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

Notes From The College Industrial Complex: Edu-Debt Springs Eternal

High wire fencing on the playground
High rise housing all around
High rise prices on the high street

High time to pull it all down

White boys kicking in a window

Straight girls watching where they gone

Never trust a copper in a crime car

Just whose side are you on?
--Tom Robinson Band, "Up Against The Wall"

Whilst looking up some other potential posting topics, I came across this whopper from the Campaign For America's Future, which focuses on a little-advertised fact about our glorious federal government -- if you borrowed their money to finance your college education, you'll be paying into your elder years...and pursued into them, as well, if you haven't managed to pay off the loan. According to the report, which I've helpfully posted below, an estimated 760,000 households headed by someone 65 or older are paying off student loans. That's worth roughly $18.2 billion in debt.

Unfortunately, one in four of these households (191,000) are in default, which allows Uncle Sam to grab up to 15 percent of your Social Security check (as long as it doesn't fall below $750 a month). As Senator Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) observes, "Garnishing Social Security benefits defeats the entire point of the program -- that's why we don't allow banks or credit card companies to do it." Well, Congress didn't allow any garnishments to happen until 1996 -- when the Republican-led Congress carved out an exemption for student loan debt, as part of its "Contract On America." Oh, wait, you mean the "Contract With America?" No, I think the other preposition fits better.

Imagine the sticker shock awaiting millions of retirees -- who shouldn't have to worry about being hunted down for decades-old debt in their golden years (theoretical or otherwise). Of course, America is virtually the only industrialized nation that insists on clinging to this Rube Goldberg for-profit model of education (although Britain is doing its damnedest to catch up with our example). Still, other nations seem to get by just fine without all the malignancies clotting our college and university system -- such as the bloated administrations who see no problem with condemning future generations of instructors to permanet adjuncthood...but I digress.

Of course, the other problem is that, while edu-debt is exploding, along with cost of living, wages and salaries haven't remotely kept pace. As a June 2014 article on Yahoo Finance indicates, the cost of tuition and fees has soared by 1,120% since the government started keeping track of these matters in 1978. And, as Dan Hurley, a policy expert for the American Association of Colleges and Universities suggests -- such figures often obscure the bigger problem: "Instead of young adults purchasing homes and goods and services, they're paying [for college], which doesn't generate any income for the country."


The grind of working pay off edu-debt and other cost of living expenses also chips away at the one of the most important -- and rarely mentioned -- aspects of the college experience, namely, exposure to people and ideas that could change your life. I met four of my closest friends in college: one has since died, but the others remain part of my life.  I wouldn't have met them anywhere else: need I say more? Still, I'll own up and admit -- hand on heart -- I wasn't necessarily motivated by whatever sheepskin I was aiming to get. I imagined college being something like the British art school scene of 1964-65...with the Kinks, the Pretty Things and Yardbirds rubbing suitably inebriated shoulders...or the '76-'77 punk explosion, where you just might bump into Paul Simonon toting art supplies and canvases, looking for another abandoned ice cream factory or junkyard to turn into a mural. I thought it'd all be a lot like Carnaby Street, with myself and my co-conspirators plotting how to take the world by storm between rounds of some imported beer or other -- even, though, at times, I felt more like Catwoman's hapless victim, Carnaby Katz, during Batman's final soggy season on TV. Good, bad or indifferent, though, I wouldn't trade those times for anything.

Then again, I didn't have to work nearly the hours that grads face down these days...back then, jobs were basically excuses to pay the odd bill, or (better yet) buy silly punk records. If you didn't have enough money for those silly punk records, you'd hope to hustle some by cashing in your textbooks...or, as I eventually did...start can collecting, and turn it into a good side income. Some way or another, you found ways to get by, and get what you wanted -- I bought my first bass for $120, which I saved by dedicating one day of my weekly can collecting take to the cause. What students do now...or whether they could pull off similar scenarios...I can't imagine.

Given the one-sided nature of the present situation, it's not surprising that more and more grads are choosing to default (see the essay below)...though the bubble will likely have to swell quite a bit larger before all those greenbacks come bursting out of our undergraduate equivalent of Mount Vesuvius (or is it more like Krakatoa?). And that's before we even get to the other big questions that the Campaign's report raises: with fewer and fewer jobs requiring a four-year degree, should college be the automatic choice for everyone? More to the point, how do we force a greater degree of accountability from institutions that fight their workers as hard as a ninteenth century robber baron? Who knows -- the "Free University" idea of the 1960s looks better and better all the time. Giving such concepts a bigger stage could only improve the present system...even if our friendly neighborhood banker is dead set against the idea. --The Reckoner

And I said,
Look out, listen, can you hear it:
Panic in the County Hall?
And I said,
Look out, listen, can you hear it:
Whitehall (got us) up against a wall
They got us up against the wall...

Links 'N' More (Click 'Em Before
They Jack Up Your Tuition):

Tom Robinson Band: Up Against The Wall:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQ9qR7CMCvo

Campaign For America's Future:
Haunted By Student Debt To The Grave:
http://ourfuture.org/20150728/haunted-by-student-debt-to-the-grave

Salon.com:
College Is Ripping You Off: http://www.salon.com/2014/10/01/college_is_ripping_you_off_students_are_cash_cows_and_schools_the_predators/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

The New York Times:
Why I Defaulted
On My Student Loans:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/opinion/sunday/why-i-defaulted-on-my-student-loans.html?_r=0

The Wall Street Journal:
$555,000 Student Loan Burden:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703389004575033063806327030

Yahoo Finance: The Daily Ticker:
College Costs Unaffordable For Students:
https://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/college-costs-unaffordable-for-students-174357548.html

Punk Rock Poetry Corner: At One Time...

Ana Vujic: "Birth School Work Death"

(Mixed media on wood, private collection, 2014)
http://www.gallery-daeppen.com/_artists/ana_vujic/index.php

At One Time...

<Birth>

At one time...you could go shopping for fun, spend hours at the mall, and still have money left over when you were done.

At one time...two parents didn't sweat like dogs...just to afford
all those wonderful toys at the mall.

At one time...families could afford two weeks' vacation a year,
stay in a hotel each night, and enjoy some meals out.

At one time...you could actually buy groceries,

and not feel like you needed a bank loan.

At one time...you could visit long-distance relatives and friends
a couple of times a year (even on weekends)...
...and afford the gas to get there.

At one time...people got involved in what happened around them.
Now, they just don't seem to care,
no matter how crazy it gets.

<School>

At one time...civics courses were standard K-12 fare.  Today, they're drowned out by the drumbeat of standardized tests.

At one time...you had to know what the Constitution and

the Bill of Rights said (and they also taught you

something about early American history).

At one time...people could identify Vietnam

or Norway on a map without hesitation.

At one time...schools looked out for every student's needs,

and didn't try to make everybody the same.

At one time...you could afford the promises of college...when

the regimes in charge offered more grants than loans.

<Work>

At one time...people stayed in the same place, and weren't forced
to move every few years, just to make a living.

At one time...even a minimum wage office job (boring as it was)
offered some sort of hedge against moving every few years
(until those jobs eventually dried up).

At one time...banks competed for customers' loyalties,
based on interest rates. Today, they slap fees
on every ounce of your slavery.

At one time...businesses were smaller, and didn't draw big red lines
through the communities they pretended to serve.

At one time...if people were practical and frugal,
they put something away for a rainy day.

At one time...many people lived on farms
and felt rewarded for the fruits of their labors.

<Death>

At one time...we would never have questioned
if “Solyent Green” felt like a documentary.

At one time...working till you dropped sounded like something 

out of a bad science fiction novel, 

or a cheesy '70s movie.

Today, life is the stuff

of a cheesy, bad science fiction movie.

Logan never stops running,

always in motion -- 

alive and well for now,

but whether he sees 31

remains ripe for speculation.

--The Reckoner & The Squawker

Ever Wonder Why Your Banker's Laughing So Hard? Look At Your Interest Rate

If you want to get a real handle on what keeps the financial industry afloat in greenback gravy, while millions of people remain mired in economic misery, the following example should serve as an illustration, and also, a warning.

In this case, the source material comes from a financial management course that the U.S. Bankruptcy Court requires of its petitioners, passed on by someone who's undergone the process.  The reader is asked to ponder two hypothetical case studies, affected by different credit histories:

Kelly

Credit Score: 750

Interest Rate: 4.5%

Loan Amount: $175,000

Insurance: $500 annually

Property Taxes: $4,000 annually

Monthly Payment : $1,262

Total amount to be repaid: $319,211 

Lisa:

Credit Score :620

Interest Rate: 7.75%

Loan Amount: $175,000

Insurance: $500 annually

Property Taxes: $4,000 annually

Monthly Payment: $1,629

Total amount to be repaid: $451,341

Although Kelly's credit score will give her a hypothetically less bumpy ride in life, the reader should notice the repayment amounts, which are highlighted in bold, for your convenience. In Kelly's case, she's still going to pay back almost twice the loan, while poor Lisa will cough up slightly more than three times the original amount. Ever wonder why your banker's laughing so hard?

The impact of interest also plays a role in the debate about the impending student loan debt bubble, which -- amid all the ink being expended on the current Fiscal Cliff Debate -- has received precious little attention, but certainly should. Ever wonder why your banker's laughing so hard?

Last year, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) put out a call for student loan horror stories on its website. This example, courtesy of Yahoo News, is an example of rapacious laissez-faire capitalism at its most harrowing:

Socialworkmary: Paid $350+ per month on her loans for 14 years to no avail

"I admit I did not understand capitalized interest until recently. I consolidated my loans in 1997 when the interest rate was 8 percent. My student loan office at Tulane University led me to believe that I 'had' to consolidate and Sallie Mae was the only option offered to me.

I have repaid them over $61,000 (over 14 years). I think I should be done now, but according to Sallie Mae I still owe $25,000. A Sallie Mae employee directed me to write the legal department and ask to have my loan written off and to appeal if they denied. They denied, stating that federal government regulation prevents them from writing off the balance of the loan.

When I talked to the Sallie Mae employee and said I was confused about why on most months more of my payment goes to interest than principal... she chuckled and said 'We certainly don't go out of our way to put that in big bright red letters across the front page'." 

You can read the original CFPB press release on the subject here:

http://www.consumerfinance.gov/pressreleases/consumer-financial-protection-bureau-aims-to-shed-light-on-the-private-student-loan-industry/

And, if you want to take a truly depressive bath during this most difficult of holidays for folks living on the margins, this "Business Insider" story should do the trick:
http://www.businessinsider.com/depressing-student-loan-stories-2012-9?op=1

Just cut, paste and then...shake your head.

Ever wonder why your banker's laughing so hard?  It's safe to say that 99 percent of us know all toll well, but sometimes, we need a healthy reminder (or two) of why the picture doesn't look so pretty for those of us caught in the grip of such schemes...and, also, why those who continue to champion the status quo need to be held accountable for promoting them.  --The Reckoner