THE SORRY STATE OF HIGHER EDUCATION NEW YORK

THE SORRY STATE OF HIGHER EDUCATION

NEW YORK (Reuters) (April 9, 2018) - A federal judge on Monday signed off on a $25 million agreement to settle fraud claims arising from Trump University, the now-defunct education venture of U. S. President Donald Trump, after a former student agreed to drop further appeals.

According to Wikipedia, Trump University, founded by Donald Trump and his business partners, was a for-profit company that ran a real estate training program from 2005 until 2010. It was owned and operated by The Trump Organization. But after multiple lawsuits, it is now defunct.

In 2011, Trump University was investigated by the New York Attorney General’s office for illegal business practices. Class action lawsuits were brought against the company, centering around allegations that it has defrauded its students by using misleading marketing practices and engaging in aggressive sales tactics.

The President’s effort at higher learning drew in suckers with pathetic promises of great real-estate insights (for instance, that Trump ‘hand-picked’ the instructors) and then charged them top dollar for getrich-quick tutorials that students later described as ‘almost completely worthless’ and a ‘total lie’.

The story of the decline and fall of American higher education begins in the 1960 s with Chicago School economist Milton Friedman’s assertion that higher education should not be seen as a ‘public good’ but an ‘investment in human capital’.

The prevailing view at the time was that while better access to higher education is good for society as a whole, it would be necessary for the government to provide the fundings. Otherwise, higher education would be undersupplied by the private sector because it is not profitable business.

Milton Friedman disagreed. He argued that as long as students of higher education are the ones who benefit from the returns on human capital, they should bear some or all of the investment costs. The government should eliminate subsidies for higher education because ‘there is no such thing as a free lunch’.

Friedman’s proposal eventually found a sympathetic ear in Ronald Reagan, who became President of the United States in 1980.

When Reagan came into office, only about 20 percent of the cost of college was paid as tuition; the other 80 percent was paid by the government. Today the numbers are almost exactly reversed, and it is the students themselves, rather than the government, who have to shoulder most of the costs of higher education.

Beginning in the 1980 s, state budgets for education have been dwindling, and more of the costs of education have been transferred to students and their families. Flagship state universities set their prices below those of elite private colleges. But they are not cheap by any other standard.

It was around the 1980 s that most of the high-paid manufacturing jobs began to be outsourced from the United States to other countries. Since then, a college degree has become more necessary to obtain a job. Since everyone feels obligated to go to college, tuition skyrocketed.

The price of a college degree is more expensive in the United States than anywhere else in the world, according to an OECD report which looked at public and private college costs in its 35 member countries and found that higher education is priciest in the United States by a significant margin.

Tuition is, and has been, increasing at triple the rate of inflation. On average, college tuition increases at around 8 percent per year, which means that the cost of college doubles every 9 years. But how about those poorest students who can’t afford tuition at even underfunded public universities?

No problem at all. If students don’t have the cash, there is a virtually unlimited amount of credit available for them to borrow. All they have to do is go to the financial aid office, sign a few documents, and they can get a loan from the Student Loan Marketing Association (Sallie Mae) or some other private lenders.

In short, college costs are outrageously high, but students pay them because they have to, and because the system makes it easy to borrow massive amounts of money.

Universities and colleges these days operate like corporations. They see students as customers, and achieving customer satisfaction has meant building expensive social centers and athletic facilities even while cutting library and research budgets.

Flush with student loan money, colleges are spending lavishly on luxury dorms, gyms, swimming pools and other amenities, or to hire the best sports coaches and fitness trainers. To attract more customers, the best way is to make college a lifestyle, not just giving students an education.

At the same time, universities and colleges have relegated the task of instructing undergraduates to meagerly compensated adjuncts. At institutions across the country, ranging from small community colleges to big state schools and elite universities, the traditional fulltime, tenured professor is becoming a minority.

A 2014 report by the American Association of University Professors showed that adjuncts (i. e. part-time teachers) now constitute 76. 4 percent of U. S. faculty across all institutional types, from liberal-arts colleges to research universities to community colleges.

Though adjunct numbers have risen, their pay, in many cases, has not, despite often punishing working conditions. For example, colleges and universities often do not provide adjuncts with office space, making it difficult for them to meet with students outside class.

Many universities and colleges do not give adjuncts the basic resources they need to properly teach their courses, such as sample syllabi or learning objectives. Since most departments hire adjuncts at the last minute, they are often inadequately prepared to enter the classroom.

To make matters worse, many adjuncts teach at several colleges to make ends meet. Commuting further reduces the time they can devote to individual students. A study released by the U. S. House of Representatives reveals that the majority of these adjuncts live below the poverty line.

Finally, total outstanding student debt has ballooned from $830 billion in 2010 to over $1. 5 trillion in 2018. The current college education bubble has been fueled by the U. S. government’s willingness to give out cheap and easy student loans to anybody who applied for them, regardless of whether they will be able to pay the loans back.

Students take on a huge debt load with the promise that their degrees will be the doorway to jobs that allow them to pay it back, but for many the jobs are not there or are not sufficient to meet expenses. The average undergraduate who borrows leaves school with about $30, 000 in debt.

Recent college graduates are ending up in more low-wage and part-time positions as it has become harder to find educationlevel appropriate jobs. With many students graduating with high debt loads, a growing number of students are becoming delinquent on their loans.