[Vision2020] A Dangerous ‘New Normal’ in College Debt

Nicholas Gier ngier006 at gmail.com
Sat Mar 9 09:54:41 PST 2013


Good Morning Visionaries,

Since I started teaching at the UI in 1972, tuition has risen 1,100 plus
percent.  I have the exact amount over 1,100 somewhere in my files.  In
stark contrast appropriations for higher ed have dropped from about 20
percent of the budget to about 10 percent.

For the 21st Century the rest of the industrialized world will leave us in
the dust in most areas, except for defense spending per capita.

I weep for America,

Nick

On Sat, Mar 9, 2013 at 5:22 AM, Art Deco <art.deco.studios at gmail.com> wrote:

>  [image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>
>
> ------------------------------
> March 8, 2013
> A Dangerous ‘New Normal’ in College Debt By CHARLES M. BLOW
>
> We are reaching a crisis point in this country’s higher education system.
>
> As college tuitions rise and state and local funding for higher education
> falls — along with median household incomes — students are taking on
> staggering levels of debt. And many can’t find jobs that pay well enough to
> quickly pay off the debt. This has long-term implications for our society
> and our economy, as that debt begins to affect when and if young people
> start families or enter the housing market.
>
> The student debt crisis may become a dangerous “new normal,” according to
> a report<http://www.sheeo.org/sites/default/files/publications/SHEF-FY12.pdf>this week by the nonprofit State Higher Education Executive Officers
> Association:
>
> “In the ‘new normal,’ retirement and health care costs simultaneously
> drive up the cost of higher education, and compete with education for
> limited public resources. The ‘new normal’ no longer expects to see a
> recovery of state support for higher education such as occurred repeatedly
> in the last half of the 20th century. The ‘new normal’ expects students and
> their families to continue to make increasingly greater financial
> sacrifices in order to complete a postsecondary education. The ‘new normal’
> expects schools and colleges to find ways of increasing productivity and
> absorb ever-larger budget cuts, while increasing degree production without,
> we hope, compromising quality.”
>
> In constant dollars, state and local educational appropriations per
> full-time student reached their high in 2001, at $8,670. In 2012, those
> appropriations fell by nearly one third, to just $5,896.
>
> The cost of tuition, on the other hand, has increased dramatically.
> According to a September report by CNN Money<http://money.cnn.com/2012/09/17/pf/college/college-costs-obama/index.html>:
> “Over the past decade, average annual tuition for a year of community
> college has risen 40 percent to $3,122, according to the College Board, a
> nonprofit group that runs the SAT exam. At four-year public universities,
> the cost has risen 68 percent to $7,692 a year.”
>
> Meanwhile, a September Census report<http://www.census.gov/prod/2012pubs/p60-243.pdf>shows, median household incomes fell by nearly 7 percent from 2001 to
> 2011. And there are now more Americans living in poverty than at any time
> since record-keeping began more than half a century ago.
>
> This confluence of trends has led to higher borrowing by students.
>
> An analysis<http://www.newyorkfed.org/newsevents/mediaadvisory/2013/Lee022813.pdf>last month by Donghoon Lee, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New
> York, found that “student debt is the only kind of household debt that
> continued to rise through the Great Recession” and is now the “second
> largest balance after mortgage debt.”
>
> According to Mr. Lee, student loan debt is fast approaching a trillion
> dollars, up from less than $400 billion in 2004, and both the number of
> borrowers and the average balance per borrower have “increased by 70
> percent between 2004 and 2012 (7 percent per year).”A September Pew
> Research Center report<http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2012/09/26/a-record-one-in-five-households-now-owe-student-loan-debt/>found that “a record one-in-five households now owe student loan debt.”
>
> That report also found that student loan debt as a share of household
> income was 24 percent for families in the lowest income quintile. That was
> at least twice the share of any other quintile.
>
> As the report put it, “The relative burden of student loan debt is
> greatest for households in the bottom fifth of the income spectrum, even
> though members of such households are less likely than those in other
> groups to attend college in the first place.”
>
> And many of those graduates can’t find work or are underemployed, and they
> struggle to pay back their own personal mountain of debt.
>
> A January report<http://centerforcollegeaffordability.org/uploads/Underemployed&>from the Center for College Affordability and Productivity found that
> “about 48 percent of employed U.S. college graduates are in jobs that the
> Bureau of Labor Statistics suggests requires less than a four-year college
> education.” That number included 37 percent in occupations requiring no
> more than a high school diploma.
>
> For example, the report pointed out that “in 1970, fewer than 1 percent of
> taxi drivers and 2 percent of firefighters had college degrees, while now
> more than 15 percent do in both jobs.”
>
> And yet, this country needs a more knowledgeable work force to be
> competitive. While the number of college graduates in America is
> increasing, that number is growing even faster in some other countries.
> And, as the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development noted in
> 2011, “The U.S. is the only country where attainment levels among those
> just entering the labor market (25- to 34-year-olds) do not exceed those
> about to leave the labor market (55- to 64-year-olds).”
>
> Our national educational aspirations and the debt crisis that they’re
> creating are colliding. We are on an unsustainable track. This will not end
> well.
>
>>
> I invite you to join me on Facebook <http://www.facebook.com/CharlesMBlow>and follow me on
> Twitter <http://twitter.com/CharlesMBlow>, or e-mail me at
> chblow at nytimes.com.
>
>
>
>
> --
> Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
> art.deco.studios at gmail.com
>
>
>
> =======================================================
>  List services made available by First Step Internet,
>  serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.
>                http://www.fsr.net
>           mailto:Vision2020 at moscow.com
> =======================================================
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/attachments/20130309/5f1dafbf/attachment.html>


More information about the Vision2020 mailing list