[Vision2020] U.S. Loses Lead in Higher Education: Drops to 10th in Young Adults with Degrees

[nickgier at roadrunner.com]

Greetings:

This was my radio commentary/column for last week.  I wrote it long hand in one our camps on the Green River.  What a great invention word processing was!

The full version is attached as a PDF file.

Nick Gier

US LOSES LEAD IN HIGHER EDUCATION:

By Nick Gier

When I attended the University of Copenhagen in 1966-67, I learned that only 8 percent of young Danes graduated from gymnasium, the rigorous 3-year professional preparatory school system. These graduates were then qualified to go on to business school, the teachers college, or the two universities.

Today Denmark has seven universities and 40 percent of adult Danes have a post-secondary degree.  (The U.S. percentage is 33.)  There is no tuition and single students who keep up their grades receive $800 each month from the government.

The U.S. used to be the world's leader in education at all levels, but we now rank 14th in high school graduation rates and our students do poorly in international assessments.  

We have now dropped to 10th in terms of the number of 25-34 year-olds who have a college degree.  Only 25 percent of Idaho's high school graduates receive a college degree. 

The U.S. graduation rates are even worse.  Right next to Turkey and Mexico we rank 15th among 29 nations.  Only 53 percent of UI students finish in 6 years, while the percentages for ISU, BSU, and LCSC are 31, 28, and 27 respectively.

Over the past two decades European universities have borrowed basic ideas from the U.S.  They are moving to 3-year baccalaureates, 2-year masters degrees, and standardized diplomas.  Under the 1999 Bologna Plan students will be able to transfer credits among European universities.  

Adjusting for inflation, tuition on American campuses has doubled since 1980, while salaries for middle class families have remained flat.  Thirty years ago Pell grants to needy students covered 72 percent of their college costs, but today that percentage as dropped to 38.  

During the Bush administration Pell grant funding was cut so severely that 375,000 qualified students failed to get stipends. Columnist David C. Johnston states that "an estimated 200,000 young people do not attend college each year simply because they lack the resources."

A study done by the Education Trust found that financial aid at 50 flagship public universities increased 500 percent for students from families making over $100,000, but it dropped 13 percent for students coming from households earning under $20,000.  The study concludes that our top state institutions "have become enclaves for the most privileged of their state's young people."

Over $85 billion each year is lent to students struggling to make ends meet and many of these loans are made by private lenders such as Sallie Mae, Educap, and Nelnet. These companies can charge any interest rate they please.  Students take out loans at single digits and then discover that the rates have doubled or tripled by repayment time.  Typically, a $20,000 loan has become a $50,000 debt.

Making "pay day" loans to students is very profitable.  Sallie Mae reported a 51 percent profits from 2001-2006, and Educap's chief executive makes $1 million a year and flies around in a Gulfstream jet.

Conservatives would charge that an $800 monthly stipend for every Danish student is socialism pure and simple, but at the same time they claim that the private lenders are practicing "free enterprise" and preventing a government take-over of the student loan system.  

It is significant to note that the decline in American educational opportunity also means exclusion from the excellent vocational-technical curricula offered by the nation's community colleges. Europe has always been and continues to be strong in this vital area.

European students have better access to higher education than ever before and most of them start their careers debt free.  Hundreds of thousands of qualified American students are denied post-secondary possibilities and two-thirds of graduates enter the workforce with huge financial burdens.  

This does not bode well for America's economy or its future as a once great nation.

Nick Gier taught philosophy at the University of Idaho for 31 years.  He is also President of the Higher Education Council of the Idaho Federation of Teachers, AFT/AFL-CIO. 
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