The College Degree Glut (Did Our Ancestors Know Something We Don't?)

This graphic is extraordinary. The caption reads as follows: "A Prospect Of Higher Education. Sixty-Eight Million Dollars Were Given For Colleges Last Year; --if the Mania for College Education Continues We May Soon Expect the Above State of Affairs." I found it in a book entitled, Looking Forward: Life In The Twentieth Century As Predicted In The Pages Of American Magazines From 1895 To 1905. Published in 1970, Looking Forward does exactly what the title says: I picked up for a buck at the library book sale for Squawker, who loves to read about Victorian- and Gilded Age-era life.

Considering that it's a century old, this illustration definitely strikes a nerve with me. Back in 1990, when I returned from my six-month tenure as a clerk, at the University of London, I faced a post-college employment picture that should look familiar to any graduate today. I was still living at home, so I didn't have that pressure of paying rent -- plus food, and laundry, and all that other grown-up rubbish -- over my head. However, my family was struggling financially themselves, so I had to pound the pavement. I couldn't expect them to subsidize me, on top of everything else on their plate.

However, after almost six months of pounding, I couldn't find a job that paid above McJob level (as in, minimum or sub-minimum wage). So I did what anyone in my spot does. I told myself:: if you must work a McJob, make it one you can stand. I went to my hometown paper, where I'd done a 150-customer motor route in the summer of '86. It didn't pay princely sums, but enough to put gas in my car, get a few takeout meals a week, and keep me in records and rock mags (which I was now beginning to score for free, having discovered the magic world of reviewing for comp copies).

I asked the paper if they had any big routes opening up. As it turned out, they did, and I found myself dealing with 200-plus customers through the summer and early fall of 1990. Eventually, after asking around some more, I found an out-of-county newspaper job with one my former college editors, who was now the boss there, and wanted me badly. So, in a sense, I landed on my feet, though not without some tense moments...like in the den, when a news report came on about the Gen Xers' struggles to find suitable jobs. I was about to mutter something along the lines of, "Wow, I can relate," when my dad looked over his paper, and said: "Son, the trouble with this place here is that everybody graduates." 

Not having found my second motor route job yet, I quickly changed the subject; I didn't feel like giving a progress report. Looking at today's numbers, though, I think that my dad raised a valid point. As of 2014, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that 260,000 bachelor's degree holders were working for $7.25 an hour or less, along with an additional 200,000 associate's degree earners trapped on the same go-nowhere treadmill.

This issue has produced no lack of anguished rhetorical questions from the likes of Forbes ("If college degrees are becoming more valuable, why are so many graduates either unemployed or employed at low-paying jobs?"), and the National Association of Scholars ("Obama wants to substantially increase the number of Americans who get college degrees, but what does he think they'll be doing?").

However, solutions -- and the long-term thinking needed to produce them -- are in shorter supply than ever, as we see from "Education Secretary" Betsy DeVos's decision to scrap promises of student loan forgiveness to graduates who took low-paying public sector jobs. As my dad suggested so long ago, there are way too many people competing for way too few jobs. The problem is that we're well into a new era of outsourcing and automation that leaves less and less for anybody to do, even though their bills don't ever stay the same for long.

This notion, to coin Lester Bangs's classic phrase, "is slightly inconsistent." As for Obama, I doubt that he's giving the matter much thought anymore, or why else would he feel comfortable with collecting $400,000 to speak at a health care conference this fall? Shame on him for doing it, but that's another discussion for another day. What's needed among grads, though, is a more radical resistance. 

Begging the world at large to ease your path toward a high-paying job only taps into the prevailing narrative that the federal government constantly pushes: college pays off in the end, so if we treat you like a walking profit center, you must be good for it. Every penny. Every percentage point. End of discussion. Deferments, forgiveness, lowered interest -- all of those remedies are fine, but what's needed is a tougher-minded look at the big picture. And that starts with my dad's statement, plus one more that's worth repeating: What do we mean by the golden rule? He who has the gold makes the rules. --The Reckoner

Links To Go (Act Now,
Before Your Loans Go Up):
Common Dreams: Borrowers "Chilled 
To The Bone" As DOE Reneges
On Student Loan Forgiveness:
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/03/31/borrowers-chilled-bone-doe-reneges-student-loan-forgiveness

New York Post: Sanders Calls Obama's
Wall Street Speech Fee "Unfortunate":
http://nypost.com/2017/04/28/sanders-calls-obamas-wall-street-speech-fee-unfortunate/

Student Loan Report
Student Loan Debt Statistics 2017:
https://studentloans.net/student-loan-debt-statistics/

Think Progress: Half A Million People
With College Degrees Are Working
For Minimum Wage:
https://thinkprogress.org/half-a-million-people-with-college-degrees-are-working-for-minimum-wage-4a2d86ea7775

The Definition Of Insanity (America's Student Loan Bubble)

<Be Seeing You....>

<i.>
"Insanity: doing the same thing
over and over again and expecting different results."

<Albert Einstein>

Here's how it worked, once upon a time, for yours truly. I spent seven years between two different colleges -- starting at a small rural school often derided as "three buildings in a cornfield." To which I invariably responded: "It's a dozen buildings in a cornfield, actually." That experience took two years of my time. 

I then transferred to a Big Ten perched in my state's capital city (population: 130,000-plus then, 100,000 now). Alas, the new institution only took half my credits, essentially forcing me to start over academically....silly me, eh? Why hadn't I taken that issue into account? (On the plus side, it gave me a handy one-liner -- "Hey, there, I'm a second-year junior" -- depending on which friend I wanted to make, or woman I'd try to chat up.)

When I graduated, Communism was on its last legs. The Berlin Wall's future looked dicey, so the mainstream media plumped up the rosy glow of capitalism accordingly; the "giant sucking sound" of all that globalist outsourcing (as Ross Perot  would label it during the 1992 campaign), hardly merited a tinny whoosh in any headline writer's ear. With 40-plus years of Cold War paranoia fading into history, nobody wanted to hear such alarmist talk.

I graduated with $1,850 in student loan debt to my name. No, that's not a typo: that's $1,850, not $18,500. Though I hadn't lined up a job, and the thunder clouds of recession were gathering, I felt reasonably confident about the future.

Exhibit A: National Direct Student Loan papers for College #1, including (from left to right) the amount that I borrowed, when I borrowed it, and the dates of their credit to my account ($1,100 in all).

<ii.>

Student loan issuers are notorious bird dogs: if you don't believe me, just scan the Internet. You'll find any number of outrageous stories about shadowing people at some relative's funeral, or phoning up a delinquent borrower's friends before a high school reunion, telling them that they're associating a deadbeat (nice one, eh?)...to name two examples that I've read myself.

I got a minor taste of this phenomenon when I decided to skip the whole post-graduate paper chase (as in, job, mortgage, massive debt load). Instead, I ventured overseas, and spent six months in the UK. During my tenure, my family indicated those bird dogs had come knocking: imagine their disappointment to find out I wasn't anywhere near their firing range.

Of course, this is the U.S. government we're talking about, and they don't stay upset for long. Eventually, as my sister told me (during our weekly transatlantic phone chat), she wrote on my behalf, and succeeded in scoring a deferment until I came back to the States -- a small favor that, in today's feverish bubble climate, is distressingly common, as the Wall Street Journal suggests.

According to the Journal, 43% of Americans borrowing from the federal government's main student loan program are either missing payments, or falling behind. The U.S. Department of Education reckons the total amount owed at $200 billion (and climbing) on its $1.2 trillion portfolio. 

One in six borrowers (3.6 million) have defaulted on $56 billion (missed a year or more of payments), while three million are running a month or more behind ($66 billion). An additional 110 million have cut a forbearance/deferment deal that allows them to temporarily stop paying due to an emergency (such as unemployment, notes the Journal -- always the master of understatement, right?).

Exhibit B: National Direct Student Loan papers that I signed for College #2, the high-profile state school ($750 in all). Apologies for the quality, but the paper has gotten a bit faded over the years (though not the memory, obviously!).

<iii.>

By any measure, those are scary numbers. However, the dialogue on this issue gets downright surrealistic, as the Boston Globe noted of a 65-year-old man, Robert E. Murphy, who's challenging the undue hardship test that remains the sole legally sanctioned escape from student loan debt. Murphy, a former manufacturing company president, is trying to shed himself of a $246,000 debt incurred to fund college tutition for his three children.

As the Globe reports, Murphy considers the debt an "undue hardship" since a) his job evaporated after his employer moved overseas 14 years ago (where've we heard that one before?), which b) depleted his retirement savings, leaving him c) in foreclosure. He and his wife are surviving on her $13,200  teacher's aide salary. What's that saying? Stick a fork in him, he's done.

A federal appellate judge sided with Murphy, saying, "If this [situation] doesn't constitute undue hardship, what would?" However, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court ruled against Murphy, saying he's healthy and well-educated enough to find a job. How a person past the wrong side of 50 re-enters the job market isn't clear. Even if he managed it, however, the meter will keep running on fees and interest, making it difficult -- if not impossible -- to catch up.

That's how a bankrupt, bedridden social worker saw their '80s-era loan balance balloon from $13,000 to $70,000 (to name one of several examples from the Reuters article). How defensible is it to shove people down these rabbit holes, especially when the "undue hardship" definition has remained largely unchanged for decades? That's like your local hospital basing its cardiac arrest treatment on '70s-era reruns of "Emergency," down to the suitcase-sized devices that its heroic paramedics lugged everywhere. (Suffice to say, we'd probably go elsewhere if confronted with such absurdities in real life.)

Apparently, these big questions don't bother the appellate justices, who are suggesting that Murphy settle with the Educational Management Corporation, the entity that the feds hired to fight him (presumably, all on the taxpayers' dime, though the article doesn't explain how much that little endeavor has cost).

Maybe he can bargain them down to $245,000, or $244,000, or -- if they're in a really generous mood -- $243,000.Why, that's a steal, right? You never know, I suppose. I just thank my lucky stars that my own educational habit never grew quite this large....but then again, it was a different era. 

A letter from College #1, acknowledging my clean slate (as of 8/29/91). Ironically, the more expensive institution, College #2, signed off five months earlier (3/22/91).

<iv.>

The saddest part of this whole mess, of course, is that it's not a mystery how we got here. As Reuters' article notes, college tuition has risen more than 900 percent since 1978, when Congress began making it harder (and then, nearly impossible) to discharge student loans through bankruptcy. By contrast, median male income has risen 165 percent, yet the percentage of Americans who hold bachelor's degrees has gone from 20 percent to nearly a third. Those statistics reflect how the mission changed from the post-war affluence of the '50s, when returning GIs looked for ways to make themselves more marketable, to a simple way of keeping young people off the unemployment rolls (as some of my professors stated, during an unguarded moment or two, back in the day ).

Even so, common sense alternatives do exist. We don't have to keep doing the same damn thing over and over (and thus, making the same mistakes over and over). Re-evaluating the hardship standard, and how it's determined -- as I've already suggested -- would be a start. With so many millions patching together part-time jobs just to survive, it's the least that we can do. How about capping interest rates, or at least tying the loan repayments to the type of job that you get -- as Australia does, for instance? (See the link below for an extended look at how the student loan system works Down Under.)

If nothing else, it's also high time to tell America's colleges and universities that they can't have it both ways anymore. For example, just 25 percent of U.S. professors are full-time employees. That leaves the remaining 75 percent work as adjuncts, with no benefits, no health insurance, no retirement, and (as the Sex Pistols said): "No future....No future....No future....for youuuuu!" In short, we need to tell them, quite forcefully -- and empathically -- that you cannot preach 21st century ideals of diversity, inclusion and openness, yet leave most of your workforce languishing in the 19th century.

And for those who trust the donor classes to take care of our business, I leave you with this quote, attributed to the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill: "Americans can always be counted to do the right thing....after they have exhausted all other possibilities." While it's doubtful that Churchill actually, "then he should have," as Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) jokes. At any rate, you get the picture....it doesn't have to be this way. --The Reckoner


Links To Go (By The Time You Read This,
Your Interest Rate Will Have Gone Up)

Boston Globe:
Bankrupt Duxbury Dad Battles To Get Student Loan Forgiven:
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/03/13/bankrupt-dad-battles-get-student-loan-debt-forgiven/cYGo9MeCZ5hj1oPdCqezbO/story.html

Reuters.com:
Column: The Student Loan Crisis That Can't Be Gotten Rid Of:
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-student-loan-crisis-idUSBRE87E13L20120815

Slate:

How Australia Gets Student Loans Right:
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_bills/2015/11/australia_s_student_loan_system_should_make_americans_jealous.html

Wall Street Journal:
More Than 40% Of Student Borrowers
Aren't Making Payments:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/more-than-40-of-student-borrowers-arent-making-payments-1459971348

(As always....cut 'n' paste into your browser if the links themselves don't work.)

So Much Debt!

Regarding my last post, notice he is now in the place where he has to say PLEASE GIVE ME A JOB! What if the bean counters say NO? The colleges are busy teaching underwater basket weaving and theory rather then any actual SKILLS. Remind your young people they need to be able to sell a skill that no one else can do where there is actually DOING not just theory and putting those things into practice!---The Squawker

College is a Racket!

Now that information is free via the Internet and even your local library, why are young people being forced to spend tens of thousands of dollars a year to have information spoon-fed to them?

I dream of a new movement of lecture societies, apprenticeships and people who are interested in educating themselves coming together, but it's doubtful it will happen in controlled America.

The colleges really are not that interested in teaching anything useful, outside of some highly technical fields where they are forced to put you in a lab, they'd rather indoctrinate you into being a good little consumer. College today, is basically a mercenary exchange where a young person exchanges a giant pile of money [or future debt] to receive a piece of paper that allows them entrance into the job world. Of course that said, that piece of paper is not guaranteeing that anymore is it? And how many people even from a generation ago, admit that their college degree was worthless as they most often ended up doing things like flipping burgers, cleaning toilets or telemarketing that had nothing to do with those 4 years of sitting in class?

I remember my alma-matter, and while in the late 80s they built endless million dollar buildings including a new retrofitted sports arena, they had their hand out for an endless array of tuition bills, incredible fees, and more. My own parents resented me as they took out a loan for my education to pay a portion of it, I paid the rest, and that lauded higher paying job after college never showed up. Of course my health issues were interfering by then. I remember working in the college dorm cafeterias putting cookies on heavy trays and making sandwiches for fellow students for three and half years to meet my expenses, getting the huge tuition and housing bill that zoomed up way past the rate of inflation. Summers were spent in a variety and mixtures of day care centers, factories, camps, and restaurants. The money from my months of summer work would vaporize immediately upon the dawn of September.

More then a couple times, with my dorm bills late, I went to class receiving notices, that I could be evicted but would get them paid just in time. By the way, I looked up what the kids are paying now, everything is THREE TIMES the amount I paid, why doesn't anyone ever question how much it all costs?

The phrase money hungry does not even do justice for the lust for cash, my alma-mater had. Every misdeed meant a giant fee. Even buying books could break you for a semester, I bought all used and even in a few classes was so broke, I had to borrow other people's books. It was good I read fast. Even that could cause one to lay down 300 bucks in one day. Some of my classes required supplies too, and often those came too dearly as well.

Even applying for a teaching job in a dead market in 1990, cost three dollars for every school to send out credentials. [You weren't allowed to make your own copies and the schools required the information to be sent from the college]. Three dollars doesn't sound like too money, on the front end, but just think applying to a mere 10 schools means 30 dollars. Then add on even more costs if you want to go out of state for a teaching job, back in 1990, $150-300 dollar was the cost for a teaching certificate. I do not want to know what it costs now.

The whole system was designed to pick my pockets from 1986-1990 and leave me without much in the way of a real living wage or future. In my case, I lost out on regular teaching jobs due to declining health--my state required medical exams of would be full-time regular teachers at the time. I would spend years piecing together substitute teaching jobs, with other part time jobs. So I got to be in the schools, and had a well paid part-time alternative school teaching job, that lasted for a few grant based years but was it all worth it? I would say "NO!" without hesitation.

While I went to an elitist suburban high school in the early 1980s, which put down the blue collar crowd, their main focus was to teach us the anti-ethics of that then go-go time. A decent Vocational Education probably would have made things a lot less stressful on me. Perhaps if I had gotten a job with actual medical insurance, disability could have even been averted.  Back in the late 1980's I would have been better off buying a small house for $40,000 and enjoying life rent-free rather then seeing it all burnt to a crisp with nothing to show for my efforts except a piece of crispy paper encased in an "6 x 8" faux leather cover.

In my case, I could get a few day-care jobs and $67 bucks a day as a substitute teacher but that was about it. I was left living the rented room-boarding house life and out of milk crates for years, the poverty would not improve, it would only worsen. Out of my graduating class, I knew only ONE person who got a regular teaching job, and their parents had connections to people in the school district and they were able to get a Master's Degree. The rest as the Baby Boom teachers, held onto their jobs with an iron grip, disappeared into a variety of alternative schools, Montessori centers, residential homes, day care and substitute teaching. The promised wave of teaching shortages never came and then the school lay-offs and hiring freezes had already begun.

Later I would go for a paralegal degree, thinking it was more stable and easier on my health rather then the physical rigors of teaching, by then I had specialized in the troubled and violent youth market to stay employed. However the worries about the hordes of unemployed lawyers taking the only jobs available nibbled at the edges of my mind. I would be forced to move to avoid homelessness, taking a residential care job out of state, not realizing the money-hungry colleges would deny all credit transfers, to make my completion of this post-baccalaureate  degree even with only two classes left impossible. Later I would return to my former state, would do an internship once a week fitting it around being disabled, and would be denied due to the passage of too many years and told I would have to start from English 101, bachelors or no bachelors, talk about the lust for cash determining their decisions.

College has become one of the biggest rip-offs on the planet. I even realized to my horror, as I grew older and more wise, away from my start of college at the age of 17, that I learned far more for FREE, outside of the classroom just from having a love of libraries and reading non-fiction. There I could learn things outside of being indoctrinated, and so much college was absolute nonsense--- goddess worship in women's studies classes writing a paper about whether you were an Aphrodite or other Greek goddess, art classes that taught absolutely no real techniques or craftsmanship-paint your "feelings", history classes, that were so superficial, and never asked any real questions, education classes with weird experimental group-think stuff taught for future indoctrination of those younger then you. I'll admit my class selections could have been better but what did I know at 17? One got the idea that education wasn't about real thinking but just adopting the twisted world view of out of touch professors who still thought it was the late 1960s.

Even as I started being a teacher, I had to study up quick to go survive in the classroom and write some actual realistic lesson plans. My life was spent in a fury at the library, learning what all those thousands of dollars hadn't bought me.

 Think about this is college really paying off for young people? or is it really enslaving them? Just to remind people, I do think education and learning are good things, but what happens when it becomes abused for a captive audience to get that piece of paper even just to make a living, and those who run the system make that piece of paper harder and harder to get and more expensive? Something is very wrong with that picture.

Watch this video to figure more of the college game out.



If you are young and reading this rethink what you are being told and the automatic go into debt formula. Don't believe every word your high school guidance counselor tells you or all those fancy brochures that sell college to you. Make sure if you do go to college, that you enter a field that gives you a fighting chance of a living wage and a job when you are done. If you are a parent, make sure to discuss this with your child and don't think protecting them from how hard it is to make a living will do them any favors. Tell them how the system really works. Tell them what happened to their older cousins or uncles and aunts, try and break through the youthful idealism that tells them, "it won't happen to me!"

College may pay off for a few still, but at least go into it with your eyes open.--The Squawker