As if on cue
Not eight hours after I finished writing my last post, Mother Jones published this timely article about the crisis of college affordability. I touched on many of the same themes in a piece I wrote about the Quebec student strike four years ago, but Andy Kroll summarizes some important new research that bears quoting. Specifically:
Colleges and universities have [ . . . ] undergone a dramatic shift in the kinds of financial aid they give out. Grants have been largely replaced by student loans issued by governments and private lenders. In the decade between the 1997-1998 and 2007-2008 academic years, student loans more than doubled—from $41 billion to $85 billion—and the number of students taking out those loans soared from 4,100,000 to 6,111,000, according to “Measuring Up 2008.”
Between the 1992-1993 and 2003-2004 academic years, student borrowing rose by 89%, from an average of $3,884 to $7,336 per year. Meanwhile, grant aid lagged, increasing only 57% from $3,545 per year to $5,565, while the Pell Grant lost much of its purchasing power: In 1979, it paid for 75% of the cost of attending a four-year public college or university; today, only about 30%.
This point about “purchasing power” is absolutely crucial, since most public sources of student assistance–i.e., those that are targeted to low and middle-income students such as Pell and G.I. grants in the US, or the Canada Student Assistance Program here–currently offer little or none. Without purchasing power, grants do nothing to advance their original goal, which was to provide economic access to post-secondary education for students who cannot rely on private means. Instead, grants provide an illusion of access, which masks the extent to which the financing of education has been privatized and therefore how disadvantaged those low-income students who do make it to university are in comparison with their peers.
In light of this, I think that Kroll is right to predict that Americans may “emerge from economic disaster with their college and university system looking unrecognizably different and staggering numbers of potential students shut out of an education.” To say that this is not the system I had hoped to teach in is an understatement; it is also precisely my fear.
Because of financial worries, the trend in NY state has been more students applying to the SUNY schools and CUNY schools in NYC, and less applications to out-of-state or private schools. For me, I am hopeful that this will lead to more positions of adjunct lecturers, which will probably happen for intro science courses in the CUNY system. In addition to the impending fare hikes the MTA will impose for the subway, this will encourage people to stay local, even refusing to venture out of their neighborhood let alone boroughs. Interesting change in dynamics.
P.S. – Sorry, forgot to tell you great post!
As I understand it, the Canadian university system was based to some extent on the principle that students shouldn’t have to “go away to college” to receive an education. We’ve moved a bit closer to the American model of late, but perhaps the economy will stem that tide.
Anyway, thanks, and good luck with the job hunt…