The Future of Higher Education for the Lower 50 percent
Fight back before it is Too Late
I often have heard it said that Americans only react to crises. When I was growing up the common sense was that the U.S. never started a war: “we wanted to give the other side a chance” – supposedly Americans liked being the underdog so they never threw the first punch. History shows the absurdity of this bravado joining a junk heap of other American myths.
This bravado spilled over into everyday behavior and the way Americans looked at society. For instance, when a child Los Angeles already suffered from smog –a hybrid name for smoke and fog. Angelinos knew smog was caused by vehicular emissions produced by internal combustion engines and industrial fumes. As in the case of Mexico City the problem is worsened by an inversion that traps pollutants close to the ground.
However, Angelinos had the attitude that if they ignored the problem it would go away. Why else would rational people tear up a light rail system that linked the region and replace it with massive freeways that promoted a car culture?
Of course the answer is greed. Los Angeles bought a major share of the automobiles manufactured in the United States, had more gas stations than Starbucks has coffee shops, and has more auto insurance companies than elsewhere. As with smoking and climate change, these interests accused critics of being alarmist. Deny, deny, deny.
When researchers came up with studies on how the ruling was blaming the victim for a failure to educate the poor, deniers went on the offensive saying that this claim was racist; it perpetuated a victimization complex. They refused to consider the probability that the poor were handicapped by low wages, bad neighborhoods, and racism.
The deniers ignored that there was a crisis in education. They refused to admit that it was caused by their refusal to pay for the education of students who did not look like them. Conservative think tanks promoted the line that people of color had other ‘gifts’– they were just not genetically made for academic learning. Blacks could bounce a basketball and Mexicans could play a guitar. Spending money on their education was throwing good money away – this was based on good old American common sense.
The big people got offended when reformers answered that this was racist. The deniers insisted that everyone had an equal opportunity. Their response was similar to the research on cigarettes that proved they were harmful to our health, that smog was caused by carbon fuels, and that emissions were causing climate change. Truth be told, American common sense is incapable of solving a simple syllogism; they have to wait for a crisis.
Similarly many reformers have sounded the clarion about the privatization of education. For some time, they have said that it is threatening access of the poor to higher education. St. Ronald Reagan who did not know how to spell the word syllogism as governor preached the gospel of raising the cost of higher education, saying that the turmoil on the University of California and Cal State systems was caused by idle students. The solution was to raise tuition so dissident students would have to work and be too tired carry picket signs.
Deny, deny, deny! Even my liberal colleagues accused me of being alarmists – “it is only $50 a semester.” Through the years the cheerleaders fought efforts to increase access. When we tried to start an osteopathic school of medicine, they twisted the logic saying that minorities deserved better; we would be offending the American Medical Association who were real doctors. When we talked about starting not for profit universities, they said the U.S. universities were the world’s best, denying that most advanced nation’s had tuition free institutions. It was always an excuse. However, today it is clear that this shift and the denial of access is by design. It is what St. Ronald intended.
Matters have progressively worsened to the point that in this century tuition has become the principle way to deny access to the bottom fifty percent of minorities. Society has learned nothing from the lessons of how smoking causes lung cancer and smog leads to climate change. Higher education has become a marketplace where students are commodities
This week the University of California system announced that 20 percent of incoming freshmen are out of state and foreign students. They will each pay over $23,000 in tuition versus $12,192 for instate students. The UC announced an estimated profit of $400 million.
How about Latinos and Blacks? In the nine UC undergraduate campuses, the highest percentages of out of state students are at UCLA, 30.1 percent, UC Berkeley, 29.8 percent and UC San Diego, 28.4 percent. Minorities are already being relegated to less prestigious campuses.
A former student of mine remarked on Facebook: “Twenty percent of freshmen are coming from out of state and internationally, and yet they think that we’ll believe them that these 20% are not pushing out our own students? Come on!! Of course they are! Last year UCB accepted 14,000 students, this year – 13,300. Fewer admits and more non-Californians, hmmmm…. Do the math!”
Another respected scholar wrote, “This is a very sad development and is the direct result of the people of California cutting their taxes so much that they cannot give our young people the opportunity they were given. Less than a tenth of the UCLA budget now comes from the state. It is becoming a semi-public, semi-California institution. Since it was just ranked 12th best in the world there is a vast demand from amazing students. The state needs to decide to pay for its great state institutions. UC isn’t cutting back California students but the growing spaces are going to others. We need more UC campuses and more spaces on the existing ones.”
The question is not whether they are international or out of state students; however, like gentrification, the question is who is being displaced?
The deniers say this extra cash keeps education in California going forgetting that corporations and real estate ventures are not paying their fair share of the costs.
I have proposed a not for profit institution that delivers a college education modeled after Spain’s National Distance Education University (UNED). UNED offers higher education through the modality of distance education. It has more than 205,000 students, and is one of the largest universities in Europe, accredited to offer bachelors, masters and doctorates; it has 45 majors.
The system is simple. It does not have a central campus and its distance learning is supported by numerous resource centers – housed in storefronts or in non-profits – supplemented by tutors and equipment. Students can even watch classes collectively or do the work individually from their homes. Exams are strictly supervised at the centers.
The reaction to my proposal to establish this system here has been, “I don’t like online classes!” “It lessens the quality – you get so much more out of a class.” The deniers forget that it is not about them, but the 50 percent who do not have a choice. It is not about us.
The deniers’ common sense is based on years of propaganda by the corporate elite who refuse to pay taxes and those who benefit from making universities profit centers. In the U.S. education is for sale; education is a business. The question is, how do we serve the people? When do we start fighting back?
