loans of $56,000 a year for four years.”
🤔 That’s the same oddly specific number the out of state school dropped… if we could afford that, he’d be going to UC Davis.
Want to guess what his 3rd choice school came back with (University of Oregon Honors College)?
“Well, we’ve reviewed your FAFSA information, and counting tuition, scholarships, room and board, you need to take out parental plus loans of $56,000 a year for four years.”
So three schools, 1 out of state, 2 in state, all working from FAFSA all came back with the same oddly specific number. What are the chances of that? OTHER parents would have been sorely tempted to go “Well, I guess that’s just what school costs…”
WE bailed on the FAFSA system, enrolled him as a normal student at the University of Oregon. Tuition was about $10,000 a year, he had a scholarship that paid $5,000 a year, I ran the other $5K through my Amazon card for points, paid his rent, and gave him a $300 credit limit card for food and expenses.
4 years later he graduated with a CS degree, no debt and went to work at Intel making 6 figures.
Edited to add: the reason it’s worth discussing is because people shouldn’t think that applying for student loans will increase the cost of attendance. It won’t. The costs of public universities are fixed, publicly listed, and don’t change based on your need for financial aid. If you need student loans to pay tuition, it is ok. Just try to avoid financing housing and food costs of at all possible.
Something about the story here is off. I work in higher Ed, have multiple degrees I paid for partly with grants, scholarships, and student loans.
The FAFSA is the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. The way it works is you report your financial assets and your parents income (unless you are considered an independent student, over 25, etc), and the FAFSA calculates an expected family contribution towards your education and determines eligibility for Pell grants, subsidized student loans, and unsubsidized student loans.
The school you are admitted to looks at the total costs of attending school, and then calculates the amount of student loans you need after applying grants and scholarships.
In the story above, the only way to get the same number for student loans (or parent loans) poping out is if the cost of attendance is identical. So something about the story smells from the start. Then it ends with them applying as a “regular” student and just paying tuition. But there is no tuition difference, or enrollment difference. FAFSA is just financial aid and doesn’t impact what the costs are at all or what kind of student you are enrolled as.
So if tuition at Oregon was $10k, applying for a FAFSA wouldn’t change that. All it would do is give you access to grants and student loans.
Being generous, maybe they were confused by the attendance costs including things like dorms and meal plans. But they could have opted out of those costs, just like they did at Oregon.
Long way of saying that the story just doesn’t match reality so I would take it with a grain of salt. Higher Ed has many faults, but this story is more one person’s confused anecdote rather than an exemplar of what is wrong with the system.
That doesn’t make any sense. The only thing that using the FAFSA does is get you Pell grants and Stafford loans. I don’t think that amount of aid changes based on the cost of tuition.
This is why I’m against student loan forgiveness. When a thing costs $10, and the government offers to pay $8, the cost of the thing tends to rise to $18.
We need overall student loan reform. Then, maybe forgiveness as a secondary thing to compensate those who won’t benefit from the reform (ie people who borrowed before the reform). But overall reform of the system should be the primary goal, not a one-time payout to those lucky enough to take out their loans before x date.
Teenagers should not be allowed to take on that much debt. That’s literally the root cause of all college problems! Of course the tuitions will rise if everyone is apparently able to pay basically limitless amounts.
One Super simple way to fix this is to allow people to default on their student debts. That adds risk for the banks, with forces them to give appropriate amounts of money, which forces unis to lower tuitions to appropriate amounts.
The government owns a large amount of that debt and could forgive it at any time. Call it an investment for the future.
I’d like to congratulate the author if this article for waking from their coma!
“Neoliberal public universities” is such a Jacobin thing to say lol
This article is a mess, and the overarching point will remain stupid as long as college graduates continue to make vastly more money than non-grads.
They could’ve approached this from any sort of reasonable position, aimed at higher ed reform, loan reform, expansion of digital university access, etc and the direction they went was “neoliberal publicly-supported education” lol
Do they make vastly more? It’s not a guarantee. Plenty of folks out there with a degree in something they can’t service $120,000 in debt on with the salary it offers. These people would’ve been better off with a trade skill, or anything that pays minimum wage without the gargantuan debt.
I do generally agree with the point of the article. University’s have become exploitative. Not just to students, but also the army of underpaid adjuncts and grad students that keep things running while the schools spend on lavish buildings and admin salaries and grow their endowments.
I think you just have an ideological ax to grind with jacobin and maybe no real experience with student loan debt or the academic job market, which is blinding you to the truths it is highlighting.
If you get a college degree and don’t make above median income it is 100% due to your own choices. I don’t believe that many of those jobs should pay so little, especially with regard to shit like social work, teaching, and other publicly funded institutions, but a college degree is a gateway to wealth full stop.
I am pro-loan-forgiveness and believe public university attendance should be free, but it’s undeniable that a college degree is currently worth the investment the vast majority of the time.
FWIW I have a degree in English/secondary education and was a teacher before I quit to make more money, which I will be forever angry about.
The system needing to change does not change reality.
I agree, too broad. Good insight. Most people can’t even conceptualize neoliberal capitalism. Change the language, make it about personal issues. Talking dialectical materialism just glazes people’s eyes.
Well also you immediately lose anyone who isnt an already-Jacobin-reading “socialist” so that’s kind of not ideal.
As an actual neoliberal capitalist, I stop taking anyone seriously the moment they force “neoliberal” into shit that isn’t remotely in an actual neoliberal’s lexicon.
Like, even the most shitty, caricature-style neoliberals are into places like the Ivy League existing. They are all famously nonprofit. Normal people who align with neoliberalism, like me, are in fucking teachers unions and shit. We’re the mainstream Democrat party, as Jacobin so often likes to remind everyone.
It’s just such a lazy, irresponsible thing for an editor to allow through and an interviewer to not challenge. Fight against real shit.
I see myself as aligned with the general direction of the Jacobin on a lot of things - that’s why I read the articles every time even if I’m constantly calling it a rag. It’s a storied name and should produce better content.
I know being edgy is their whole thing but it’s just so goddamn annoying.
