In the next few weeks, I will be posting blogs on the subject that infuriates me the most -- the American higher education system.
The USA was the greatest nation on this planet because of our democratic ideals and the fact that we were the best nation on this planet for people looking for economic and educational opportunity. We are no longer the greatest nation on this planet because we have failed in recent decades in democracy, economic opportunity and educational opportunity.
The worst thing that has happened is that many segments of our society no longer believe that we should invest money so young people who don't have rich Daddies can have an affordable education. This belief has caused an about-face on educational policy.
Below is one of many articles on the problem and how it has adversely affected the USA. I only copy-pasted the first three paragraphs of the article. If you click the link, you will also see the comments below the article, including many rants about how we shouldn't help young people go to college (many of the same ranters are OK with taxpayer money going to corporate welfare)
http://www.salon.com/2013/07/30/higher_education_was_never_an_investment_partner/
For many Millennials, the present higher education system exudes an overwhelming sense of permanence. In our short lives, college tuition has always been high, education funding has always been decreasing, and college has always meant a risky “investment in our futures.” We know that these yearly tuition hikes are wrong, and that the current tuition rates already saddle us with debt we probably won’t pay off until we retire, if we retire. For many of us, the consequences are much more immediate, as many low-income students cannot afford higher education anymore. Yet we continue to shell out the money, or take out the loans. Confronted with the institutional power of the higher education system, we feel powerless.
Depressing, right? But history shows us that all is not lost by exposing the mechanisms that brought about the status quo. In their Fall 2012 article in Dissent, Aaron Bady and Roosevelt Institute Fellow Mike Konczal reveal what higher education used to mean and how it was systematically destroyed. Bady and Konczal transport us to 1950s-’60s California, where bipartisan support for a University of California system built the state into a land of prosperity and innovation, a burgeoning middle class sent its children to college for free, and progressive Republicans happily funded education to support inclusion and social mobility for California’s next generation. In 1960, the Donahoe Act, or the Master Plan for Higher Education, represented California’s commitment to educate anyone who wanted to be educated. Despite the concurrent trends of racism, sexism, and American imperialism that pervaded that era, California’s higher education system was a golden example of what America could achieve.
So what happened? Where did it go? In 1966, Ronald Reagan was elected Governor of California and began dismantling the promising work of the past 20 years. Previously, admission had been free, except for a few relatively small fees, but the Reagan government lifted regulations on how much schools could charge in fees, allowing costs to skyrocket. Also, incentives were created for colleges to accept out-of-state students, who would pay higher fees. Both of these strategies shifted the financial responsibility for higher education onto students rather than the state. The process of culturally redefining higher education as not a right, or a public good, but an investment, subject to the whims of the marketplace and corporate capitalism, had begun.
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