newleft:

criticalculture:

“Perhaps more surprising, even those high-school students who are fully qualified to attend college are increasingly unlikely to derive enough benefit to justify the often six-figure cost and four to six years (or more) it takes to graduate. Research suggests that more than 40 percent of freshmen at four-year institutions do not graduate in six years. Colleges trumpet the statistic that, over their lifetimes, college graduates earn more than nongraduates, but that’s terribly misleading. You could lock the collegebound in a closet for four years, and they’d still go on to earn more than the pool of non-collegebound — they’re brighter, more motivated, and have better family connections. Also, the past advantage of college graduates in the job market is eroding. Ever more students attend college at the same time as ever more employers are automating and sending offshore ever more professional jobs, and hiring part-time workers. Many college graduates are forced to take some very nonprofessional positions, such as driving a truck or tending bar.”

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America’s Most Overrated Product: the Bachelor’s Degree (From The Chronicle of Higher Education)

The effects of neoliberalism on the higher education system are frightening. Students are fighting harder with one another to pay more to ultimately get less. Rates of interest on student loans are increasing for the same reason that the professional jobs are being sent overseas- to furnish the growth of profit to which investors feel entitled. Should it be any surprise when one of the largest providers of money for education is a privately held corporation?

As the higher education system continues to deteriorate, writers and columnists place the blame on students, who just a few years earlier were told by their guidance counselors and many education experts that “the bachelor’s is the new diploma.” College, they were told, was “an investment in your future,” with the lifetime differences in incomes continually touted as a reason for students to take on huge personal debt. When students have started asking where the return on their investment is, they were told that college probably wasn’t the best choice for them.

The very structure of education in the US has become not just job training, but a reflection of the capitalist economy at large: a select few born into privilege (through legacy admissions and their parents’ donations), fewer actually managing to make it into that privilege through luck and hard work (but mostly luck), and the vast majority seeing their opportunities wither away.

@2 years ago with 13 notes